Brands and Bullshit Read online

  EXCEL AT THE FORMER AND AVOID THE LATTER.

  A BRANDING PRIMER FOR MILLENNIAL MARKETERS IN A DIGITAL AGE.

  BERNHARD SCHROEDER

  A Brand Expert Who Worked with

  Amazon, Yahoo, Apple and Nike

  Author of Fail Fast & Simply Brilliant

  BRANDS AND BULLS**T. EXCEL AT THE FORMER AND AVOID THE LATTER.

  A BRANDING PRIMER FOR MILLENNIAL MARKETERS IN A DIGITAL AGE.

  PRAISE FOR BERNHARD SCHROEDER’S NEW BOOK ON BRANDING:

  “For any digital marketer, strategist, creative or communicator in today’s business world, read this book. Schroeder’s career has spanned three decades and his branding knowledge is all here for the taking. Whether you’re part of a startup or running an established Fortune 50 company, consider this the play book for how to compete in today’s ever-changing world of brands.”

  TOM SUITER, CO-FOUNDER OF ENJOY, FORMER CREATIVE DIRECTOR, APPLE

  “Brands and Bullsh*t examines the distinctions between branding and marketing - between tactics and strategy - for today’s up-and-coming digital marketers. If you are looking to stand out in a crowded field, evolve into a well-rounded marketer or make the transition to brand marketing, you need to read this book.”

  SCOTT CARRINGTON, MGR, DIGITAL BRAND MARKETING, PATAGONIA

  “Brands and Bulls**t should be mandatory reading for every online marketer. It’s time you learned what you don’t know about branding and step up to becoming a “bad ass” branding warrior.”

  THOM MCELROY, CO-FOUNDER, VOLCOM

  “In my experience, too many new marketers confuse tactics for strategy and seem to believe communications somehow displaces the importance of branding. Brands and BullS**t is a comprehensive, career-enhancing course in the essentials of branding.”

  MICHAEL IRWIN, FORMER CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, WD-40

  “At Mirum, we create experiences that people want and businesses need. We work with companies who embrace the transformative power of digital. Brands and Bulls**t is a powerful addition to our digital branding arsenal.”

  DANIEL KHABIE, GLOBAL CEO, MIRUM AGENCY

  “In all that time that I have worked with some large brands, I’ve never worked with anyone who understands branding and where markets are going like Bernie Schroeder. He has the ability to look over the horizon and see where a brand needs to go to be successful. Brands and Bulls**t is not a book as much as it is a lighthouse in the darkness for young marketers.”

  LEEANN IACINO, FORMER COO, BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES

  BRANDS AND BULLS**T. EXCEL AT THE FORMER AND AVOID THE LATTER.

  A BRANDING PRIMER FOR MILLENNIAL MARKETERS IN A DIGITAL AGE.

  As a digital marketer, are you marketing banner ads or building brands? Do you even know what a brand decision tree or a category ladder is? Probably not. Well, it’s not your fault. You most likely grew up inside of a digital marketing environment. You had no brand mentor. However, your future career success depends on your ability to grow from being a digital marketer to becoming a brand expert.

  Brands and Bulls**t. Excel at the Former and Avoid the Latter strips away the mystery of branding and gives you a branding primer necessary for every digital marketer. This new branding book offers you the insight and tools to learn how to excel at marketing strategy and branding. It is filled with over twenty years of expertise working with some of the best brands and branding experts in the world. Add wisdom, knowledge and value to your marketing career. This book will help you:

  Understand what branding in a digital world really means

  Learn how to create a powerful brand that creates a customer “feeling”

  Create specific brand strategies that really work in the marketplace

  Review ten possible brand strategies and understand their potential

  Understand how positioning and category ladders work and why

  Utilize tools like brand decision trees to simplify complex brand choices

  Create a branding strategy for a client or company that targets a blue ocean

  Begin to comprehend the NEW 4 P’s of marketing and their impact

  Learn how to quickly create a brand plan with the BrandPlanr

  Whether you work at a brand or work in an agency, you need to understand exactly how to build and lead a brand. You need to believe that to be a great marketer, you just need more branding insight and tools. And you definitely need to understand the difference between branding and bullshit. Achieve the marketing career you deserve. This is the branding primer every digital marketer has been waiting for. Enjoy.

  For more information on this book or special orders, go to: www.bernieschroeder.com

  View all Bernhard Schroeder titles at: Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Powell Books, Amacon Books, Audible.com, and wherever fine books are found.

  Tired Coast Publishing

  San Diego, California

  This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

  © 2017 Bernhard Schroeder

  All rights reserved.

  This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Tired Coast Publishing.

  The scanning, uploading, or distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the express permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this work and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials, electronically or otherwise. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  About Tired Coast Publishing

  Tired Coast Publishing is a leader in talent development and advancing the skills of individuals to drive business success. Our mission is to support the goals of individuals and organizations through amazing books and research. Tired Coast Publishing’s approach to improving personal performance combines experiential learning—learning through doing—with opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of one’s career or journey.

  “ IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK THAT MATTERS.

  IT’S WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS’ FEEL THAT COUNTS. ”

  “Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is based on the most important characteristic, which is trust.”

  HOWARD SCHULTZ, STARBUCKS

  “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

  JEFF BEZOS, AMAZON

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  INTRODUCTION

  BRANDING IN A DIGITAL WORLD.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CUSTOMERS CAN FEEL BUT MARKETERS NEED TO SEE.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BRANDING 101: AN OVERVIEW.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE CHALLENGE OF BRANDING TODAY.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE BENEFITS OF BRANDING.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE STRATEGY BEHIND THE BRAND.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TEN BRAND BUILDING STRATEGIES.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BRAND ARCHITECTURE AND DECISION TREES.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE ART OF POSITIONING A BRAND.

  CHAPTER NINE


  UNDERSTANDING MARKET CATEGORIES AND LADDERS.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TRENDS AND BLUE OCEANS MATTER.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  4 P’S OF MARKETING HAVE CHANGED.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BUILD A BRAND: THE POWER OF INTEGRATED MARKETING.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A BRAND PLANNER AND FINAL THOUGHTS.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  INTRODUCTION

  BRANDING IN A DIGITAL WORLD.

  * * *

  The founder of a digital marketing agency called me and pressed for a quick meeting as he had acquired a new client and was unsure about how to craft a marketing strategy for this particular company. He had stated on the phone that this client was more sophisticated and might need more than just online marketing solutions. We decided to have a lunch meeting to discuss his issue. As I walked on a street in downtown San Diego, I could see him approaching from the opposite direction and we both arrived at the restaurant at the same time. We were seated quickly and made small talk before he got serious.

  “I believe our agency is about to change significantly as we’ve just acquired our first really big client,” he said. “The problem is that we are not sure about how to help this client strategically based on their situation.” He then explained a bit more about the client including their products, the marketplace and the competition. After he answered a few of my questions, I was starting to get a sense of what the strategic problem or opportunity might be here.

  He had founded his company four years earlier after gaining about three and a half years of marketing experience at several online marketing agencies in town. His digital marketing agency had grown very rapidly as had his client base. The agency had started with smaller clients but now they were attracting larger companies. Not exactly Fortune 500 companies but nevertheless, companies with revenues north of $50 to $100 million.

  I had met him at San Diego State University, where I was teaching entrepreneurship and creativity courses, when he was a student and I had been a mentor to him over the past seven years. I knew him fairly well and quite frankly, I liked him. He had the attributes a marketing person and entrepreneur needed: He could sell, was not bothered by calculated risk and did not obsess about being perfect. He was constantly moving forward and learning “on the go.” So, our meetings were usually spirited; we both had strong points of view on everything and were not afraid to voice our opinions. Maybe that’s why we got along so well: Mutual passion and mutual respect.

  I had spent twenty years in marketing becoming a branding expert to well-known, larger companies like Kellogg’s, Mazda, American Express, Nikon, Apple, Yahoo and Amazon. So I quickly honed in on his agency’s strategic issues with this client.

  “It sounds like your client has a couple of options,” I said to him. “They can re-position their brand in the marketplace to where customers are going and establish their leadership with this growing customer segment. Or they could create a new market category and position themselves on the first rung of the “product category ladder” in their customer’s minds.”, I stated. He stared at me for a few seconds and with a perplexed look on his face, he said, “What is re-positioning a brand, how do you establish a new market category and what the hell is a product category ladder?” Wow, I thought, these new digital marketers, with all their knowledge of online marketing do not know anything about branding. How are they olving complex branding issues? With bullshit? How did we get here?

  WHY BRANDING IS THE ROCK STAR

  Branding has infiltrated every corner of our universe it seems. Many consumers aren’t consciously aware of it, but everything we buy, touch, eat, etc. has been thought through, analyzed, positioned, and presented in a certain way. Some of us may not be aware of how we regard certain companies and products but we have all been influenced to some extent by a company’s branding efforts. Otherwise why would we pay $4 for a cup of coffee? Because it’s not just coffee, it’s a Starbucks coffee!

  What’s fascinating is that Millennials (read also digital marketers) are so affected by branding and yet they understand so very little about how branding actually happens or even how to create a brand. Branding is all around us. And if it’s effective, it makes us feel something. Once we internalize that feeling, then we essentially “own” that brand. It becomes ours and we are not easily dissuaded to try or even buy another product. You don’t need me to convince you that branding is valuable. Just look at all the companies that make products or provide services and dissect them down to what they actual provide: Glass, metal, chips and software? That’s what makes up an Apple iPhone. But talk to a die-hard iPhone customer and this is what they will tell you, “I love my iPhone.” Love? Needless to say, Apple has been extremely successful with their branding efforts. But, if branding is so important, how did we get to a place where digital marketers know so little about branding today?

  THE MAGIC OF A MARKETING MERLIN

  I spent twenty years crafting a marketing career that culminated in me being part of a five-person team that built a $1 billion integrated marketing agency with over 10,000 employees in more than thirty countries. After that I held Chief Marketing Officer roles in four successful company turnarounds. So, how did I—and just as importantly, how do you—become a marketing and branding expert?

  You start at the bottom and work for some amazing marketing people, those whom I think of as “quasi Merlin’s.” Back in the 1980’s, when I started my career, and for about fifty years before that, marketing was managed in a disciplined manner inside advertising and marketing agencies. There was structure in terms of who was at the bottom and who was at the top; there was training and there was a systematized progression of learning and experience. In other words, when you started, you started with small accounts and worked for bright people and you learned. If you were good, you moved up to bigger challenges. Early on, you were asked to say nothing in either company or client meetings and to learn how to listen and observe. If you were fortunate, someone would take you under their wings and start to explain the “unsaid” things that occurred in client meetings. Over time, you were asked to attend training programs on brand and marketing strategy so as to progress from being a “tactical” doer to a more “strategic” thinker. This usually took between five to seven years and about 10,000 hours. All of that mentoring, training and actual experience is what provided the basis for your strategic marketing education. It’s what made you understand how critical brands were and that you could not really force anything onto the customer. That customers had to embrace your marketing messages and internalize all of that marketing to “feel” something. Hopefully that “something” is exactly what you wanted them to feel. I can’t say “you need to love” your iPhone in my marketing. But I can say and project all the right things to make the customer say it and better yet “feel” it. That is the art and science of branding. So, why do most online marketers today not get the right kind of marketing strategy and branding training? Today’s marketers are not dumb. On the contrary, they are pretty smart. So what has changed?

  HOW THE INTERNET HAS CHANGED BRANDING

  When I saw my first webpage in 1993, it was pretty unremarkable and made no real sense to me. Honestly, I did not think anything of it. Boy, was I wrong! Initially, the early Internet (backbone infrastructure) and the World Wide Web (graphics interface browser) was dominated by “pretty” websites (all graphics and photos, no real content or purpose) that really served as marketing brochures. All that changed when our agency office in Portland, Oregon landed the Amazon account in 1995. After a few meetings with Jeff Bezos, I started to understand what he was really building with all of his programmers. He was going to fundamentally change the way we shopped. I am not going to tell you that back then, I really understood the significant impact Amazon would have on the world of commerce. Our initial focus was to build the brand and sell books. And that’s what we did. We did all the early research, brand strategy, creative design and buil
t the core foundation for the Amazon brand. On purpose, we built a very powerful brand. Interestingly, a brand that only existed online. Amazingly, Amazon is now building retail stores. Geez, they just bought Whole Foods.

  So with the rise of the Internet as a new medium, came a plethora of new “online” digital marketing agencies. While traditional advertising and marketing agencies largely ignored the Internet, these digital agencies grew rapidly and started to creep into more strategic marketing projects with larger brands. Time has marched on and now we are in a world where online marketing has become critical. With the rise of social media and customer reviews, being online is not a “nice to have” in marketing, it’s a requirement and is now a core element of most brands’ marketing strategy. So, if the traditional advertising agencies were laggards in embracing online marketing yet new online marketing shops are proliferating, who was training the new marketing leaders in these digital shops about marketing strategy and branding? No one. These digital agencies have grown so quickly that their leaders have never worked in an environment where they could learn or be trained about branding. As a matter of fact, you could have a 30-40 year old leader of a digital agency who has never worked on a “branding assignment” and now is responsible for perhaps leading a client’s marketing efforts. Unless that leader has brought in other people who have had the brand strategy training, what do they think branding is? Online ads, videos, tweets, contests and promotions? Unfortunately, yes.

  MARKETING WITHOUT BRANDING EXPERTISE, IS WELL, BULLS**T

  Going back to my lunch with the founder of the online marketing agency, he is not dumb. He is actually quite bright. He just does not understand the craft of building a brand. He does understand that brands always win over products but he simply does not know how to build a brand. He has never worked for a marketing Merlin. He has done what he has always done to help his online agency grow and thrive. Online tactical marketing. The only problem with understanding one medium “tactically” and not acquiring strategic marketing knowledge and expertise is that as you move upstream to work with larger clients and more powerful “brands” they all expect you to know marketing strategy and branding. It may not be exactly why they are hiring you but they expect you to know it. And if you don’t know it, your tendency is to either “bullshit” your way through it or to actually offer recommendations that are really going to be based on bullshit. That is, you don’t actually know what to do so you try and wing it. This is the most dangerous place to be as a marketer since you could damage your brand, the client business and definitely your career.