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What is branding?

If you really want to gain a solid understanding of the evolved concepts of "brand" and "branding" - the cultural challenges of creating expectations with customers - here are two revealing commentaries.  The first is a rebroadcast of yesterday's NPR radio program On Point about American Business in China.  Pay particular attention to the elucidation of branding in China by Tom Doctoroff, Northeast Asia Director for JWT.  The Chinese sound a lot like 1950s Americans.  Here's the link to the podcast.

The next is an AdAge article about Ford's new 'Drive One' Campaign, which is intended to shake up car buyers' perceptions of the automaker.  I've lifted key excerpts from the article, as well as all of the comments to-date.  To understand branding in the U.S., and how it's much different than branding in China, contrast the sentiments in the article with those in the comments:

Jim Farley's moment of truth came when he told his Santa Monica, Calif., neighbors he was leaving Toyota for Ford. They told him his move was "heartwarming," but added that they wouldn't buy a Ford.

"I realized they had gone past skepticism to apathy," said Mr. Farley, who is now group VP-marketing and communications at Ford Motor Co. "We have to break that pattern of apathy." In fact, he told reporters last week that not enough Americans "have a favorable opinion of our company."

Ford is out to change that perception with its new "Drive One" marketing blitz that began with a 60-second commercial during "American Idol" last week. The goal is to make believers -- and buyers -- out of Americans who aren't putting Ford on their shopping lists.

Ford wouldn't reveal ad spending behind the effort, but . . . said the brand, its regional dealer ad groups and individual Ford dealers collectively spend about $1.5 billion annually in measured media. Ford Division will account for about half the new campaign's media spending; the regional dealer groups the other half.

The essence of the advertising, as Mr. Farley sees it, is "one human being talking to another human being about Ford. That is the only chance we have to break this cycle of apathy." Mr. Felice told Advertising Age that the marketer will measure the campaign's performance on seven criteria, including building the Ford brand's image, improving customer consideration and increasing dealership traffic.

He said consumers see Ford as a maker of trucks and Mustangs, as an old-economy outfit for mid-America. But the automaker has a lot of untold positive stories, he said, which the campaign will popularize. "We're really trying to remake the image of the company." Mr.

Farley, who had been group VP-general manager of Toyota's Lexus division, cautioned not to judge the success of Ford's campaign this month or next. "The judgment on this will be five years from now."

Now read the comments to understand why mass media advertising has a very different effect in a mature, economy of abundance like the U.S.:

"Look it's not apathy. It's that they make ugly cars. Their new design language is horrible. And completely not innovative. I wouldn't buy a Ford right now, and I drive a Ford, which I actually love! But the cars that I see down at the dealer lot are back to the ugly whales they made in the 1970s and 1980s when I thought of them as old people's cars." –Vienna, VA

"If Ford tries to publicly claim that "Among other things, Ford is touting that its quality now equals that of Toyota," I predict that they will immediately crush any credibility the campaign may have. Ford's problems are their current and past products. It is a brand in need of rehabilitation, and the only way to do that is to restore confidence in the products they make. I saw the "swap my ride" campaign as weak because one week in a brand new car is not enough to assess whether they have fixed their chronic problems: Reliability, durability, and the dependent variable of those, resale value. If you want to impress people on the quality of your vehicles, showing them how good the ownership experience is in the first week (with a hand-massaged unit) isn't going to do it. Toyota, in their "Ask someone who owns one" gets right to that point: Don't believe what we say, don't depend on a one hour or even one week test drive, ask anyone who has driven one for 100K miles. Hyundai was in a similiar situation after then entered the US market with vehicles of "modest quality." And now they are actively rebuilding their reputation by building reliable cars, and backing them up with very long warrantees. What does Ford do: Continues with the shorted warranty in the business, and sends all new vehicle owners ominous marketing materials for their ESP extended warranty, pointing out in the glossy brochure just how tragically short their standard warrantee is. You can probably tell that I've experienced much of this first hand, and I have. As a staunch "buy American" advocate, I've bought Fords for the past 20+ years, but I now own my last one. I've been burned too often by rampant and chronic product failures that Ford declines to cover. And until they back their product with the same enthusiasm they put into their marketing, I can't see them winning back past customers. And each of those unhappy customers is now a messenger that can't be overcome at that personal level." –Hopkinton, MA

"What would help, in my opinion, is if Ford would design cars that I would actually want to drive. Right now the only cars in the Ford lineup I'd even consider are the Mustang or the Escape Hybrid. That's it. I can find 3 or 4 cars in each other auto maker's line up that I would want to drive. To find only 2 in Ford's deep roster is a harbinger of the situation I feel." –Centennial, CO

"While I realize that this article's purpose is to congratulate our friend on a well won campaign, it is perhaps prudent to offer a word of caution: Part of the demise of Ford and it's brand has been due to it's all-too-comfortable relationship with agencies and bankers, and too little with discipline, engineering and a management demand for results. We have by our hard work, and the public's predisposition, given them an option to continue their bad behavior like an apologetic partent prolonging the childood of an undisciplined youth. Anyone can drive a Ford at a car rental service while travelling. And the experience is telling. The best indicator is the dampness of the acceleration compared to German and Japanese cars. After all, these are 'Motor' companies as their brands tell us. And they cannot make a motor with the agility necessary to handle urban traffic. To say nothing of a transmission or suspension that rivals that of their competitors - see the depreciation difference between Ford and Nissan/Toyota trucks. Yet despite their moniker and pride in being motor companies, they are third world engineers, producing a product unsuitable for either first world or third. The lack of materials science is obvious in the plastic finishes alone. The shoddy fit and finish and the simple sound of closing a door is telling. Or as one car transport trucker said "All you have to do is look underneath a car to see that Japanese cars are built better." The car designs absolutely surrender any sense of aspiration in exasperated aesthetic submission, or, as in the case of the exaggerated nose of their trucks, embrace the cartoonish: evidence in any field of art that the creators have no taste borne of mastery of their field and it's history. Or worse: evidence of the ever-present medioctity demanded by a fearful and self-justifying bureaucracy. Creativity and excellence are the expressions of a single mind. Crowds make very different choices. The sacrifice of quality to price, removes from customers the the choice to encourage the company to make better cars - they have no choice to buy a better model because there is not one. And because of these choices the company cannot learn from the market decisions of it's customers: despite wanting to hear from them, instead of the symphony they hear a monotone and react to it's meaningless minor variations. For a century we have tried to solve business problems by marketing to a cash-rich, fiat-money-and-debt-induced, spendthrift consumer. But our consumers, no longer benefitting from the technological delta between a minority west, and a majority east, will not likely be flush with cash for the next two to ten years as our economy corrects to the new equilibrium. We must learn new advertising techniques, probably mixing the aspirational optimism of American advertising, with the undercurrent of European financial conservatism. We must invent a new aspiration for the consuming public, and inform our customers how to speak to the newly emerging American. Even Nissan, whose numbers are heavily influenced by Hispanic buyers - a dedicated and brand loyal group, will need to find new messages when debt or inflation combines with a flood of strech-financed used cars that are returned at the end of lease, consumers realize that they have no value because of glut, and that this perfect storm will hit the market starting in the next two years. A company that asks a customer to "drive one" is an admission of defeat. A public acknowledgement of failure. An appeal by a fallen victim for mercy. It is a Hollywood pump and dump campaign. One thing it is not is the claim of a company that makes a competitive and superior product, who only asks that it's voice be heard so the product they have created can bring joy, comfort or utility to customers. It is after all, the satisfaction of wants at reduced prices, or the creation of wants at exaggerated prices that gives us moral authority to advertise in the fist place. Ford is dead as an organizational entity unless it makes a dramatic cultural change. Perhaps it uproots and moves to one of the coasts. And there, as a aesthetic cultural minority surrounded by superior product and a hostile competitive market the management and staff could be drummed into the design and production of a product worthy of the campaigns we would make for them. And a Ford (Or GM or Chrysler) who produced an attractive and well built product line would be something we would all fall over ourselves to help take to market. And what great campaigns we could create for that event. Now that is aspirational. Cheers." –bellevue, WA

"I certainly like what I've read so far coming from Mr. Farley but one thing makes me doubt this "break the pattern of apathy" strategy, the reference to 4 brand pillars. That's too many. Ask Geico." –ROSLYN HEIGHTS, NY

Posted April 16, 2008
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