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Pitching an idea

When pitching or selling, just having a good idea is not good enough. We hear this time after time, but what are the things that make pitches or sales people more successful than others. 

Many people come up with great and revolutionary ideas, I have seen entrepreneurs with great business minds crash and burn because they lack the charisma or the ability to convince someone of what they believe is best. This takes passion, enough passion to make people capable of relating to how you feel or think. Make them feel part of the idea. And great entrepreneurs achieve this, sales people do this everyday. 

Because they understand that out opinions are biased by our experience up to that point, and that understanding what makes your idea great is not easy if we are not like minded. Even if I unconsciously don’t like the way you, look, talk or even what you like.  

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A brand through time...

Burberry began as a brand directed towards the military and the “weatherproof” capacities of the coat. Similar to Hugo Boss and the German military. 

The brand was quick to position itself as a luxury brand after this: 

Their image idea, and their publicity has always looked to position the brand as a luxury product. Showcasing airplane and society figures. 

Nonetheless, Burberry is a clear example of how the image and positioning strategy as are important as the distribution and the strategies behind were you buy and the consistency of your brand. You care about who wears the brand on TV, but who wears it on the street. And this is harder to change than the simple image. 

Burberry has been able to find a new price, placement and distribution strategy that warranties quality and consistency throughout the brand, thus recreating the brand.

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Brand Architecture

“We think there’s some advantage to making P&G as a company more like a brand. If you look at investors, they buy our company. You look at the various lists out there — Most Admired, Most Respected companies — they’re about the company, not about the brands.”     —Bob McDonald, CEO P&G

During college I had the opportunity to intern at Procter and Gamble (P&G) for a summer. I worked in the marketing department, and the company was deciding if they should continue with their current brand architecture, or if they should brand their portfolio under P&G.

We had a couple focus groups to understand what the current perception of P&G as a brand, as well of the perception of each of the main brands for the country and the results were very impressive.

About 85% of the people in the focus groups associated P&G with high quality house hold products, but when asked to name a brand only around 20% would actually name P&G brands.

This concept was recurrent almost all over the world, and after this the company decided to change the way they spoke and how they addressed their brands in order to give them the P&G quality seal, and began to also market the company.

I believe there are some pros and cons to this strategy:

Pros:

1.       The company can now enjoy the benefits of the perception of P&G and relate that to the full product line.

2.       In Venezuela in many cases scarcity was a problem, so people felt confident substituting goods from P&G if they did not find their preferred brand.

3.       It allows you to create a company image and goal that can align internal and external corporate communications

Cons:

1.       If at any point there is a problem with a specific product, it can affect the full portfolio.

2.       There are quality differences between brands at P&G, that are explained by pricing but promising the best in every product can be tough to deliver

3.       Product differentiation becomes more complicated (Luvs vs Pampers)

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Concha y Toro: #1 Power 100 ranking of the world’s leading spirits and wine brands

Concha y Toro has continued to work hard in order to position its brand as one that generates value to its costumers. 

Creating a good wine is as much an art as it is a science. Most people cannot perceive the value or the different between a good and an excellent wine. Perception can only tell most consumers if a wine is terrible or good enough, particularly for low cost wines. The rest of the reason why we buy wine is mostly related to trust in the brand. The believe that at every price level that winery will return your money’s worth. 

http://www.thewinesociety.com/value-charter

Although this is not necessarily true for every wine maker, people have begun to associate quality with a brand and not necessarily with the country of origin. For Concha y Toro leveraging the idea of value added to consumers through different levels of wine quality for all of which you receive a good price-quality relation was smart in a world in which wine consumption has been very stable for the past several years.

Looking at this data and understanding that wine consumption has remained stable, Concha y Toro might want to also concentrate efforts, not only in earning market share within current wine drinkers, but also in making wine appealing to new consumers. 

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Predicting Difussion

When I think about the adoption of a new project I try to place myself in the mind of the potential consumer. Looking at this four products, I can easily rank according to my own preferences: 

1. The silver screen

2. iSmell

3. Satellite radio

4. Sliced peanut butter

Nonetheless, my reaction to this new products is clearly impacted by my own bias as a consumer. The fact that I probably would never consume a slice of peanut butter does not make the possibility of this product succeeding with a different target market any less probable. 

During my time at P&G many of the new products launched were unappealing to me initially, and after a good campaign and seeing people starting to use the product I was, many times, convinced and even inclined to use it. 

In many cases, certain products will appeal to us as early adopters and will seem like a potential market success. But this can sometimes be misleading, since our behavior is not necessarily that of the target market. 

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/477170522993428409/

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Corona: Keeping it simple

Sorry, Dude, You’ve Been Drinking the Wrong Beer for Years

The American Association of Wine Economists conducted story in 2014 about beer preferences. The discovery was that many beer drinkers are loyal to brand and not taste, and were unable to recognize their favorite beer in a blind taste. 

Keeping this in mind Corona’s idea of advertising was brilliant. They kept a simple brand that was easy to recognize. And given that price and taste could only differentiate their product so much, they relied on selling the experience of drinking it. This creates an aspirational campaign, that without a doubt has been successful.

Keeping this clear path of what the brand represents and where they want to take you as a consumer is something not all brands have been able to obtain. Most beer brands have changed their paths and this affects the top of mind of consumers. Heineken’s efforts are in the right track, but they must commit to their fun and laugh campaign for enough time to have consumers associate what they drink to that experience. In the end you are drinking what you know and associate with enjoyable, not only beer. 

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Black and Decker: Power tools or Coffee Makers?

When Ducan Black and Alonso Decker began their machine shop in 1910, they probably never imagined that less than a hundred years later there brand would sell anything from power tools to house appliances. 

When we think of this change in the product line, it is understandable that the brand is not selling as well as its competitors on shelf. The perception that a construction worker can hold a drill or a saw with the same logo as their wife’s pink vacuum cleaner is not one a brand wishes to create, specially not with such a different consumer base for each product. 

The leap from one product to another is easier to make when you think of Black and Decker as a home use brand. This could be partially what creates such a big difference between: consumer tools, professional industrial tools and professional tradesmen tools. Another reason for such a large difference could be attributed to distribution channels. The professional Industrial tools, although usually bought at W.W Grainer regarded as a specialized store, usually belonged to the company and were given to the workers. Larger contractors can have a longer standing relationship with the B&D  brand.

In the case of the tradesman, the workers brand perception is key. And the stores where this supplies are bought also hold a large number of other brands. This creates a higher impact on price differentiation and the perception of quality from the consumer and the workers around him. He “chooses” which brand to work with.

Finally, for a consumer buying at Wal-mart or K-mart for home use, the perception of quality from peers or heavy users is not as relevant. The fact that the brand is known and used around the house for other purposes can make the consumer feel comfortable buying it. 

When we think about how to solve the problem of harvesting a brand with so many products and such a large spectrum of consumers under the umbrella of one unique company, the message behind this brand must be very well thought. The fact that we are willing to purchase computers, phones, and laundry machines from Samsung is because the brand creates a feel of constant innovation and quality regardless of the product. If Black and Decker was able to align its brand under one main idea such as innovation they could start to shift by changing the image of the company, making it less about strong and more about usability or other characteristics that apply to the different consumers. 

I believe this idea is not as viable, thinking about holding several brands under the Black and Decker Holding, similar to what Procter and Gamble did for many years marketing products under each brand and not under the company could be a helpful solution to creating awareness towards products without associating them mainly with home uses.

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