Can Consumers Love A Flashlight Battery Brand More than Car Brands? Well...Yup

The other day, I was talking to a colleague about how advertising can contribute to building irrational love for car brands. We discussed how much of car advertising today relies on demonstrating the latest technology and features, in attempts to establish brand superiority. This is despite the fact that feature for feature, car brands are approaching parity in their offerings.  As the conversation went on, I related what I learned when I worked on the Energizer battery brand in the early 2000's

Batteries are a big challenge for marketers. They are one of the few product categories that are invisible when you're using them. The only time you are aware of them is when they stop working. It's also hard to differentiate. By definition batteries must have a standard size and shape; any product claims are fleeting, as advances are easily replicated. 

As such, how can a battery ever drive preference, let alone brand love? 

The answer to that question began to come to life in 1989. Energizer at first took a very effective competitive swipe at their main competitor, Duracell. At that time, Duracell was running a very entertaining product demonstration campaign with identical mechanical toy rabbits. All but one of the rabbits ran out of energy. Of course, that rabbit was powered by Duracell:

In a stroke of what would come to be recognized over time as genius, Energizer responded by creating a cooler, longer lasting Bunny who outlasted all the other staid rabbits, including the Duracell rabbit:

But it all could have ended there if this was just a head to head comparison of a longer lasting battery. Instead, Energizer decided to adopt this cool bunny--not for use in head to head comparisons, but instead to represent the indomitable spirit of the Energizer brand. Suddenly, the Bunny was unstoppable and ubiquitous. It interrupted commercials for other (fake) products. People with boundless energy were referred to as 'Energizer Bunnies'. The Bunny had found a permanent space in culture. And today, the Bunny remains inseparable from the Engineer brand, and the batteries that bear its name.

This conversation spurred me to investigate how strong brand love is for Energizer. And here's where I came to a startling discovery. The Energizer Brand beats the automotive category by 21 points in Brand Love.* 

Source: BERA

Moreover, no automotive brand is rated as high as the Energizer brand!

This made me dig a little deeper, and again I was blown away. It turns out that consumers have more than a 3 times stronger personal connection to the Energizer brand than to the automotive category! And Energizer is seen as better meeting people's needs and making life easier!

Source; BERA

So what can automotive marketers learn from this? How can they forge a stronger emotional connection with their customers? How can they become irrationally loved?

1. Lead With Brand Values, Not Features

While there is a time and place to demonstrate functional attributes, features alone are not sustainable and will never drive an emotional connection. Instead drive emotional love by tapping into shared values.

Automotive brands should ask themselves, what at the core makes you different? What belief in your DNA do no other brands share? How can this create an emotional bond with customers that no other brand can replicate? 

2. Be Consistent Across Products and Time

While Bunny executions have varied over time, the Bunny has remained consistent in representing the Energizer spirit since 1989--with one exception. In 2001, Energizer introduced a new, more powerful lithium battery. Because it was a quantum leap forward and intended for use in high tech electronic devices, Energizer decided to forgo the Bunny. Instead, it talked about lithium and power. After an unsuccessful launch, Energizer reintroduced the lithium battery with the help of the indomitable bunny, and the question--'do you have the bunny inside'?

So often automotive manufacturers want to position each product individually, with no consistent narrative over time. But brand values are tied to the brand, not individual products. Shifting the narrative for each product, segment and powertrain means that each campaign begins with zero equity. Each product must duke it out without a brand safety net. 

Once an automotive brand discovers its core truth, it should carry that truth across time and products, so that the bond between brand and customer strengthens over time. It will create instant equity in as new products and new technologies are introduced. And as brand love grows, people will eschew other brands and go directly to the brand that they love when it's time for repurchase.

3. Behave Your Brand Across All Touchpoints and Beyond

The spirit of the Energizer Bunny lives in all brand behaviors. From packaging to CSR activities, the idea of endless spirit and energy permeates everything they do.

Few automotive brands think beyond the sheetmetal. CSR programs tend to follow the same cost of entry directions--eg sustainability and safety, rather than finding something uniquely ownable.

As evidenced by the data, there is real white space for an automotive brand to grab. Who will take the leap beyond features and begin to chart the course to irrational love?

* BERA's Brand Love scores have been validated by Forrester to be highly correlated to business success

Chart your own course: Why Following the Leader Will Never Get You Ahead

 Years ago, way before I was in advertising, or even out of school, a Xerox commercial got my attention. While I was not in the market for a copier, I was struck by the simple sentiment of the ad--that the best selling point that any Xerox competitors could come up with was that theirs was 'Just as good as a Xerox'. Naturally, Xerox won.

Many years later, in many categories, all measurement and consequent strategies and ads encourage brands to still follow the leader. Why? Because more often than not, success is benchmarked to the brands' specific category--be it tracking studies, share of voice computations, copy test norms or even third party sources like Consumer Reports . As such, every brand is chasing the same metric, and thus, by definition, following the leader.

One need only to look at the luxury automotive category for a great example of how this benchmarking manifests itself in marketing. For years, the category has benchmarked itself on style, performance, technology and prestige. In order to demonstrate this, just about every luxury brand's ads look the same. Shots of cars driving swiftly down windy roads near beautiful scenery, with quick cuts to a luxurious and tech laden interior, a quick look at a smiling driver, followed by the car filmed in mood lighting to give it an aura of prestige per the video below.

The result? Brands spend millions of dollars to chase each other on the same playing field, and no one really stands apart from the herd.

So what can brands do to avoid this?

Stop benchmarking to your competitors and start looking for out of category benchmarks that will allow you to deposition your competition and create irrational love for your brand.

Sticking with the luxury car category, let's take the top volume brands in the US--Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Audi, and the latest 'disruptor' Tesla.

Source: BERA

As indicated by the chart, The category has a pretty consistent shape, with very little differentiation across brands. All brands seems to deliver on Functional and Emotional drivers. Tesla seems to lead on Purpose. There is more dispersion in Experiential, but no one excels.

But what happens if you start to compare with some out of category brands. And since the automotive business is moving functionally closer and closer to the technology category everyday, what if we added a couple of tech brands like Amazon and Apple?

Source: BERA

Suddenly, the entire category looks weak on Experiential and Purpose, and could use some strengthening in Functional drivers that no one would have seen if they stuck to category benchmarks. But looking outside, it's clear that there is white space for a brand to deposition the leaders.

Looking further in depth at factors that ladder up to experiential, that white space revolves around care, consistency, and convenience. It opens the door for innovative brand behaviors  that will set a luxury brand challenger apart from the rest. Imagine the ads that could come from these behaviors? They are not likely to involve curvy roads and big screens. 

Source: BERA

But they are likely to get a viewers attention with something completely different and missing from the category. Something like this, that highlights intense care and brand consistency.

And that's how brands win. 

So the next time you are looking at a brand tracking study and you're pleased with your progress, ask yourself - 'Am I really doing well, or am I just the biggest Chihuahua?'

[Full disclaimer: My agency, Innocean made the Genesis ad.]

How Far Can Irrational Love for Brands Stretch? Apple Vision Pro Might Tell Us

Brands and Irrational Love

Brands love to be loved. Love helps their bottom line. Customers are typically willing to pay a premium for that brand and exhibit a reasonable amount of loyalty. 

But there is another level of brand love--Irrational love.

When brands are loved irrationally, not only does this result in higher transaction prices but it also means that customers are loyal beyond reason. It makes the brand forgivable, should it stumble. It creates instant new product desire--sight unseen. 

Irrational love is what creates the most valuable brands in the world. 

Apple as Irrational Brand

Perhaps the most valuable and irrationally loved brand is Apple.

Over the years, Apple has built irrational brand love through a killer combination of products, services, and experiences:

• Breakthrough products that perfect and simplify existing technologies to make them useful, transforming everyday life
• Extending this experience across their seamlessly crafted eco system
• Creating emotionally compelling advertising that simplifies the product proposition, while vividly bringing the experience to life
• Introducing new products at a regular cadence, with great fanfare and instant demand

Apple iPhone launch used their traditional irrational love formula: simpler, useful, better

Vision Pro-Love or Hate?

Apple's recent announcement of it's new Vision Pro mixed reality glasses met with polarizing reviews. While praised as being the best mixed reality headset ever, two big questions seemed to come out of every review:

• The Price
• $3,499 is at least twice, and sometimes as much as 7 times as expensive as other headsets on the market -- can it be worth it?
• The Purpose
• Harvard Business Review seemed to summarize the over-riding sentiment in one sentence- 'Thus, they have produced a device capable of both [AR and VR] but have not found compelling use cases in either domain.'

Great...'but still searching for a purpose'

And that lack of specific use cases was evident in the way Apple described the Vision Pro. Previous breakthrough Apple products were described from the start with a specific, easy to under stand purpose--'1,000 songs in your pocket' (iPod), 'the internet in your hand' (iPad). The Vision Pro on the other hand was described in a number of ways at its debut, none of which really indicated a specific purpose:

• 'Spacial computing'
• 'Free your desktop, and your apps will follow'
• 'Be in the moment, whenever you want it'
• 'Get on the same page, in the same space'

So, can Apple maintain irrational love without the simplicity and transformative usefulness that has always driven it?

The Science Behind Irrational Love

It turns out, irrational love is measurable, diagnosable, and statistically linked to economic performance. BERA's Brand Explorer tool, with its scale of 0-100 does just that. And Apple's score of 97 is a good indicator of the most intense or, put another way, irrational love that one can have for a brand.

BERA Love Score is computed using a number of inputs including usage and loyalty, 5P's ratings, and purpose and emotional drivers

In looking at some of the key contributors to BERA's overall score that are rated 99 or 100 indicate that purpose, differentiation and relevance are key drivers of Apple's irrational love. (1) 

Thus, it will be incumbent on Apple, perhaps with through collaboration with app developers to define a clear and differentiated purpose behind this breakthrough technology if it is to justify the hefty price tag. Otherwise, Apple might find that it's reached the breaking point of irrational love.

(1) Actual BERA scores: Innovates With Purpose' (100), 'Stands Out' (100), 'Culturally Relevant' (99)  

 

Wanna Win An Effie? What I Learned From Being A Judge

 As someone who believes that craft and business results should reinforce each other, I am a big fan of the Effies and proud to have participated in Innocean's Effie win for Hyundai's 'Smart Park' in 2021.

But winning Effie submissions are hard to write! Wanting to know more, I was honored to be invited to be a judge this year and spent all day yesterday judging the finalist round... and I learned a lot! While I am under a strict NDA regarding any of the 12 individual cases that I reviewed during all-day judging session, I came away with a greater understanding of the process, what to do, and moreover, what not to do when writing an Effie case submission.

Understanding the Judging Context

First of all, it's great to understand how the judging works. The day, including breaks, instruction and judging sessions spanned 9 hours, 6 of which were spent reviewing and judging the actual cases. This adds up to approximately 30 minutes per case. Those 30 minutes were broken into:

• 10-15 minutes to read the actual submission and review the video. 
• 10-15 minutes  discussing the case with the other 17 people in the room, 
• A few minutes were left for scoring the case and providing any feedback. 

Depending upon the time of day, the judges reviewing your submission may have already read 10 + entries that day. 

The 5 Principles of Winning

1) Less is More 

To paraphrase Henry Ford II - Never overexplain, and you'll never complain. Several of the cases went to great, or shall I say too great lengths to explain every minor detail of the thinking that led to the development of the campaign, whether it was relevant to the case you are making or. Just because the Effies are about effectiveness, doesn't mean that irrelevant metrics, charts and graphs will help you win. 

In our session, the simplest, shortest submission received the most positive reception from the judges. This brings me to the second principle:

2) D = A + B = D

While some campaigns can have softer objectives, be sure to tell a linear story in which everything is clearly connected. Clearly stated objectives should see used as the North Star for the articulation of the insight, strategy and corresponding executions. The most brilliant insights and strategies will fall short, if they don't ladder back to the objectives. Similarly, the most amazing executions will not guarantee a win if they don't linearly connect the insight to the results.

In our session, some cases required a big leap in logic to move from what were smart insights to the execution. For others, the greatest results were not tied to the stated objectives. This tended to degrade overall scores.

 .

3) Clarity over Poetry  

One of favorite people, Rob Schwartz always endorsed clarity over poetry, and if ever there was a time to stick to this principle, it's in writing Effie submissions. Remember the context--judges come from a myriad of disciplines and categories. They are clients they are agency people. Their expertise may be strategy, creative, media, or management. They may come from categories as diverse as financial services or breakfast cereal. Your submission may be the last of ~12 that day. Thus, it's important to be succinct; to leave the category jargon on the cutting room floor; to use short, clear bullets rather than long winded, complex sentences. The judges will greatly appreciate it, and it might help you win.

In our session, we reviewed 2 back to back cases. One was extremely efficient with words and charts, and crystal clear to everyone in the room. The other was laden with word, chart and jargon overload. Although the fundamental idea was sound, the story was so mired in detail, and in stark contrast to the previous one, that again, it led to overall lower evaluations.

4) All that Glitters Is Not Gold

Just because your case leverages the latest technology, doesn't mean it's Effie worthy. Why and how the technology is used is the key to winning. Does it reflect the target insight? Does it punctuate the idea? Is it true to the brand? Does it help drive efficacy? If not, it might be a small piece of context, but if that's all the case is about, don't waste your time writing it. 

We reviewed 2 cases that utilized VR/AR. One in which the tech had a very strong purpose for being, while the other was merely tech for tech sake. Needless to say, the latter did not fare well in our group discussions.

And finally, a corollary to point 4...

5) Effies and Cannes are Not the Same

Know your awards and the corresponding audience. Always first filter your cases to ensure they meet the requirements of Effie. Ground breaking creative that didn't drive measurable business results might be better reserved for Cannes. While some campaigns might be both Effie and Cannes worthy, do not try to cut and paste from one submission to the other. Begin each from scratch understanding the rules of the game. 

So my closing advice to any aspiring Effie winners is to spend more time thinking through the submission narrative, and judiciously selecting the relevant support points, and less time writing the case--with the right forethought the case will write itself!

Good Luck!