Red Bull is Killin’ It
As someone who holds a deep passion for the branding and marketing industry, I tend to informally monitor a brand’s progression over time. Just like most people in the business, I’m a bit of an industry critic – some brands I naturally root for and some I root against. Today, however, I want to talk about a brand that I’ve always been pretty unbiased towards… that is, until recent years. The other night while I was cooking dinner, watching television and browsing my iPad (welcome to 2012), my attention was briefly apprehended by Red Bull’s new TV spot. Not only was I impressed by the production value – impactful, dynamic clips of the Red Bull Team overlaid with an emotionally charged, motivating melody and voice-over – but it also caused me to say out loud to myself, “Wow. Red Bull is really killin’ it.” And here’s why.
Progression
Red Bull has been a pretty interesting brand to follow over its relatively short life. It was first developed and sold in Austria in 1987. It didn’t make it to the U.S. until 1996, and by that time Red Bull was starting to establish itself globally. And not only establish itself, but establish an entirely new product category. Red Bull was really the first to pioneer the global energy drink marketplace, which anyone would describe as courageous, risky and bold. So even at its pioneered essence, Red Bull was founded on characteristics it has spent so much time, money and effort trying its best to embody.
Flash forward to present day and a completely saturated (and regulated) marketplace, and Red Bull is still the world’s #1 energy drink company. In 2011, Red Bull pulled in $471 million in U.S. sales and held 44% of the energy drink market share, according to SymphonyIRI. But how do they continue to stay on top in such a crowded market? Well, the simple answer is branding. Red Bull has managed to create something that reaches far beyond its product offerings and even its industry. It has created a movement, a culture, and even a world – the world of Red Bull.
Here are a couple of ways Red Bull got there:
Vision
From the beginning, Red Bull realized how you market a product is just as important as the product itself. That’s why it invested in relationships – with people and brands that reflected similar characteristics. In 1989, Red Bull sponsored their first Formula 1 driver. Now, it’s hard not to see a Red Bull sponsorship at a sporting event - they even own a professional soccer team. And within the sporting world, they absolutely own the extreme-sports segment. Skateboarding, skydiving, wakeboarding, cliff diving, rock climbing, surfing… you name it, and Red Bull has some sort of stake in it. But it doesn’t stop at sports. Dance, music, film and gaming are just a few other categories that Red Bull is exploring. Its vision spreads far and wide, and there are no signs of slowing down.
Consistency
Consistency is what develops reputation. Red Bull has remained consistent at a high level for the majority of its existence. Red Bull’s messaging focused more on functionality in the early years as the product was introduced, and now has switched to a much more emotional approach. But even with the shift, its overall positioning has remained consistent. Just ask any consumer about Red Bull and their response will most likely leave you with, “It gives you wings.”
Execution
You can have a great idea, but if you can’t execute, nothing will ever come of it. Fortunately Red Bull knows how to execute, which might be its strongest attribute. Its efforts began with animated sketch-art advertising, to help showcase the product in an amusing, but functional manner (who can forget the “Pigeon” ad). Red Bull’s more recent marketing efforts have become wildly interactive and social, focusing more on the lifestyle it has created that surrounds the brand. Consumers are regularly visiting its website to explore and discover the world of Red Bull, looking for opportunities to hang with the brand. Red Bull even has its own media company, Red Bull Media House. So not only is Red Bull the content feature, they are also the content producer. Pretty amazing.
The remarkable thing about Red Bull’s brand is the fact that it has matured in such a short period of time. It went from a new product in a new category, to a cultural influencer in less than 25 years – not many other brands can say that. Without Red Bull, it’s hard to say where extreme-sports would be today. And I’m excited to see what’s in store for the future.
Pinterest: A New Way to Market Your Brand
There are many websites out there that help us find the things we are interested in such as Google and Stumble Upon, but recently there has been a growing interest in organizing these likes and interests on one platform. And that’s where Pinterest comes in, and as it grows in popularity more than just its individual users are reaping its rewards. Brands too can benefit from Pinterest, as it has become an innovative way to share information, ideas, and more importantly products, and brands.
According to its’ website, Pinterest “lets you organize all the beautiful things you find on the web.” Pinterest is made up of many different boards, which have an overlying topic such as “Recipes” and “Fashion.” Each user’s board acts as a virtual pin board, where they can pin pictures, articles, or anything of interest from the web or uploaded from their computer. Users are using their boards for everything from redesigning a bedroom, to planning a wedding, to making a collage of favorite fashion designs.
Pinterest has become an innovative way for businesses to get their name and products out there. Because it allows users to share and gain information with ease, it makes the spread of ideas and information easier than ever. If a business has a product pinned on a very popular board, other users are likely to see the pin and click it which will take them to the business’ website. For example, if you see a pair of Nike tennis shoes pinned to a “Shoes” board and want to buy them, all you have to do is click the picture and you will be taken to the website where they can be purchased. Unlike Facebook, Pinterest does not have the option to create a corporate account, which can actually help a brand. With no corporate accounts, brands are not able to pin their own products, so customers must pin them instead. Customers pinning about a brand’s products instead of the brand pinning about its own products may be more effective. Customers tend to listen to and trust fellow customers more than a large brand. If they see a product they like that another user has pinned they will probably be more likely to purchase it because it is being promoted by another person like them, not a large brand. Pinterest is a new branch of social media that brands should take advantage of. Brands can capitalize on Pinterest by encouraging customers to pin products they like, which shares the product with the millions of people on Pinterest and is free marketing. Many brands may discover that they gain a great amount of recognition and business by letting the customers do some of the promoting.
Contributed by Keena Classen
Google This and Google That
There are certain brands that fascinate me and I can never learn enough about them. Google is one of those brands. I recently finished Douglas Edwards’ book “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59” and I can’t stop talking about it. Just ask my coworkers – it’s been Google does this and Google did that for about three weeks now.
The book is an interesting look into the company as it was first starting up until it went public. I love how Edwards lets us in on key meetings that determined how the tiniest of details would be presented first through the search engine and then through AdWords, Google News, etc. As a believer that a true brand lies in the details, I could not get enough of these insights.
In addition, the book talks a lot about Google’s culture and showcases examples of how the company brought that culture to life in its TGIF meetings, office space and decision making. As with many successful brands, the strong culture is the foundation for the Google brand and its distinct voice.
As Google’s first dedicated brand marketer, Edwards helped to build and set standards for one of today’s most iconic brands. While this is only one employee’s perspective, it is definitely worth adding this book to your “To Read” list.
Have you read it yet? Let us know what you thought.
Top Three Tips for Internal Branding
One of the keys to building a successful brand externally is to build your brand internally. Not only do your employees live and breathe the brand each day, but they are the ones communicating it to your current and future customers. So how do you develop a successful internal branding campaign? Here are a few tips.
- Provide easy to understand and easy to access tools. These tools could be as simple as a rack card at each employee’s desk or educational pages on your company’s intranet.
- Engage team members from multiple departments. Ask department leaders to highlight employees who are enthusiastic and willing to carry the brand flag within the team. Then educate these brand ambassadors on the brand and how to talk to their coworkers about the value of the organization’s brand.
- Do it once, twice, three times and don’t stop. Internal branding is not something that can be done once and be considered successful. If it is just done once, employees may just see it as a campaign. Regularly communicating about the brand will help engrain it in your organization’s culture. Consider highlighting a different organization benefit or value each month, explaining its value and showing examples of how the brand is lived each day by employees.
When your employees believe it, your customers and future customers will notice. By tapping into your greatest brand implementation tool – your workforce – your organization will not only be singing from the same hymn book (pardon my Southern phrasing), but so will your customers.
What is Employer Branding?
It’s easy for you to start talking about the products or services your company offers, but how do you talk about your company itself? It’s not enough to promote one of your own brands, companies must brand themselves as employers.
Brett Minchington, Chairman/CEO of Employer Brand International, defines your employer brand as “the image of your organization as a ‘great place to work’ in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders). The art and science of employer branding is therefore concerned with the attraction, engagement and retention of initiatives targeted at enhancing your company's employer brand."
Companies brand themselves as employers to convey to the world why their workplace is appealing in hopes of attracting good workers, which is especially important during the economic slowdown. As companies cut costs, getting the best people in the right jobs is even more crucial. Additionally, as companies expand into foreign markets competition for skilled workers increases.
While there are many ways to approach employer branding, one of the most important things is knowing who you are. Create a brand based on your company’s mission and objectives. The book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies demonstrates that companies with consistent, distinctive and deeply held values tend to outperform those companies with a less clear and articulated ethos. Product lines, profit strategies, cultural tactics, and organization structure can change – but a core ideology should not.
Your employer brand is who you are, and how others—both employees and potential candidates -- view your company. Communicating your organization's mission and values will attract and engage the like-minded talent who will directly affect your bottom line.
Brandverbs: The Highest Mark of Success?
When was the last time you said: "I'm going to go use a search engine to look up information on tonight's event." The answer to that is either never, or sometime circa the early 2000's, but since then it's more than likely that most Americans say "I'm going to go Google more information on tonight's event." And that is my friend is brandverbing.
Companies like Xerox, Hoover, and even Google have gone to great lengths to avoid their brands becoming verbs, but why? When a brand becomes a verb you know that it has reached mass market consumer recognition, so wouldn’t becoming so engrained in society that your brand becomes part of the language be the ultimate degree of success for a brand?
So while others have fought hard to keep their brand from becoming a verb others are spending a lot of time and resources to make sure their brand is used as verbs by consumers in everyday life and conversation. Enter: Vanguard; an investment company who in 2010 began a highly visible campaign to turn their brand name into a verb.
The move by Vanguard shows that they too recognize the significance and potential payoff for their brand to be used in everyday language just like Xerox or Google has now experienced. And unlike a brand becoming genericized like asprin, zipper, and escalator (yup, these were all trademarked brand names at one point) a brand that becomes a verb is more appealing than its generic counterpart and has less risk in losing its brand appeal. Seth Godin, American author and speaker, said: "people care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that are happening, that change. They care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel. Nouns just sit there, inanimate lumps. Verbs are about wants and desires and wishes."
So if what Godin says is true, every brand should strive to be a brandverb when appropriate. After all a brand is more than a product or logo, a brand is about an experience and the expectations we have of that brand. So if becoming a brandverb will incite those feelings then what's the big deal? These days I believe becoming a brandverb is not a kiss of death but the mark of success.
How Social Media Can Help Branding
Social media is a great way to help promote a brand because of convenience and connection. Social networks are unlike other marketing platforms because they offer brands an easy access to target audiences, and the ability to maintain online relationships. An online brand profile allows a company to introduce its brand identity, and make the brand more present in consumers’ everyday lives.
The biggest platforms that will help bring the most traffic to a brand are Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Facebook offers a limitless amount of space to promote a brand, with room for wall conversations, updates, photos, video, pictures, interests, and more. Though Twitter and Linkedin are a bit more limiting in what you can share with your audience, they are equally as powerful as Facebook for engaging interaction and forming an online identity.
Consistent updates on Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin will help flesh out your brand’s profile. Followers can learn about news updates, comment on posts, and offer other insights that may help your brand be the best it can be. The unique quality about social networks is that they build a community and thus a loyalty around your brand, which is valuable for staying relevant and attractive in any industry.
One of the most valuable things social media has to offer a brand is the ability to associate with other brand names online. Partnerships can increase visibility to a wider audience, and leverage a brand into new markets. Alternatively, if a brand targets a specific market or a certain audience, there are niche social media sites to explore. For example, if your brand is a diaper company, it would be advantageous to follow or even start a mommy blog, to get feedback on what mom’s think about your products.
In the past, brands have just been names and logos, but now they trigger online conversations, bringing more life and interaction to a brand’s identity. Not only can you see what consumers say about your brand, but also what they say about competitors. Following a competitor’s profile page can help a brand to monitor the direction of its competitor, and stay up-to-date in the market.
In a brand-centric world, social media can really help a brand distinguish itself and maintain a fresh image. The social media-scape is still new, allowing room to innovate the ways in which it’s being used. We should be seeing some interesting social media initiatives from brands in the near future!
Contributed by: Emily Hassell
Nice Package: 5 Tips for a Great Package Design
As "the hot dog wars" battle on between Sara Lee Corporation and Kraft Food Inc. in a Chicago courtroom over misleading package designs, I think it's time to take a deeper look into packaging and why it is important enough for these two companies to battle it out in court.
While a brand must employ a successful strategy throughout many different touch points including advertising, identity, and web presence, it is packaging that could most directly have an impact on a brand's sale. No longer is a product's package merely a means of protection during transport from point A to point B, but an increasingly important factor in product's success. A well-marked package will get a customer to pick up a product and take a closer look, which ultimately puts you one step closer to making that sale. This is why it is so important to have an interesting and compelling package design.
Kristin Everidge, Manager of Visual Branding at Addison Whitney, says "People are drawn to products with interesting packages because it suggests that what's inside is equally appealing or different." Package design can enhance a brand through unique structures, sustainable materials, cross promoting other products and building brand awareness through shelf displays and planograms that wow consumers during their weekly shopping trips.
Packaging is a vehicle that reflects the product's brand and image. To ignore the importance of packaging in today's market is your own product's death. Package design should be a continuous investment to evolve with the ever changing world that is packaging.
But what makes a great design? I asked Kristin and these are her top five elements of a great package design (in no particular order):
- 1. Shelf Presence/ability to grab attention quickly
2. Effective informational hierarchy
3. Inspiring materials and structure
4. Functionality
5. Clean & crisp design (images, typography, and functional information)
So do you think you're immune to the power of package design? I think the real answer would surprise you, next time you're shopping the aisles of your local Target, take note of the products you grab and how compelling their designs are compared to the products you left behind…
The Situation with Celebrity Endorsement
From credit cards to sneakers, it is not uncommon to see celebrities endorsing a brand. The basic idea of an endorsement is pretty simple: People like celebrities. So, if a celebrity says that he or she likes a particular product, then people will like that product too. But what happens when that celebrity endorsing your brand brings negative associations? Celebrity scandal has resulted in contracts being terminated, but recently clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch proposed a new alternative.
Abercrombie has offered to compensate reality star Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino (a character on MTV's The Jersey Shore) to stop wearing A&F products.
"We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image," said a statement on the A&F website. "We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans."
Initially this sounds ingenious and yes, pretty funny. But it brings into question just how effective celebrity endorsement is. Can celebrities really transfer their popularity--or in this case, notoriety--from themselves to the brands which they endorse ?
A&F is no stranger to controversy. The company's catalogs have caught heat for scantily clad models and, though they were later dropped, partial nudity in A&F display photos led to obscenity charges in 2008 in Virginia. So, given its semi-scandalous past, is The Situation's endorsement really such a situation?
Avoid the Noid, Round Two
Mascots are generally likeable characters. Familiar faces like Tony the Tiger and Ronald McDonald often hold a nostalgically happy place in the memories of most Americans.
But let's be honest – who ever really liked the Noid?
Domino's Pizza's short-lived, floppy-eared mascot is making a present-day comeback after a retirement that's lasted for 23 years. The popular pizza chain is using the Noid to promote an online game on Facebook, stylized to resemble an arcade game from the 1980s, in which users with the high score can win a free pizza every minute.
Domino's recently garnered a lot of attention for its brutally honest television commercials that aired nationally during the last year and a half, in which the company promised to reinvent itself as a pizza chain. The ads featured consumers openly complaining about the company's pizza products, followed by various Domino's chefs and supervisors who demonstrated how they had improved their pizzas with better ingredients and techniques. The campaign proved successful, as Domino's experienced a historic quarterly gain in the following year.
It's strange, then, that Domino's would revive a long-forgotten mascot at the height of its own revival. The T.V. campaign was successful in re-branding Domino's from a mediocre fast-food restaurant that makes "pizza that tastes like cardboard," into an honest, committed company that goes to great lengths to listen to the concerns of its customers.
So why hearken back to a time where there was no glory – when all Domino's had to distinguish itself as a pizza brand was a cackling little man in a red jumpsuit? After all, the Noid was intended to be an annoying creature that represented other pizza competitors; ironically, it became known as the Domino's mascot instead.
The online promotion is clearly trying to cash in on a blast-from-the-past moment with the 1980s-themed novelties. However, Domino's should think critically about how it wants to brand itself from here onwards. The company has made remarkable strides in less than two years' time in reestablishing itself as a reputable pizza brand, and it needs to continue that momentum instead of interrupting it so abruptly.
One can only hope that, when the promotion is over, the Noid will hop back its way back into the past where it belongs.
Contributed by Allison Meeks