I just finished
Branding Only Works on Cattle by Jonathan Salem Baskin on my flight to St. Louis. I’ll be honest that I thought I wasn’t going to like the book. I write about personal branding quite a bit, and the first sixty or so pages of the book seemed to be just a repetitive slam of the product/service type of branding. Boy, am I glad that I read more and finished the book. By the end, I really loved the ideas, and I came away really reconsidering some of how I talk about marketing and have shifted a little bit of what I say when advising people about social media strategy for business. Let me talk a bit more about what changed my mind.
Changing Behavior Drives MUCH More Value
Baskin left me thinking hard about two major points. The first was that money spent on marketing should be money spent on shifting a buyer’s behavior closer towards buying. Yes, I realize that this is fairly basic and fundamental in one light, but if you look at how far from this perspective marketing efforts seem to be drifting, especially online, it seems to me that maybe we should poke people on the shoulder and point out the basics again.
Is it more important that I remember the Geico Caveman, who somehow accidentally became a TV celebrity? Or should I be motivated somehow to double-check my insurance rates against Geiko’s? Repeat this with every brand. Did Starbucks win so many dollars because we remember the green and white logo, or because they invented the “third place?”
Search Is Vital
“Search is a larger, behavioral reality that impacts corporate strategy.”
Baskin rightly points out that marketing strategies that don’t include a heavy element of search won’t work well for us. One of the reasons that I advocate content marketing, such as writing a compelling group blog, is that it’s an opportunity to build search equity. Writing about things that people might search for is a great way to find some new people at your door who might want a look at your product.
Worth It
In the end, I think that Branding Only Works on Cattle is worth a purchase (or if you’re a library type, add yourself to the waiting list). The supporting information and some of the other points that I didn’t write out are worth looking into as well. It’s not a reference that I’ll be pulling down from the shelf every few days, and this book itself probably won’t be Baskin’s landmark work, but I tell you this: I’ll be waiting to see what he publishes next in a few years.
What’s your take on my representation of what he said? What do you think about focusing on behavior over branding? Are you naturally adding search into your marketing mix? Have you considered content marketing?
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After reading this post, I’m interested to read the same since I’ve personally found very less books focussing on behavioral aspect (as some may say it “Behavior depends on too many variables”).
Still why are we focussing only on behavior rather than branding? Isn’t it that brand performance will depend both on asssimilating real consumer behavior & content. Leaving any one will be blasphemy in terms of reach, scale and market penetration!
What do you think - both the author & Chris?
–Sampad
What does a brand do? It leaves an impression. What does targeting a behavior do? It attempts to move us from one type of action to another (the latter being an impulse to buy, in this case).
Given those two options, which would you want to tell the boss you were sitting around doing all day?
Candi Sparks, “Can I Have Some Money?” author & speaker
Focusing on behavior seems a more organic way to reach consumers with your brand. In the same way one has to wait for the right moment to ask the boss for a raise, the entrepreneur has to consider approach, timing and likelihood of success with a client.
Candi Sparks, ‘Can I Have Some Money?’ Author & Speaker
Focusing on behavior rather than branding seems a more organic way to approach a consumer. It is the difference between active listening and simply waiting for your turn to “tell about yourself” in a conversation. Active silence is golden! In the same way that it is prudent to wait to ask one’s boss for a raise, the softer behavioral approach is seemingly a better one.
I enjoyed this article and look forward to reading the book!
Interesting stuff, Chris. I recently attended a conference that included discussions (not necessarily solutions) on the ROI of social media involvement, so the idea of search equity is quite relevant. I’m all for contrarian views, so plan to check out the book as well.
Second, to Sampad’s question - I’m halfway through Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. While not specifically focused on branding, the book sheds light on the concept of vital behaviors - the 2-3 three aspects of a problem that stand the best chance to drive real and lasting change. I think it’s a best-seller now, so a good chance this recommendation won’t come as news, but I thought it was worth mentioning on this thread.
Chris, thanks for reading my book, and I’m glad that you got something out of it.
I’ve always been struck by the oddity of any business talking about its ‘brand awareness’ without linking it to ’sales success’ or other behavioral measures.
I think some marketers do themselves a disservice insisting that branding is about ‘thought’ or ‘perception’ alone; no company earns money from putting ideas into the world, unless those ideas get translated into actions. I think there’s an incredible opportunity to revise our conception of brands to incorporate such behaviors, and thereby make a far more meaningful (and defensible) impact.
Anyway, I wrote the book because I think we need to change the questions we ask of branding before we can come up with the right answers for our clients and employers.
I look forward to the continuing conversation.
jsb
Branding has it’s place. Branding will drive upper funnel behavior. Branding is part of a marketing strategy, not a replacement for one.
Branding will drive sales - albeit indirectly. This is market normalization, devolution, a busted bubble, call it what you will, but it’s all about going back to sensible basics, the 4Ps, the 4Ds etc.
Thanks for posting and getting us thinking. I posted a full response here - http://jburg.typepad.com/future/2008/10/rethinking-branding—and-the-kitchen-sink.html
I respect that argument, but I still see branding as a crucial part of the process. If you look at most successful people or companies in any business, they are those that know how to brand themselves. Heck, most bloggers need a brand to get off the ground.
Changing behavior is a good place to focus some effort, but not all of it. You might even be able to include branding as part of that process.
Behavioral targeting is something that’s obviously becoming more of a big deal. Maybe that’s the idea behind lifestyle marketing — i.e. branding your products as items that fit in with certain behavioral patterns.
The title, though, reminds me of this anti-branding video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RN7mTobPOI
Great post and comment discussion. In my view branding is a promise of value. I believe people are unlikely to take action without a compelling reason to do so. The brand is a big part of the momentum from that point of view.
Chris, it’s unfair for me to totally judge this book based just on what you say here, but it seems to me that this book launches from a false premise. If Baskin’s branding protagonists are the Geico Caveman and the Starbucks logo, then it’s no wonder he arrived at the conclusion he did. But in my book, a logo and a spokesman are not branding. They are merely delivery vehicles of the brand promise.
As I read the book’s description at the link you provided above, more bad branding examples are given. Really they are not even examples of branding, but instead examples of poor advertising campaigns.
Then you say the book suggests “that money spent on marketing should be money spent on shifting a buyer’s behavior closer towards buying.” That’s sales. That’s not a new form of marketing, that’s the old way.
It may be cool for an author to say “branding is dead,” as Baskin does, but if he does he should use pertinent examples. It seems as if Baskin focuses on the superficial Madison Avenue marketing campaigns rather on the legitimate branding. Just as those campaigns will unfortunately not die, neither will branding.
We can define “brands” any way we want, and I know it’s hard to think openly about it. But the links between ‘awareness’ and motivation, compulsion, sales (gasp!), or behavior of any kind are, at best, taken for granted by most branding and, at worst, left utterly unaffected.
It seems like the opportunity here isn’t to regurgitate all of the old defenses of brand (usually reliant on some form of a ‘you don’t understand it’ argument).
Rather, the Big Kahuna idea goes beyond behavioral targeting (I agree, that’s a tactic) and redefines brands entirely — not as imaginary constructs, but as the series of behaviors that companies and consumers undertake in order to have a ‘conversation.’
The brand isn’t participating in that conversation, or putting nonsense into it, per se…but rather the conversation itself. More behaviors that lead to more sales more often = better branding.
Like I said, we can defend definitions of branding until we’re blue in the face (or unemployed), but the reality of the marketplace has already left most of our aspirations by the wayside.
I think they are both equally important depending on the product / service you are trying to sell. A mix in the middle is ideal and preferably a brandable domain that has your term inside it. :)
The difficulty with this discussion is that there is not a universally accepted definition of branding. It certainly includes awareness-building, which the Geiko cavemen spots do. But generating awareness is only a first (albeit necessary) step in the marketing process.
In broader terms, branding *defines the experience* one has or will have with the brand. By creating desire for that experience, behavior is influenced.
There are numerous successful examples: Nike, BMW, Harley-Davidson, Disney, etc., that continue to promise the experience.
Unfortunately, the influencing-behavior part of the formula has been overlooked in some high-profile highly-creative campaigns. That doesn’t mean branding doesn’t work; it just means *bad* branding doesn’t work.
I wonder if you’ve got it backwards: perhaps experience defines the brand, and that means experience of reality — things that exist, happen in the real world, etc. — and not of the imaginative constructs of brand marketers?
Sorry for the semantics. I agree with you that the brand = the experience. One and the same. And accordingly, the consumer having the experience takes part in its definition. Agreed.
The act of branding itself, I believe, promises the experience, which is to say it defines what it will be like when given a try. This is where influencing behavior hopefully occurs within the branding process.
It is certainly up to the brand (or organization behind the brand) to deliver the experience, leading to brand loyalty. And as we know, often the one delivered is not the one promised.
I think we’re damn close!
People attach meaning to products and services, not branding. So I think that a cool few billion are wasted every year by companies hoping to attach otherwise unassociated emotional or lifestyle attributes to what they sell. That approach is old, discredited, and irrelevant…but it still dominates the pages of BrandWeek four times a month, and does so with lots of laudatory praise.
Where we might differ is that I believe ‘promises’ are nothing more than outbound marketing. We want to accurately describe what something is, does, etc., and we want to do it in a compelling, creative way.
But dictating experience — what people get from their acts of living — is a skill something for mesmerists to claim, not marketers. Experience isn’t ‘delivered’ by companies…it just IS, and it’s real-time, 24/7, involving inputs as diverse they are informal and/or uncontrollable.
My challenge to our traditional definitions of brand is this: what would happen if we threw out our expectations of influencing consumer thoughts or predispositions? What if we stopped trying to prove our hopes for branding and, instead, stated that mental states have NO impact on sales or business performance?
We could then set out to explore the behaviors that lead up to consumer purchase (and repurchase), and then build models for communicating upon those facts (whether via marketing, vendor policy, hr, whatever).
It would be a fundamentally different conversation than the one we’re having right now in this chain.
I think it’s more useful and profitable for everyone concerned to think in terms of creating and strengthening relationships. Then the line between branding and behavior disappears.
I subscribe to Seth Godin’s definition of a brand, which is a promise made over time.
The green and white logo is an infinitisimal sliver of the Starbucks brand. The “third place” is at its core. It’s hard to evaluate branding from the outside unless an insider walks you through the intended brand promise, at which point you can look at the external manifestations and say “yes, you’re telling the story you want to tell with that” or “no, that manifestation has nothing to do with the story you’re trying to tell.” So if I know that the third place is at the center of Starbucks’ brand promise, I can look at the big comfy chairs and the decor of the stores and decide, Is that an effective way to tell that story or not?
Obviously it has to *work* with the customer without explanation. But if you’re analyzing how well the brand is working, I think you need the map. If you’d never seen an acorn, you would never be able to guess that’s what oak trees came from.
Starbucks tells its story so well that we think *we’re* the ones who are telling it. That’s spectacular branding.
Having worked with a few giant ad agencies now, I don’t think the “awareness advertising is clueless, big advertising doesn’t get it” arguments hold as much weight. Maybe they once did. Every good agency I’ve talked with has a very keen understanding that awareness needs to drive behavior. They know very well that it’s not just about getting the logo colors right.
Having said all that, great title and one that is sure to spark a lot of conversation. :)
See, one skew on this is that any of us who aren’t tied to making a sales number are looking at this another way. Let’s go micro for a second. Let’s pretend we run a small shop in St. Louis that sells Gooey Butter Cakes. We have a website. We have great product that inspires groans of lust. And now, we turn to our marketer person, freshly hired, and say: okay, I’m selling 1,500 of these a day. I need to get up to 10,000, and then I’m going to franchise. YOU have to bring me that 10,000 bump.
Is brand part of that? I think so. But MORE of what will count is how you influence people and motivate people and change their behavior such that they willingly put what must surely be a 1,000 calorie “treat” into their belly in any kind of recurring volume.
Krispy Kreme on the east coast at least has all but FAILED because they thought it was all about the donut. Even Dunkin Donuts knew it was about the coffee. Have you swung by a McDonalds lately? They’re putting in McCafe’s and attacking Starbucks on the premium drink front.
Know why they MIGHT win a big chunk of market share? Behavior. They’ve stuck in the wifi. They’ve put in the premium coffee. NO, it’s not the same as Howard Schultz’s “third place,” but we (and by we, I mean a bunch of parents every single day) still go there. They have wifi and coffee, my two entry points into doing business *and* I’ve been behaviorally trained to swing by there and buy my kids chicken nuggets every four or five days.
Behavior / brand? Which one if YOU are the marketer?
Good to hear others starting to find value in behavior–love the title of the book. Behavior analysis has been far more valuable to our work than any other type of analysis. I’m on my way to buy the book.
Wow. great discussion.
ZeFrank once said that brand is like the emotional aftertaste after interacting with a message or product. In the case of selling products, isnt the holy grail building up a behavior where that emotional aftertaste just becomes the emotional permanent taste?
I guess what I’m getting at is they interact with each other. The key isnt attacking one or the other, the key is jumping on the carousel and keeping it spinning.
Maybe “routine” (or habit) is the new “preference?”
I love the idea of the carousel…spinning off “branding” with every twirl.
At the early stages of branding or behavior changing, it is rarely sales or marketing, but both intertwined. Good marketing is really measured by sales, otherwise it is just unsustainable sponsorship. The difference between effective branding and behavior changing is merely a semantic one. It is true that a company cannot simply impose its will upon a consumer the way a rancher can on cattle, but isn’t effective branding about less forceful behavioral changes anyway?
Agree that sometimes we forget what the role of marketing is…its about changing behavior…Such a simple, yet powerful insight
Great thread. Branding & marketing go hand in hand, but the product or service needs to deliver on that brands’ promise. Chris’ examples of Starbucks and McDonalds shine. I remember hating to get McD’s coffee in the drive-through because I’d have to juggle the creamers, sugars, stirrers…then one day, they offered me ‘premium’ coffee and mixed it for me- not only convenient for a change but tasted better too. The branding for this new service came after my user experience. I no longer associate McD’s with a bad experience coffee wise. If they’d marketed their previous coffee without real changes to their product- their brand would have been hurt by the poor taste and sad user experience. Instead, the firm made sure they made positive changes (following the market accordingly) first, then marketed it, reinforcing the brand.
Product, branding, marketing.
Nice discussion! I’m not sure you can so easily discount the power of the “brand”. To Cathlyn and Chris’ case on the coffee at McDonalds, neither of you would have been in that drive thru without their brand to begin with. This gives them the power to try new products. Yes, they need to continue to deliver on the promise, but, be honest, how many times in your life has McDonald’s or Starbucks under-delivered for you personally, and yet, you *still* believe in the brand. We all do. If this Bailout crisis was in Hamburgers, we would all be on the Hill pitching to save McD’s as an American icon. I don’t think we all feel the same about WaMu…:-)
Alan
Good points Alan! I was there based on the McDonald’s brand, and past experience- however, what I noted was a purposefully delivered approach to their new coffee experience. Clearly it was something new, and the staff and mgt had been trained on, and I saw promotions for the coffee service follow later. So it was a beautiful roll out. I think that is what I liked about it. Getting the service first, and then seeing promotions about it later- and being able to say to friends; “Yes, McDonalds’s had changed their coffee. It’s great now.” So my perception of the brand was reinforced.
So do we think brand serves to overpower (or distract from) reality, or is it an expression of it?
I keep reading examples of “branding” that seem, to me, to be examples of glorified “awareness.”. I question whether there are things called “brands” separate from the subjective and real-time redefinition of consumers…
This is a great discussion–thanks for sparking it, Chris (and Jonathan too, of course).
Jonathan asks a key follow up question: “do we think brand serves to overpower (or distract from) reality, or is it an expression of it?” While many so-called brands do distract from reality, a good brand uncovers and then communicates the true character and purpose of a company or organization. As a professional who focuses on the copy/tone aspect of branding, the most important thing I do for my clients is ask lots of questions; the ultimate goal is uncovering that true character. That’s the more difficult, but most necessary, work of branding. If you’re slapping on a facade rather than excavating something real, the divide between brand and action will be gaping.
In this discussion, there seems to be a premise that branding is emotional and action is rational. I disagree. Both are both, just like people are both emotional and rational. Both approaches must be included in a successful marketing mix.
First discussion/comment section I read all the way to the end and everyone in the middle, too!
My 2 bits:
brand - keyword - positioning - association - personal story - elevator pitch
How are these so much different? We seek understanding by figuring out the relative value of someone or something in relation to ourselves.
True, Madison Avenue is divorced from reality, so “Branding” (capital B) is completely different from the reality of needful conversations as in the “Cluetrain Manifesto”. That’s their problem.
“Chris Brogan” is a brand which I follow as he produces routine value which I can use. “Stephen King” is a brand I do not, because I don’t like that genre.
Branding occurs by any name (although some roses smell better than others) - and all of us are doing it all the time. Politics is -rank- in it.
The trick is in taking responsibility for the effect. Corporations which are actively listening on Twitter are getting a clue.
Jack Humphrey, among others, are profiting off this understanding.
Branding got a bad name (even cows don’t like it) because of the lack of responsibility. Trust fails. And so goes their “market share”.
I am devouring JSB’s book right now. There’s more of my highlighting and underlines and notes and thoughts and ideas than typewritten copy.
I’ll defer full comment until I’m done but the one thing that’s coming through straight at me like a 8 ton semi with it’s HIGH BEAMS on is ———> it’s all about…um…ahhh…SALES? Call it branding, call it awareness, call it marketing, call it whatever you want. And pay what you can for it.
If your in chrage of my branding and it doesn’t drive sales, DIRECTLY drive sales, BIG sales…Ricky, you got some splainin’ to do.
Thanks for the thread Chris and JSB - BIG KUDOS to you! Your book’s a game-changer.
Rick Z.
SocialMOO.com was available - perhaps there is an opportunity to create a Bovine Social Network - surely that is the kind of idea where one could obtain venture capital from an idea scribbled on a cocktail napkin.
;^)
Brand building and behavior changing are two separate functions of marketing. Both are vital and important. Behavior changing is the short term, quarterly sales view. Brand building is the long term plan to build good will and drive future growth through brand extension. You need them both.
Behavior changing pays the bills. Behavior changing opens up possibilities and helps companies get through tough times (from a PR perspective) because of built-up good will among the consumers.
Think back to the 80s Tylenol poisoning crisis. The company’s response is now the textbook case for corporate responsibility. However, the product wouldn’t have survived to execute that plan if it hadn’t built up good will over years previously. Imagine if something like that happened with HeadOn these days. Would the company survive, or would everyone simply stop applying directly to the forehead?
“Behavior changing opens up possibilities and helps companies get through tough times …”
Correction: BRAND BUILDING opens up possibilities and helps companies get through tough times …
Robert,
Brand - elevator pitch what is the difference?
Elevator pitch makes me say “wow”. Brand makes me take your phone call.
BIG difference, especially for those here into personal branding.
Alan
I think the fundamental point is that brand is the creation of and the property of your consumer. to talk of branding, brand building, or even brand awareness, without an intimate understanding of how the consumer actually experiences your product or service, is to be dangerously misled.
in the same way that two people can experience the same movie and walk out with violently different reactions, a marketer and a consumer can have vitally opposing expectations and experiences of the same product. so long as brand is relegated to communications and marketing, this won’t change.
it’s also true that brand does not change behavior, it is behavior. this is what i love about baskin. the revolution in brand that he announces is that the organizations who will win are the ones who will use current behaviors to change brand, not the other way around.
http://www.slideshare.net/abluecircle/whose-brand-is-it-presentation