All too often companies and charities don’t focus on the things they need to achieve their aims. This presentation highlights some of the things we get wrong and some examples of brands who’ve got it right.
10. All too often brands don’t ask the right questions.
Without the right question or an understanding who they
actually need to beat, how can we hope to succeed?
11. It’s human nature to follow the herd, do what
everyone else does rather than think independently
13. When you
start asking the
right questions
amazing things
happen.
You can the world
the chance to see.
14. You can cure disease.
The United Nations needed to get medicines to people in
war regions but the more they spent the less aid got
through.
The right question:
Who always gets through?
15. You can cure disease.
Certain parts of the world the welfare of
The right question:
Who always gets through?
You can change how a
society looks at dogs.
Dogs will never be on the
agenda whilst they are
perceived to harm children
The right question:
How do you stamp our
rabies?
16. You can keep hearts beating
BHF knew that the CPR skills
after a heart attack were key
to survival but no one wants
to learn First Aid
The right question:
How do you make it
Simple for everyone
remember CPR?
17. Please click the following link to view the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB8QC90B8Zc&feature=youtu.be
18. Vs.
You can worry the dominant market leader
For years Pepsi acted like Coca Cola, advertising cola
drinks and growing the Cola market. Thing is,
market growth is expensive and you send more
business to the leader than you get.
So they asked the right question:
How do we make Coca Cola customers drink Pepsi?
19. Please click the following link to view the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mRAUNTKc4w
20. And better questions lead to being different.
In branding being different is critical.
26. Marketing is about share of the audiences’ mind
So for 1/225th of the cost of their advertising is
actually getting a 50% share of the audiences mind
If marketing is about share of mind, being different
is critical; and it’s cheaper
27. Marketing is about share of the audiences’ mind
The annual UK spend on advertising: £17bn
4%
7%
89%
FORGOTTEN
£15.13bn wasted
by following the herd
?
28. That’s why we’re
yellow not blue
That’s why it’s the dog
talking not the human
That’s why we don’t
judge
We try to be different.
30. Dove asked a better question
Rather than copy everyone’s faked images of perfection they
asked how best to appeal to the women who really buy our
products? Real women.
33. And the same thinking is starting to change
the health of a nation
Please click the following link to view the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ8b_WF8dXE
34. But it starts with better questions
Please click the following link to view the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=couuiBsoPjw
I randomly want to start a talk about branding and advertising by telling the story of two explorers in a jungle.
Obvious, if you really think about it.
They're called explorer a.
And his friend is explorer b.
Suddenly they both hear a tiger roar nearby.
Both Explorers gasp "tiger".
explorer A thinks "I know' I'll get my running stuff on."
So he does.
explorer b says
"fool. You can't outrun a tiger in the jungle"
explorer a replies
"I know."
"I don't need to outrun a tiger"
"I just need to outrun you"
explorer b realises he's tiger food.
"Oh"
The point is explorer A quickly realised the real problem wasn't beating the tiger but beating explorer B whilst the tiger was busy eating b a could escape.
Working out who he needed to beat and then focusing on that, guaranteed A’s success.
All too often brands focus on the wrong problems. They worry about the tiger and not the solution to their problem.
In essence they follow the answers of everyone else.
That seems safe
They follow the herd and a herd mentality means the status quo stays as it is.
That’s fine if you don’t want things to change – but taking that herd thinking on doesn’t that means that the strong (the market leader) stay healthy whilst the weaker get picked off?
But what if you’re not the market leader.
What if you are a new charity starting out.
Or a totally new cause area?
Often picking a different challenge and playing to your strengths is the only change things.
And that comes from asking better questions; getting upstream of the problems to challenge the status quo.
Let me give you some examples of focusing on a problem that you can solve and how it delivered real change.
The physicist Josh Silver made it his quest to make the world's poor see.
Traditionally charities would transport thousands of pairs of used spectacles to the developing world.
But the crucial factor in the developing world isn’t glasses its opticians
In Britain there is one optometrist for every 4,500 people,
in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio is 1:1,000,000.
So Silver had what he calls a "tremendous glimpse of the obvious" – everyone looking through glasses can see whether they improve their sight.
So the better question was “how do I create glasses that don’t need an optician?”
He created water filled lenses that would allow the user to adjust for his or her prescription
A bit like Tevor Bayliss inventing the Wind-up radio to disseminate information about Aids.
The United Nations had a mandate to get vital drugs to some of the world’s remotest and war-torn areas.
The thing is the more money they invested in getting the drugs to these places the less got through.
Bribes didn’t even work.
Then some bright spark got upstream he asked rather than design a programme who can we piggy back? Who already gets to these places?
The Answer was coca cola.
So they designed their packages of drugs to fit in-between the bottles in a coca cola crate.
They actually got the aid where is needed to go for free.
The same is true in animal welfare.
The team behind Mission Rabies understood that animal and specifically dog welfare in some regions can never be considered whilst dogs were seen as responsible for disease and death.
So he got upstream of the traditional thinking and developed a way of improving the dog welfare of a nation by solving the human medical condition too
The same is true when charities advertise.
The British Heart Foundation had spent many £m recruiting and training volunteer first aiders.
But first aiders were still so few that when people had heart attacks they couldn’t always be there
So they changed the challenge from how do we persuade people to go on a first aid course
TO
How do I make CPR so simple I can give everyone a CPR course in an ad? Once they’d answered that all the agency had to do was to deliver it in a memorable way
Within days of the ad – stories raced around the media about the lives saved thanks to the ad.
And it’s still saving lives today.
For year Pepsi, very small in comparison to Coca Cola acted like Coca Cola, persuading people that cola drinks are nice – but all that did was send more business to Coke.
Then a clever person changed the question from how do we grow the cola market to how do we take share from Coke.
This now old and famous ad was the result.
It suggested Pepsi tasted nicer.
It worked so well that Coke spent $100m changing the formula
And the day they did everyone at Pepsi got a days holiday
They changed the market into two players coke or pepsi and significantly changed their market share.
Oh and there was nothing wrong with Coke, so they had to change the formula back within a year.
I want to run a quick test.
Being different made the one orange guy stand out – that’s how our brains our wired.
We look for different – evolutionarily it’s probably a big reason you’re alive today.
It helped your predecessors spot predators.
Being different not only means you stand out – it’s cheaper
Last year £17bn was spent on advertising in the UK but only 4% was remembered positively. Another 7% was remembered negatively (all those annoying gingles). But the crime here is that 89% or £15.3bn was forgotten.
Regardless of whether it is positively or negatively being remembered is the most important thing.
Asking better questions and finding your own way to challenge the status quo; being different is key in being remembered.
This sexist ad wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows 15 years ago.
In fact even the advertising to women looked like this
Dove were a middle ranking brand until they asked a better question and started acting differently.
Regardless of whether we buy into their story the thinking was exceptionally sound.
For years the model was use a stunning model to sell you product, the more aspirational the beauty the better.
Dove knew that there customers were just normal every day people
Dove asked a better question about how do I engage with my real customer
They went on the side of their customer – the campaigned for real beauty.
Dove’s message that ideas of beauty needed changing totally resonated
And moved them to the leading brand across several regions and product areas.
I play no small part in that when someone did run the sexist and elitist ad several months ago in the UK it got vilified!
Dove and several other clever marketing teams were quick to jump on the outcry against the advertising.
And that same message is now being expanded into other product areas
Here’s a recent ad targeting getting women active.
It’s unlike any Nike, Reebok, Adidas ad you’ll ever see.
Always question the question
What do you actually need to beat to achieve your goals – and if someone else is already doing it that way, go back to the drawing board!
What are the rules of the game; do you need to live by them?
- Dove changed the advertising rules for cosmetics
What or who actually needs to lose for you to win
- Pepsi realised that they didn’t need to take market share from other types of drinks; just steal share from Coke
Can you change or reduce the size of the problem?
- Professor Levin reduced the need for optometrists to 0.
Can you piggyback someone else?
- Aidpod piggybacked cocacola
What are others weaknesses?
- Children don’t like their parents knowing they are naughty – so A shopkeeper has cut litter in her village by 40 per cent by writing children's names on their sweet wrappers. Others would know if they were the ones who littered