A Twitter conversation last night instigated by Olivier Blanchard and carried on ad nauseum elsewhere, sales reminded me of a long-time guilty pleasure: Nutella. Just typing the word makes me salivate – and I have to restrain myself from running upstairs to slather some of that rich hazelnutty goodness on melba toast. And apparently I’m not alone: in additon to Twitter fetishists, Nutella has 3.5 million fans on Facebook.
So why all the nuts?
Dutch Hagelslag: The chocolate-on-bread option I grew up with.
I didn’t grow up with Nutella. As a Dutch-Canadian kid, if we wanted chocolate on bread, by golly, we just put chocolate on bread. “Hagelslag” (pronounce the g as if you are lightly hacking up a small furball) or “chocolate hail” or just “sprinkles” were always available at my Oma’s house. My first Nutella purchase came as a student, when my room-mate had to have it in the house, and I in turn have had my own jar on the shelf ever since. And now, although we don’t let the kids have it (far too precious), my pregnant wife is currently making sure we stay stocked up.
But I wasn’t conscious of where it comes from (Italy), or its fascinating history, which Wikipedia has done a much better job of than I could manage in a blog post. Basically, it comes from a war-time innovation by Pietro Ferrero to produce a cheaper alternative to chocolate using cocoa and the hazelnuts that were plentiful in that region. Nutella in its present form emerged in 1964, with 179,000 tons produced in Italy every year.
Building a fan base
But I can’t remember seing an ad for Nutella, and can’t recall a single in-store promotion or Point-of Purchase display. It was always just there on the shelf alongside the Peanut Butter, calling “Dennis! DEEEENNNNISS!”. <more saliva> But I digress.
Apparently Ferrero does do some advertising – particularly in Europe, as in this nicely toned French ad that promises that Nutella will give you the energy of a child. But according to this site, Ferrerro USA only spent $300,000 on advertising in 2008.
It’s interesting that the positioning is built around “energy” and “youthfulness” rather than being explicitly “healthy”. In Canada, Nutella labels feature a boy kicking a soccer ball to highlight their support for amateur soccer, while in Italy, the connection with futbol was made even clearer in one commemorative package (right).
But in the UK, the “energy” positioning has gotten Nutella into hot water as misleading for a product that contains so much sugar and fat (thanks to @kaitli for the tip!).
The secret to Nutella’s long term success seems to be consistency, living up to the promise by just being there, and by the affectionate devotion of its fans who carry a craving for that taste well into their adult lives. And not just consumption, but even geeky fixation.
Just do a quick YouTube search on Nutella, and you’ll find hundreds of fans geeking out on all aspects of the product. Check out this clip from a German television show that compares the consistency of French Nutella with German Nutella in agonizing (and entertaining) detail. But note that when they actually call Ferrero in this clip, the brand-er doesn’t do much to help the geeks in question with their free advertising.
So the question for you DIFFER brand geeks: what should Ferrero be doing to capitalize on all these nuts who obviously want to help them spread the love? Social Media campaigns? More traditional media advertising? Just staying out of the way? Looking for your comments as always.
Coffee giant tries to get their mojo vibrating again
Once, Starbucks was just a local coffeeshop in Seattle. Then it became a mega-brand, standard-bearer for the premium coffee category worldwide. But lately, the “star” has been fading, and even the “bucks” are drying up. So now the chain will be re-launching a few of its many under-performing stores under a new name – and it ain’t “Starbucks”. Brand seppuku, brilliant extension strategy, or just a curious experiment?
Photo from Seattle Times article – 15th Avenue Coffee & Teas (nee Starbucks)
Many little rocks; one Goliath target
I won’t spend a lot of time documenting all the many woes of Starbucks – from closing 1000 stores worldwide over the last few years, to endless streams of controversy , to an actual bombing this year at a Manhattan Store. The bigger story is actually thousands of small stories: how Starbucks is being beaten in the ground wars by smaller, more flexible, more community-minded local shops – like Ottawa’s fair trade coffee champs Bridgehead (of whom I’ve written at length in another post).
Starbucks’ erstwhile strength – ubiquitous presence in major markets worldwide – has almost become an Achilles Heel. Comedian Lewis Black thinks it is surely a sign of the end of the world (WARNING: contains hilarity – may not want to play this in a cubicle):
Starbucks responds
They’ve been fighting back of course, with their new “Starbucks™ Shared Planet™” brand and a pledge to apply renewed attention to three big perceived areas of weakness:
Ethical sourcing – to answer the Fair Trade movement, which, because of their size and massive bean-supply-chains, they have been slow to embrace. Notice they still don’t call it “Fair”;
Environmental Stewardship – to try to get back some of their tree-hugging mojo; and
Community Involvement – to fight the idea that they are the rapacious corporate villains strip-mining local economies and ruthlessly targeting competitors without giving much back – largely fair complaints.
In which the corporation offers to share… the planet
These three principles are embodied (and proclaimed loudly) in three new Starbuck’s branded “Green Stores” , the first of which opened July 1st at Paris Disneyland (of all places Press Release / Pictures)
At Brandvelope, of course we think all this is great. We’re sure Starbucks is sincere in their commitment to these ideals, and we applaud the incremental steps they are taking in this direction. The problem is their ability to move their Titanic-sized infrastructure to match their ocean-sized ambitions, and navigate around the great big pointy icebergs they face.
For example, Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ says “by 2015, we want to: Purchase 100% of coffee through ethical sourcing practices.” Great. But in the intervening 6 years, a goodly chunk of their coffee will come from, um, less-than-ethical sourcing practices, while local chains (like the Bridgehead where I’m sitting right now) are already at 100% and have been for years. And they’re already intensely environmental, and already deeply committed to their communities. So Starbucks: welcome to the club (let us know when you get here).
The problem with local
Which brings us to Starbucks’ latest uphill battel – its attempt to make itself more local, and more responsive to the communities in which it operates. Because, even on on its home turf in Seattle, where Starbucks still has some claim to being “local” – small coffeeshops are thriving and forcing Starbucks store closures.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise when a small army of field-tripping keeners were spotted at several Seattle area coffeeshops over the last few months, making loud observations about store design and product lines, and filing their notes in folders marked “Observations” in large letters. The results? Wait for it…
The new brand: “15th Avenue Coffee & Tea”
Branded by location: “15th Avenue”. That’s the name of the new game-changing Starbucks location on (surprise!) 15th Avenue in Seattle.
So does this mean a “15th Avenue” will be coming to a neighbourhood near you. Nope. Yours would be “Main Street Coffee & Tea” or “Broadway” or “Grosse Pointe Strip Mall” or “All-Knowing Supreme Leader Boulevard” or whatever. The idea would be to have each location branded with its location to make it seem like it grew organically in that space.
Two other stores in Starbucks’ native Seattle will follow suit, each getting its own name to make it sound more like a neighborhood hangout, less like Big Coffee, a Starbucks official told The Seattle Times on Thursday. Chicago Tribune.
Booze & guitars: The field-trippers focused on coffeeshops that serve alcohol alongside their hot drinks, as well as those that feature live events like poetry readings and guitar-jams. So nosurprise that these will be part of the cocktail mix at the new shops. The idea is 1) to prop up sales in the traditionally flat evening hours, 2) tap into lucrative alcohol profit margins, and 3) to make Perez Hilton very very happy.
No logo: all the media I’ve read are saying that no Starbucks logos will appear on the signage, the products, or anywhere else in the store. I can’t confirm this, so if any Seattle-based readers can visit and confirm, please do!).
But if this is a purely “white label” approach to branding these new locations, I’m interested to see how Starbucks is going to evolve this concept as they go forward. For now, the perceived independence of the locations is a useful way to allow the clipboard-toters at Starbucks to experiment and study the new format without dilluting the corporate brand.
Coffee industry analyst Andrew Hetzel: “It looks to me that they are testing a specialty sub-brand to see if they can capture some other segment of the market that would otherwise be disillusioned by a large corporate chain,” Hetzel said, adding that opening only one at first “gives them a live shop to test changes in menu offerings, store design and, perhaps, procedures quickly” without disrupting operating stores branded with the Starbucks name. Whole
article here.
Where to from here?
But this can’t last forever. Assuming the format works and Starbucks wants to roll it out to different markets, eventually, they’ll see the need to create visible connections (and brand equity) between locations. Because creating a series of purely local brands with no overall brand marketing synnergies across the chain would be counter-productive for a company of Starbucks size and clout. And I find it hard to believe they’d be that stupid.
AdAge article: Technomic President Ron Paul… predicts the concept will look much different if rolled out on a national stage. “I still think it’s more a of test lab than something they’re more serious about rolling out,” he said. “That’s not a national strategy.” Full article here.
So three basic brand strategy options:
1) New “family” brand:
Starbucks name would not appear in branding. Instead, the new shops would be given their own umbrella brand which would operate as a stand-alone “entity” within the broader corporate portfolio. So for example, the new branches could use a high-character name like “Mermaid Cafe” or a more neutral name like the “Your Independent Grocer” chain in Canada.
Advantage: diversifies the Starbucks portfolio without risk of brand dillution or confusion around over-extension.
Disadvantage: little transfer of brand equity – must essentially start from scratch building a new brand.
2) Premium brand extension:
This new format becomes a flavour of the existing Starbucks brand, but is given a descriptor or “soft brand” name of its own – like Starbucks Plus or Starbucks Cofeehouse.
Advantage: Leverages 30+ years of brand equity, but Disadvantage: seriously undermines the consumer’s current idea of what a Starbucks is and what they can expect when they walk through the door.
3) Endorsed brand:
The new brand has its own brand identity and branches would clearly not be “Starbucks” but everywhere the name appeared in graphics or formal text (like a Press Release), it would be “endorsed” by the Starbucks brand – as in “Courtyard by Marriot” or “Clever Cutter from K-Tel“.
Advantage: blends clear connection with separate identity. Disadvantage: requires careful management to balance the two aspects of the brand.
So which way do you think Starbucks should go? Your thoughts are welcome as always.
So as I write this, illness the newly re-christened SciFi Channel is ringing the bell at the NASDAQ to celebrate their name change to “Syfy” (Siffy?) and the Twitter hash tag #syfy is alive with unanimous pans of the new name: “Worst. Re-branding. Ever.” That might be a stretch, mind but so is the new name.
Screen captures from http://www.syfy.com/imaginegreater/. A distorted disorienting funhouse with no discernable direction or exit. Welcome to "Siffy".
Variety, page noting the fan outrage and commenting on the trend of cable channels renaming themselves in search of wider audiences, said NBC Universal had tripped the light gooftastic. “Syfy … opens up new possibilities for confusion,” the trade publication wrote. “If the network is trying to expand beyond science-fiction programming, why go with a new name that’s still pronounced ‘Sci Fi,’ but with a goofy spelling?”
My take:
Captain, I’m a brander not a Cable programmer, but they’re trying to have it both ways here. They’re trying to 1) preserve brand equity by pretending that the word will be pronounced the same way, while 2) leaving themselves open to the possibility of expanding to non-science fiction programming, and 3) building a distinctive protectable trademark in the package.
All of which sounds great on paper but to ordinary earthlings, it seems like a big stretch. Which is the trade-off when you choose a plain-language descriptive name like “SciFi” in the first place. Instant category recognition, but you have to live with (and respect) the expectations you create.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this weekend’s Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest should rebrand as “Blewsfest” now that KISS, Styx, and Ice Cube are all on the same bill. Note to Bluesfest: gimme a call, ‘kay?
A quick word on the tag line:
Oh, and when you put the “Siffy” name together with the mostly opaque and totally illiterate tagline “Imagine Greater” one wonders if the marketing team has been abducted by aliens (and not by the smart ones).
It’s very seldom I come across a new tool on the Web that jumps straight to the top of my bookmark lists, discount but it happened this morning. I got a tip from Charles Hodgson’s latest post on podicitonary.com on a funky new site called Wordnik.com that had my fast-twitch bookmarking reflexes firing almost instantly.
How does it DIFFER?
What’s so impressive, drug and how is it better than – or at least different from – any of the excellent reference tools out there? UrbanDictionary.com for example has become an indispensible reference for new slang and jargon. Don’t know what a “beauty booger” is? You’re in luck!
But in particular, how does wordnik compare to the granddaddy of them all: Dictionary.com? I have to admit that as a long-time word nerd (Scrabble, reading the OED for fun, the whole works) and professional brand namer, I’m a big fan of Dictionary.com. It has evolved over the past few years from providing a single set of standard dictionary definitions to providing a huge laundry list of definitions from a cross section different dictionaries, including specialized financial and medical searches, as well as etymology, suggested related searches, and cross references to encyclopedia and thesauri.
Oh and advertising. Loads and loads of advertising. Just scroll down through this definition of the word “brand” to see how exhaustive and exhausting this approach can become. So what could be missing? Well, the simplicity and focus of the early days for one. But more importantly, with this “stream of noise” approach, what gets lost is context – a sense of how the word works in the real world.
That’s where Wordnik comes in.
Screenshot of the wordnik results I got for the word "brand"
Check out this search on the word “brand” and compare it to the Dictionary.com approach. The first thing you’ll notice is the clean layout, with everything in clearly marked containers. You’ll also see that the first item is not the definition, but examples of the word in the context of an actual sentence. And quite often from unconventional sources like Twitter.
Wordnik claims to have a growing database of more than 130 million examples to go with its 1.7 million words. This actually gets closer to one intent of the first, and still one of the easiest to read dictionaries, Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language which promises: “a faithful record of the language people used”.
Okay, it ain’t perfect. That’s why they’ve stamped “Beta” all over it – or as they put it in their welcome e-mail “Because we are still in beta, there are almost certainly hiccups and other infelicities.” In particular, the dictionary definitions themselve quite often fall flat in capturing the whole range of senses for a word.
For example, when you search “branding” the only definition that comes up is “the act of stigmatizing” – which totally misses the sense of the term that I’ve built my business on. On the plus side, there is a bit of Wiki-ness to the Wordnik site, so even if I wasn’t able to add a definition myself, I was able to submit the following comment:
What’s missing here is the modern business sense of branding, which I define as “the process of organizing a company’s products, messages, and corporate identity to help consumers understand who they are and what they do.”
Will this help? Hard to say. It will depend on whether a real human on the other side sees it and does soemthing about it (which is going to be a lot harder when more than 23 people have looked up the word). I’d love to see an open wiki environment moderated by fellow wordgeeks, but that requires a critical mass of users to filter out the type of self-serving editing that I’d love to do on the “branding” entry.
A quick word on the name and logo
Very quick actually: great. Nicely understated on both. It will be interesting to see if the noun-weighted name ever becomes a verb like “Google” – as in ” Wait a moment while I Wordnik that”. Or to use the Twitter / Tweet model: “let me Wordneek that.” Or perhaps I overstretch my point (for the first time ever).
So to sum up: Wordnik is cool for word nerds, and very useful for us in our branding work. With some more tuning and opening the door to deeper user contributions, it could become a killer app for everyone else too.
Okay, dosage confession time. As an emerging Twitter devotee, page (@denvan) I’ve been “drinking the Kool-Aid” of the Twitter brand for too long to really be objective about their brand strategy. I’m a tribe member now, viagra 100mg and I’ve learned the buzzwords, tools, and idiosyncrasies of this social media monster. But as a brand strategy geek, I also hear rumblings of trouble in the Twitterverse that I can’t ignore…
As I encounter more and more fellow “tweeps” (a word about insider language later) and have the same old “what the heck is Twitter GOOD for” conversation, the more I begin to wonder about different aspects of the Twitter brand package – are the elements holding together? Do they make sense? Could this be why we learned yesterday that Twitter’s growth is flat-lining and more than 50% of Twitter accounts are dead? Perhaps.
But let’s start with the good stuff.
What I love about Twitter Branding:
Basically, the thing I like about Twitter is the thing that may kill it in the end: it’s rough around the edges.
Twitter gained my instant affection by making absolutely NO attempt to be slick or professional – in design, messaging, or corporate positioning. The graphics are simple and inviting in a cartoonish-but-zen-elegant way that gives the site class tempered with a sense of humour. Nothing arty farty-highbrow or in-your-face revolutionary here.
Scroll down to the bottom of any twitter.com page and click on About Us and you get the feeling that this thing started in somebody’s garage in 2006, and that they’re hoping to stay there. The main login page is a study in simplicity with only 183 characters in the main body copy (note to Twitter: I could help you get this down to 140. I’m getting REALLY good at that!).
“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
Aw shucks. Ain’t that nice?
The whole brand package seems to promise new users a few key things: 1) small (i.e. unintimidating – easy to grasp), 2) fun (breezy tone, quick hits of cool content perhaps) 3) free (not going to take my credit card and sucker-punch me later with weirdo fees), 4) easy (get started – and hooked – fast), 5) social (geared toward social, not “serious” conversations)… and 6) disposable (geard toward a quick pay-off for a small amount of effort).
Which brings us to the potential dark side (spoiler alert: the light sabers are about to change colour!).
The potential problem(s) with Twitter Branding
The problem with sustaining this promise can be expressed in one word: Oprah. Okay, maybe two: Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. All right, three: Oprah, Ashton, and the coming of Summer patio season to the Northern Hemisphere (now THAT’s a social network!!). The first two are problems of scale, that is, reasons for rapid viral growth, while the third is one of the non-brand factors that should lead any sane person to want to get away from the computer or Blackberry (he writes at 5:01 p.m. on a gorgeous Friday evening).
The big question for the Twitter brand is this: can it scale to meet the hype?
In early 2009, Twitter went from cool-kid buzzword to mass market sensation with over 5 million additional new visitors in March – up from 4.3M in February to 9.3M in March. And the growth continued strong into April with the addition of the Great One (Oprah not Gretzky) and the 1 Millionth follower for Kutcher – with the attendant .
And the pressures are only increasing with big serious events like the election in Iran and the attacks in Mumbai, and the pundits trumpeting the game-changing nature of the medium.
And with all that hype, came… a great big collective “HUH?!?” from the new users attracted to the platform.
Because, you see, the Twitter brand is havign trouble emerging from the basement it dug for itself. Its initial brand promises are being met with the problems of massive growth:
Promises Twitter might be breaking
1. Small: sorry Twitter. MILLIONS of users. Repeat that. MILLIONS.
2. Fun: despite the breezy graphics and light tone, Twitter is not fun until you connect with at least one other active human. But for the average newbie, Twitter.com doesn’t do a very good job of helping you understand how to make that first connection (or whay
you’d want to)…
3. Free: for now, but with the weight of so much stuff comes the time cost that mid-market adopters are more likely to factor into the equation. Business users in particular are skeptical that this isn’t just another time-waster for employees, and Twitter doesn’t help itself – starting with the name “Twitter” which is incredibly catchy and viral, but also implies empty, and possibly annoying background chatter.
4. Easy: I like and compulsively use Twitter, but even I barely ever use Twitter.com. TweetDeck and other tools are absolute necessities for anyone serious about the medium. Twitter itself may be Open API-ing itself into obsolescence unless it starts taking the user experience – and more to the point – the IMPRESSION of control that a new user needs – more seriously.
5. Social: This and all the other examples on the site imply that Twitter is just for F2F (Friend-To-Friend) communications. Sample value messages are about delving into the trivial parts of people’s lives, which, as most people find pretty quickly, is not the main content that forms the bulk of Twitter traffic. I’m finding that the most successful Tweeters mix maybe 10-20% personal with maybe 60-70% subject matter expertise and useful cross references, and the rest being current events, trivia, etc. Twitter has outgrown “What are you doing” and has crossed into the realm of “Why are we doing what we’re doing?” and “What does it mean to me?”
6. Disposable: here’s the crux of it for me. By playing up “fun” “easy” and “social” aspects, Twitter’s current brand strategy is focused on “fast-twitch” brand drivers, and missing the most important aspect of the Twitter service: that it takes time, effort, and commitment to really get anything out of the medium. New users see the firehose coming at them, and it’s no surprise they’d be tempted to go elsewhere for a drink.
So how does Twitter tune its brand package to 1) help the newbies get it and get involved, 2) make the case about the serious work values the medium can fulfill, without 3) losing the core values and emotional ties that made the brand attractive in the first place?
Or is it all just a deeper level of brilliance than this poor brand geek can grasp – after all, they’ve got the millions of devoted (and not-so-devoted) users, so something must be working.
That’s a question I throw back to you dear reader. Comment away.
Okay,