A Marketing Red Flag

 

 

It is not often that marketing can learn from our esteemed political class. 

But we live in strange times.

In 2015 after the last General Election Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed radical, was overwhelmingly elected Leader of the Labour Party and by implication, Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition.

 

Admittedly he required MPs in the first instance to ‘lend’ him their vote to get onto the ballot paper, an action that many have latterly come to regret.

But once on the ballot paper he proceeded to hoover up votes resulting in what can only be described as a walkover with 60% of the popular vote propelling him into the leadership position.

No one can doubt his a mandate.

And since his election he has continued to delight and mobilise his core supporters and those who elected him while upsetting in equal measure the Parliamentary Labour Party.

In the same week that the bulk of the Shadow Cabinet resign and the Parliamentary Labour Party overwhelmingly pass a motion of no confidence in his leadership Mr Corbyn addresses a passionate and enthusiastic and passionate impromptu rally of 4000+ supporters from within Labour Party.

As his support with his MPs fades and collapses, his support within the Labour Party grows and strengthens.

Who better represents the apolitical population of the country?

And this is at the heart of the question for the Labour Party?

And for many brands.

To date Mr Corbyn and his policies have not been seriously tested in the country.

But the polls, for what they are worth, would suggest that these are having limited effect in shifting popular opinion away from the Government and towards the Labour Party.

And this is what must be done for Labour to form the next government.

And in doing so it must learn to speak with those who are outside the tent, not in it.

These are the people it must persuade. Not the loyalists, the ultra-loyalists, the fanatics. They will buy your message come hell and high water.

It is the occasional buyers to whom the Labour Party must appeal. The swing voter.

It must stop talking to itself. It must craft a message that this group wants to hear.

In marketing terms we call this positioning.

And for any business, any brand to grow, it must find a positioning that appeals to its occasional consumers, not its loyal ones.

Growth will come when the consumer who buys you once a year buys you twice a year and more.

Loyal customers will keep on buying and have no more to give.

From cars to airlines to chocolate to Jeremy Corbyn, the rules are just the same.

Broken Windows

In 1969 a Stanford University psychologist called Phillip Zambardo set up an experiment.

He parked a car with no number plates and the bonnet up in the Bronx, a tough area of New York. He also parked an identical car in Palo Alto, an affluent area in San Francisco.

He walked away from both, leaving them abandoned in the street.

The car in the Bronx was attacked within minutes. First the radiator and the battery were removed. But within 24 hours everything of value had been stripped from the car.

Within days the car's windows were smashed in, panels beaten up, upholstery ripped, and children were using it as a playground.

In Palo Alto the abandoned car sat untouched for more than a week.

At this point Zimbardo himself started to smash the car up with a sledgehammer. Soon after others joined in the destruction and finished what Zimbardo had started. And within hours the Palo Alto car looked like the Bronx car.

He went on to observe that in areas such as the Bronx where there is a greater prevalence of abandoned property, vandalism occurs much more quickly. In these areas destructive behaviour is more common place and the people who live there more apathetic towards it.

But as proved by the Palo Alto car such behaviour can occur anywhere when social behavioural norms are altered by behaviours that suggest apathy.

Consider a building with a few broken windows.

If the windows are not repaired, vandals will come along and break a few more.  Eventually, they may even break into the building and perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people will start leaving bags of litter and other rubbish. Then the vandals will arrive. Property will be junked. Thefts from and of cars will spike.

In other words if we show we don’t care about the environment in which we live, about the society we create, about the brands we build, why should anyone else.

The problem gets steadily worse.  Apathy rules ok.

To prevent the problem, fix the problems when they are small and manageable. Before they spiral out of control.

This is known as ‘Broken Windows Theory’ and was first mooted in 1982.

Advocates of this theory, and they include the New York PD, responded with a zero tolerance approach to anti-social and petty crimes. To stop petty crime becoming major crime. It seemed to work.

I recently observed a filthy, grime smeared train bearing the logo of a brand famous transport company. I have no idea what it looked like on the inside but the outside was pretty unappealing.

It looked like no one cared about the state of the train, the state of the brand or even, and this is more telling, its customers.

Its windows might not have been broken, it might not have looked like the Bronx abandoned car, but it had many of the characteristics.

Apathy ruled ok.

If no one cared about how the train looked, did anyone care about the reputation of the brand?

And if no one cares why should I as the consumer care?

Fix the problems when they are small and manageable. Fix the problems while you can. Adopt a zero tolerance to your brand tangibles, your brand behaviour, your brand image.

 

What's in a name?-Brands and badges and the history of a nation

In 1885 at the Congress of Berlin King Leopold II of Belgium acquired ownership of the lands of the Congo, making it his private property and naming the newly acquired territory, the Congo Free State.

And he proceeded to economically exploit the natural wealth of the country for his own personal enrichment.

And the name became synonymous with imperial exploitation, tyranny and violence.

It is estimated that in the two decades it was owned by the King, as his own personal fiefdom, the population of the territory halved.

In 1908 the land was formally annexed by Belgium and the Congo Free State became the Belgium Congo.

But the people running the country remained unchanged and opening up and exploiting the natural resources of the country for personal gain remained their main aim.

No political activity was allowed and little attempt was made to develop institutions of democracy, education and welfare.

Not much had really changed.

In 1960 it achieved independence. And guess what, it changed name yet again and became the Republic of the Congo.

But it rapidly became highly unstable, hugely violent and its wealth remained concentrated in the hands of the few. The country was seen as one of the most despotic and corrupt in Africa.

In 1971 the ruling elite was overthrown by a new dictator and a new ruling elite and the country became Zaire as it bid to remove all colonial influences and to overthrow the past.








And although all foreign owned economic assets were nationalised, Zaire went on as before.

The new regime was characterised by widespread cronyism, corruption and economic mismanagement. Violence, instability and brutal despotism remained at its heart.

Not much had changed in a century despite the name changes.

In 1997 Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And although attempts were made to instil democracy the country remained unstable, violent and despotic.

Today it is still called the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But it remains a country which although extremely rich in natural resources, remains held back by political instability, the lack of infrastructure and a culture of corruption.

Democracy remains weak. Health care woeful. Education standards low.

And the poverty of its people, despite its riches, endemic.

Which just goes to prove that name change on its own changes nothing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

For unless a deep and meaningful programme of culture change is developed and applied to the DNA of a brand’s culture, as exemplified by the behaviours of its leadership and its people, nothing much will change.

And the brand, the business, the nation will continue as it has always done.

It takes more than a name change to change the underlying DNA of a brand.

And that is the essential difference between a re-branding programme and a re-badging programme.

Me, myself, I...

The humble shopping trolley.

Too often seen as a nuisance.

Clogging up our canals and rivers. Our streets. Our car parks.

Getting in the way.

But the shopping trolley as we come to know and love it, transformed the way we shop

But its success was not guaranteed.

It made its first appearance in 1937 in America in a supermarket chain owned by supermarket mogul, Sylvan Goldman.

He set out to solve a simple problem-how to get his customers to buy more than they could carry in a hand basket?

‘When the housewife got her basket full’, he once said ‘it was too heavy for her to carry and she stopped shopping,…..I thought if there was some way we could give the customer two baskets to shop with and still have one hand free to shop, we could do considerably more business.'

His first attempt based on a folding chair with wheels, could carry two baskets and could be rolled through the aisles.

He patented the design as the ‘No Basket Carrying Plan’.

The design with the rear swinging door came later.

And this design was acquired by Goldman and still forms the basic design for today’s shopping trolley.

The royalties from these designs and patents made Goldman a very rich man.

But when the trolleys first made their appearance in Goldman’s stores, they were ignored. Women refused to give up their hand baskets.

Women saw them as baby prams. And were offended.

‘I have pushed my last pram’, they complained.

And they offended men who found them effeminate.

For them it was a sign of manly strength to be able to carry round a fully loaded hand basket.

It took a careful understanding of human psychology to change attitude and behaviour.

And Goldman’s persistence.

He appealed to the ego of his shoppers.

By hiring fake shoppers, male and female, to use the trolleys in his stores, looking handsome and happy while they did it.

It worked.

And the shopping trolley was a success.

Because we all seek a positive self-image for ourselves.

We all want to feel good about ourselves.

This is why male respondents donate more to charity when approached by attractive female fundraisers.

Because we want to project and maintain a positive self-image in the eyes of the opposite sex.

And if we think we will be happier and better looking using a shopping trolley, of course we will fall for it.

It helps us make us feel good about ourselves.

Ego is a powerful motivator of behaviour. And can help consumers buy.

No man or woman likes to look bad.

We all want to look good in the eyes of ourselves, our family, our friends.

We all want to do the right thing.

And that must work no matter what we are buying. From cars to baked beans to financial services.

Even when it comes to using a shopping trolley.

Mum's the word

In the UK we have recently had Mothers’ Day.

Or Mothering Sunday to give it its traditional name.

But Mothering Sunday has nothing to do with mothers.

That is quite a recent development.

And a commercial one.

But Mothering Sunday started off in the 16^th century as a religious festival on the fourth Sunday of Lent.

And was the day when people returned to their mother church.

They went ‘a-mothering’.

Later it became the day when domestic servants and others would be given a day off prior to Easter to visit their mother church with their own mothers and other family members.

It was often the only time when whole families could gather together.

Servants were not given free days on other occasions.

And conflicting working hours meant that opportunities were rare for families to get together.

It was such a special occasion that the austere rules of Lent were relaxed to allow families to celebrate with delicacies known as simnel cakes.

And in some areas Mothering Sunday was also known as Simnel Sunday.

But with the demise of domestic servants by the early part of the 20^th century the ancient traditions of Mothering Sunday had begun to fall into disuse.

Until Anna Jarvis, in America, began her campaign to make Mother’s Day a recognised holiday, to honour her own mother and ‘the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world’.

In 1914 the President created Mother’s Day as a national holiday to honour mothers.

And this new tradition, fuelled by the commercial instincts of gift and card manufacturers, rapidly took off.

Indeed the speed with which it attracted commercial interest and became misinterpreted so angered Anna Jarvis that she tried to rescind the Presidential Decree.

For her Mothers’ Day was about sentiment not profit.

Her idea had been adopted and adapted.

There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come.

And it soon crossed the Atlantic.

To be merged with the older religious tradition of Mothering Sunday.

Mothering Sunday had evolved into Mothers’ Day.

It was now about mothers. No longer about paying a visit to the Mother Church.

It had moved from the religious to the secular.

From theology to commerce via sentiment.

It had adapted and evolved and acquired meaning like any brand does.

To stay relevant and distinctive and credible.

Like Nokia which started out as a pulp mill before moving onto make rubber products.

Like Nintendo, originally a playing card company.

Like Shell, which began life as an antiques and collectibles shop specialising in decorative shells imported from the Far East.

Like Mothering Sunday.

Still relevant, credible and distinctive today.

My unreasonably fair lady

Ask anyone to name an Irish author and you might get Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. And

not much else.

But if you were to ask the Man on the Clapham Omnibus to name anything written by Shaw you might get ‘My Fair Lady’.

It wasn’t.

That was Lerner and Loewe.

But he did write ‘Pygmalion’, the play on which the musical is based.

His name might be famous but famous for what.

Yet this was a man who wrote more than 60 plays.

Including ‘Man and Superman’, ‘Arms and the man’, ‘Major Barbara’, and ‘Saint Joan’.

And he is the only person to have been awarded a Nobel Prize (for literature) and an Oscar (for best adapted screenplay) for his film adaptation of his play ’Pygmalion’.

He had nothing to do with ‘My Fair Lady’ which appeared 3 years after his death.

But Shaw was far more than a playwright.

He wanted to change society, not through revolution, but through a gradual promotion of socialism.

He was a leading light in the Fabian Society which became the foundation philosophy of the Labour Party

He was a man of vision and championed many causes unpopular at the time but which we now take for granted.

He wanted to change society, to change the world, to make it a better place.

A man determined to leave his thumbprint on the world around him.

He spoke for a woman’s right to vote which begat Margaret Thatcher.

He promoted universal healthcare which begat the NHS.

He championed a minimum wage which begat the Living Wage, a cause now taken up by George Osborne.

And he sought the abolition of hereditary privilege which begat the introduction of Life Peers.

He helped establish the London School of Economics.

After death he even funded a new alphabet, the Shavian Alphabet, to address the vagaries of English spelling.

He was not a man to accept the world as it was.

He wanted a better world, a different world. He wanted society, the world to change, to progress. And he would use his skills as a writer, as an essayist and a lecturer to bring this about.

But his most impactful words appear in ‘Maxims for Revolutionaries’ in ‘Man and Superman’:

‘The reasonable adapts himself to the conditions around him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man’

You might describe these words as at the heart of Shaw’s approach to life.

And a philosophy adopted at great personal cost by Rosa Parks to end segregation in America; by Nelson Mandela to end apartheid; even by Tim Berners Lee to improve our lives through the World Wide Web.

This has to be the most important quote in the world. Ever. For anyone wanting to challenge and change.

And that is why it behoves us all to be unreasonable. To adapt the world to ourselves. In everything we do.

How unreasonable are you going to be today?

Hold your horses

In 1942 Britain after 3 years of war was almost on its knees.

Since 1940 it had been fighting Germany on its own.  And although the USA and Russia had now joined in, it was still having to fight and resist on three fronts.

In Europe. In the Middle East. In the Far East.

As a consequence Britain was facing a manpower crisis. It was under pressure to find more fit men of fighting age for its army, navy and air force.

Without taking too many men from vital war industries.

To find the men it needed the War Ministry initiated a review of everything it did to identify duplicated and needless tasks.

This is the kind of thing that today many businesses hire expensive consultants to do to strip out costs.

One of the activities reviewed was the manpower requirements needed to fire a field gun.

The study concluded that it required four trained artillery men to do this.

And yet each battery contained five men.

No one knew why each battery was fully staffed with five. But the commanders insisted that each battery required five men because that was the standard artillery doctrine, the way it had always been done.

With equal adamance those doing the research argued that only four were needed.

A stalemate ensued between the advocates of the status quo and the advocates of progressiveness.

Until some eagle-eyed subaltern identified the reason for the extra man.

For centuries artillery had been taken into battle by horses.

And on the battlefield someone was required to hold onto the horses so that they did not flee when the cannons started noisily to fire.

This was the role of the fifth man.

There was only one problem.

In the years between World War 1 and World War 2 virtually all the horse drawn artillery units had been mechanised. Artillery was no longer taken into battle by horses. There was no longer any horses  to hold. There was no need for a fifth man.

This was a sacred cow.

But it is not just in the military that you will find dogged logic, persistent thinking. Many brands, many businesses share these traits.

A common set of beliefs can be a strength for any brand but having a dominant logic can lock the brand into a narrow way of thinking. And can lead to group think.

This is not good.

We need to develop and systemise an uncommon sense. A different way at looking at the business and its markets.  New thinking to provide competitive advantage.

But to get there requires the sacred cows, the common assumptions of the business and the market in which it operates to be identified, challenged, tested and destroyed.

And by discarding the sacred cows when examination exposes them to be untrue, a brand can liberate itself.

Sam Walton was once told that you don’t place ‘good sized discount stores into little one horse towns’. He did.

And he credited his success to his destruction of this market assumption, this sacred cow.

So what are the things that you never question or challenge in your business, in the markets you serve?

Making a list of these will be a start.

To ensure you are not the one left holding the horses.