davidbassani-blog

[davidbassani-blog]

The importance of “framing”

Right after our last branding section, I kept thinking about the importance of framing (the Princeton example). I remembered of a relatively old Ted Talk from Prof. Dan Ariely, which at the time I thought was enlightening (http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions). 

But even though I'm got to the point where I’m aware of how important framing is, it’s interesting how I feel I often still fall into the same mistake. For example, in a survey we had to prepare a few weeks ago, only at the very end, when the survey had already been sent out, did we realize that one of the alternatives was framed in a worse way than the others. In that specific case thankfully, I’m confident that the main takeaways will be the same, but this underlines once more how careful we have to be and how, in specific contexts, words have to be fully weighed, to minimize biases.

[davidbassani-blog]

Coming up with a new brand!

Together with three of our Branding Lab teammates (Lea, Davide and Filippo) we spent the whole morning on Sunday brainstorming what the essence of the “DueMinuti” brand should be (Clarification: DueMinuti is a “fast casual” food startup that a Slonie is launching in Seattle in June).  The experience was great! Thankfully, we had Lea, who through her creative approach, was able to interview and ask the right questions to the founders, so that the essence and real nature of the startup came up. The most powerful example to me was when she asked “Why do you think people like food?,” and Davide’s gut’s answer was “because that’s the best part of your day!.” That’s when our tagline was created.

In addition, the whole brainstorming session was key for the team to rule out many possibilities, and start focusing on concrete specific actions/ideas. All this work will be a great complement to the results we’ll get from the survey. We focused intensity on the store decor, the employees (e.g. training, appearance, etc.), as well as on many smaller important details, which in the end are what really make... a brand!!

[davidbassani-blog]

Your customers changed: from technical buyers, to… “normal” people!

It’s very fascinating to learn how Intel reacted to the change in its “primary buyers,” and how it had to entirely rethink its whole marketing approach. Specifically, with the growing presence of computers at peoples’ homes, the focus needed to shift from technical and specialized engineers to normal people, who on average had low IT knowledge. But the way Intel did it was revolutionary. The launch of the brand “Intel Inside” quickly became synonym of quality, and even non-technological savvy people often could relate to it. Today, when we look back, this whole change makes entire sense, but who would have really backed this whole strategy change back then??

FOR ENGINEERS...

FOR THE PEOPLE!

[davidbassani-blog]

Keep your brand under tight control (especially in luxury)!

Cases such as Burberry, or Tommy Hilfiger (who lost focus, and started distributing products to less prestigious stores such as Ross Stores, etc.), are the proof of how wrong it can be to pursue growth in brand awareness without a confined scope. It became clear to me, how there are other elements such as focus and brand consistency which are more important and that allow companies to reach a better kind of awareness.

In Italy, a famous example of wrong branding strategy was done by Vuarnet, a very high-end French ski apparel brand. What happened was that in 2006-2007, because they faced a harsh competition by brands such as Patagonia, The North Face, Kappa, etc., they came to the conclusion that they needed to gain traction through more visibility (they aimed at becoming a “top of mind brand” for people when thinking of ski jacket). However, they totally messed up their channel strategy. They reached an alliance with Esselunga, a famous Italian supermarket chain (relatively high end, but still a supermarket chain!), allowing people to buy Vuarnet products with their grocery-shopping points. This led to a quick loss of credibility, with people implicitly doubting the quality of the brand, and not seeing it anymore as an exclusive product.

Although to some extent all industries face this risk of brand dilution, I feel this is much more visible and impactful in the luxury arena, making the whole strategy (from production to distribution) for these kinds of companies more challenging!

[davidbassani-blog]

Lambretta: rise, fall, and "reinvention” of an Italian brand

The “brand manifold” framework is very interesting when it comes to analyzing brands, how they are perceived by different stakeholders (Multiple Constituencies) and how they evolve over time (Temporal Factors). In fact, brands are everything but static! 

An interesting case I was thinking of is that of Lambretta, an Italian scooter manufacturer, which got discontinued in 1972. Lambretta was perceived by people as a comfortable and especially very efficient scooter. It wall overall quite well engineered (strongly appreciated internally by manufacturer) - advertisements from that time often underlined aspects such as speed and classiness.

The company got discontinued mostly given the introduction of cheap cars in the market, which substituted many of these kinds of scooter. However, the brand has remained alive in Italian culture, with many people still looking for and buying alternative products such as t-shirts, sweaters, posters, etc. But the big difference is that the “new brand” is now much more anchored to the past/vintage, and has much more of an external meaning, related to popular Italian heritage.

[davidbassani-blog]

Singapore Airlines’ advertising strategy: bringing the magic to your own house/city

I was quite impressed with Singapore Airlines’s marketing strategy. Specifically, I was fascinated by how not only did they create this mystical character (“Singapore Girl”), who is sophisticated, classy and mysterious at the same time; but they also brought it directly to foreign city settings, bringing “the exotic” directly to peoples’ own homes: as a matter of fact, I was able to find interesting SIA advertising campaigns from different time periods, where the “Singapore Girl” is consistently represented in the middle of European, American or Asian cities (the reading mentions the specific case of Manchester).

To me it’s interesting to compare this strategy with Corona’s, for instance: while Corona was explicitly focusing on mostly showing images of beaches, fun, relax etc. (almost offering people a way “to escape from their daily lives”), SIP is bringing the exotic/magic to settings which people are familiar with, balancing the sense of exotic with a sense of safety: definitely a powerful combination!

[davidbassani-blog]

Yellow Tail: a wine company who really went for a different identity!

It was mid 2000s, I remember walking through a supermarket in Italy and seeing a bottle of “Casillero del Diablo:” I was really impressed by how a Chilean wine made it all the way to the shelf of an Italian supermarket! However, I also remember thinking how in my opinion they were not trying to market their products in a very original way (yes, they had a very foreign name and a slightly different label, but other than that it was a quite standard bottle of wine).

I stopped thinking about that episode until a few weeks ago, when during a 15.828 Product Management class (with Prof. Ke) we saw the case of the Australian wine “Yellow Tail.” What impressed me was precisely their innovative strategy/positioning: finally a “new entrant” to the wine industry was looking for new ways to market itself, so that instead of using typical images associated with wine (tradition, history, heritage, etc.), they were going for a fresh image related to attributes such as “easy, fun and adventure.” To some extent, although Concha y Toro has been undoubtedly very successful, I wonder whether they also should have (or they will) adopt a more innovative strategy at least with some of their younger brands!

http://jeffcarter.me/tag/blue-ocean-strategy

MIT Sloan Prof.   Tony Ke (slides from 15.828)

[davidbassani-blog]

Applying Rogers’ Five Factors to Echo Labs

During the “Silicon Valley Study Trek” last month, we visited Echo Labs, a startup that produces and commercializes a unique wearable technology that measures and analyzes cardiovascular, respiratory, and metabolic functions continuously and non-invasively. Since the day we met one of the two founders, I was very impressed with their work, and I kept thinking whether this idea would be one of the ones that “would make it.”

So when reading about Roger’s Five Factors, I decided to see how they applied to Echo Labs.

1.       Relative Advantage (medium/low): The product clearly has an edge over comparable wearables in the healthcare segment (e.g. non-intrusive, precision, etc.). However, the question is whether the general public will perceive these differences to be significant. In the end, as mentioned in the case, it’s mostly about perception, not just the actual product features. This might be the aspects where I’m more skeptic..

2.       Compatibility (medium/high): People are getting more and more used to wearables. For this reason I believe that Echo Labs can be perceived consistent with existing values and beliefs

3.       Complexity (low): One of the main advantages of this technology is that it is not intrusive, and very easy to understand and interpret by the general public

4.       Trialability (high): Given the size and weight of the wearable it should be relatively easy to get a large mass of people try the product (e.g. booths in malls, in hospitals, etc.)

5.       Observability (high): Echo Labs produces a wearable device, which people will constantly carry on their bodies. For such reason the observability could be quite high

I believe Echo Lab could be successful and develop at a high pace. The main barrier I see is whether people will truly perceive its benefits vs. the other wearables out there… We’ll see!!!

https://angel.co/echo-labs

[davidbassani-blog]

In “commoditized” products, perception is all that matters. But once you establish your perception than that’s hard to change…

Is Starbucks really the best coffee out there? Is Barilla really the best pasta? Are there real differences in all those mass distributed lager beers (Corona vs. Heineken vs. Bud)? Truth is that there are many mass distributed products than have, to some extent, very similar features. In these cases, the discussion is really about how do people perceive the product, rather than the product itself. And this is achieved through advertising, and brand positioning.

However, there is one caveat: once the market builds a perception of your brand, that is very hard to change. This could be a strong advantage (e.g. no matter what, Coke is considered the most classic and refreshing soft drink in the world), but also trap a company in a stereotype from which it will be hard to exit. In the case, it’s mentioned the case of Heineken, when in 1995 tries to take a new advertising route, by working on a new personality for the beer. This is a very hard path and I thought right away of cases I’m familiar with where this was not successful. A case that we analyzed for a previous class was PayPal. This company achieved tremendous success in the early 2000’ through its retailing arm, Ebay. But once PayPal decided to detach itself from Ebay, they realized that no matter what (e.g. change in logo), the market kept associating it to Ebay. Also for this reason, the company decided to keep Venmo as a separate brand in its portfolio. How did Heineken manage to re-position its brand?

The bottom line is that it’s key to use all possible media to position the brand in a strategic way (e.g, Corona = summer and fun), but changing this positioning is then very hard, especially once this is well defined in customers’ minds.

[davidbassani-blog]

In “commoditized” products, perception is all that matters. But once you establish your perception than that’s hard to change…

Is Starbucks really the best coffee out there? Is Barilla really the best pasta? Are there real differences in all those mass distributed lager beers (Corona vs. Heineken vs. Bud)? Truth is that there are many mass distributed products than have, to some extent, very similar features. In these cases, the discussion is really about how do people perceive the product, rather than the product itself. And this is achieved through advertising, and brand positioning.

However, there is one caveat: once the market builds a perception of your brand, that is very hard to change. This could be a strong advantage (e.g. no matter what, Coke is considered the most classic and refreshing soft drink in the world), but also trap a company in a stereotype from which it will be hard to exit. In the case, it’s mentioned the case of Heineken, when in 1995 tries to take a new advertising route, by working on a new personality for the beer. This is a very hard path and I thought right away of cases I’m familiar with where this was not successful. A case that we analyzed for a previous class was PayPal. This company achieved tremendous success in the early 2000’ through its retailing arm, Ebay. But once PayPal decided to detach itself from Ebay, they realized that no matter what (e.g. change in logo), the market kept associating it to Ebay. Also for this reason, the company decided to keep Venmo as a separate brand in its portfolio. How did Heineken manage to re-position its brand?

The bottom line is that it’s key to use all possible media to position the brand in a strategic way (e.g, Corona = summer and fun), but changing this positioning is then very hard, especially once this is well defined in customers’ minds.