The Brand Landscape

When I was with Max & Erma’s 25 years ago, I gave the keynote at the annual Akron Women in Communication Dinner. I began by holding up a vintage Barbie and asking, “How many of you owned a Barbie doll when you were growing up?” Laughter rolled through the banquet room as I continued, “I got one for my birthday in 1959 and ever since I’ve believed that being a success was easy…as long as you had the right cute outfit.”

Of course, the real speech was about more than just Barbie, it was really about how I went from being a high school teacher to becoming SVP for a $60 million company. But in her follow-up note, my host thanked me for my insights on the Barbie School of Management. Clearly, my opening made a big impression on her just like the Barbie movie is making on millions today. But what is it about Barbie? Is it just the cute outfits, or is it that she helps us imagine… just as Billie Jean King once suggested, “You have to see it to be it.”

Part of my speech focused on the 3 C’s: gaining Competence, building Confidence and becoming Comfortable with power. Competence for me meant getting my MBA and then over-preparing for every challenge after that. As for Confidence, I’d had no problem with it as a teacher. I knew I was smarter than my students because I had the Teacher’s Edition. I learned that I’m at my best when I know that I know what I’m talking about, so as an executive, I talk to myself every day to keep my energy up and take care of myself to develop that feeling of confidence and being comfortable in my skin…and a cute outfit never hurts either. We know that when we fly, the flight attendant tells us, “Put on your own oxygen mask first.” The more we take care of ourselves, the more we have to give to others.  

Competence and Confidence are great, but sometimes they aren’t enough to help women feel Comfortable in positions of power. The first two boards I was appointed to were all men, so (without a feminine role model) I knew I had to create my own personal power style…authentic to me.  There are 5 bases of organizational power: Position power, Expert power, Resource power, Coercive power, and Charisma (that inexplicable something like attractiveness, likeability (or possibly the perfect outfit). The more bases of power, the stronger the effect. Think about some of today’s powerful women: Taylor Swift, Serena Williams, Janet Yellen or Dolly Parton. Each powerful, each unique—they show us there’s no such thing as a comfortable one-size-fits-all personal power style.

My career change was a big one and people are often afraid of change not because they fear the future, but because they’re afraid to let go of the past…it’s risky. But there are two kinds of risk: what if you try and fail and what if you’d be great at something and you never give it a shot?  The second implies that sometimes it’s better to let old assumptions go so that your hands are free to embrace the next opportunity.

Malibu wasn’t a dead end for Barbie. There were lots of new opportunities out there… Maybe that’s what Barbie represents…opportunities. No offense to Mattel, but it was Walt Disney who once said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

Until next time, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A while ago I was in LA on a Discovery Tour and visited a haute hotdog concept called Slaw Dogs. The line-up of builds was impressive. They had dozens of variations from a Hotdog Rueben to a Breakfast Dog, but most impressive was when they brought out their ‘Secret Menu’ for two women who were undecided about what they wanted. How fun.

Weeks later I went to PF Chang’s with my sister and brother-in-law who ordered an off menu item—Chang’s Shrimp which had been taken off the menu years before. Since being deleted, it is now a ‘secret’ that those in the know could order. My brother-in-law told me, “They make it for me.” He loves having the ‘inside scoop.’ It made him a huge PF Chang’s fan, and the fact that he could tell me about it absolutely made his day.  And that’s the point…Secret Menus make guests feel good because they get what they want and feel like they’re getting special treatment.

But secret menus are also good for restaurants. Having headed up marketing for several restaurant chains, I know how tough menu development can be…especially when staying on trend with new items means you have to let go of old established items to keep the total size of the menu down to an executable level.

I read research a long time ago that the single biggest reason people stop going to their favorite restaurant is because the restaurant deleted their favorite item. I’ve been convinced of that over the years as focus groups have told me the same story of abandoning a restaurant because their favorite item had been 86’ed.  That’s why restaurant chains, like the Bravo Brio Restaurant Group where I was Chief Marketing Officer, keep recipes, server training materials and POS keys for deleted items so that if guests request a deleted item they can still make the item for them like Bravo’s Shrimp Fra Diavolo. It’s really a win-win. The guest gets what he wants because the restaurant has the infrastructure in place to do it without taking up valuable menu real estate.

And it’s not just deleted menu items that find their way to a secret menu. Often, secret menus include items that solve a guest problem—nutritional or otherwise. Someone told me if I was too late for breakfast at McDonald’s I could ask for a Mc10:30. (To test the theory, the other day I asked my local McDonald’s if they had heard of the Mc10:35 and the cashier said to me, “I wish!” implying that even though their location didn’t serve it, it would be a great idea and would make her and a lot of her customers very happy.)

Secret Menus cater to the undecided, to the health conscious, to the picky eaters and to the spurge market.

• The Undecided—just like Slaw Dogs, some build-your-own concepts like Neopolitan pizza place 800 Degrees offer suggestions for great combinations…this can really help expedite the ordering process and lower the anxiety level for indecisive patrons
• The Dietary Conscious—Panera Bread in deference to their low carb customers has recently launched a Hidden Menu with power protein bowls for breakfast and protein options at lunch, Popyeye’s offers their sandwiches ‘Naked’ without the battering and In N Out Burger offers their burger ‘Protein Style’ wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun
• The Just Plain Picky Eaters—A picky eater friend of mine is executive vice president of a great chain of restaurants in New Orleans. To accommodate her preference for no sauces, the chain instituted a special register key just for her that is now commonly used for anyone who prefers simpler presentations.  I happen to hate burritos, but I just found out that Chipotle will make my chosen ingredients into a quesadilla instead of a burrito if I just ask—that’s all the incentive I need to go back
• The Spurge Market— McDonald’s Pie McFlurry is where you can buy a Baked Apple Pie and a McFlurry and have them blended together, Wendy’s offers a Grand Slam with 4 burgers, and In N Out’s 4×4 includes 4 burgers and 4 slices of cheese, but legend has it that they once served a 100×100! (NOTE: A side benefit of keeping these items off menu is that their calorie counts stay off menu too.)  Some things are better left a secret!

What all of these Hidden Menus, Secret Menus and Not-So-Secret menus suggest is that great operators are finding inventive ways to give customers exactly what they want while insuring the consistency and execution their customers demand.  For chains that can’t devote valuable menu space to items that only have limited appeal, but that want customers seeking esoteric items to know that they are available, secret menus are a great option. For chain operators to simplify the complicated ordering process of picky customers and to maintain consistency on even quirky orders, secret menus allow restaurants to do so. To build deeper relationships and an insider feeling among customers that can spur them to share via social media, Secret Menus are the perfect tool. In fact, in today’s intensely competitive battle for market share, a secret menu can be a real Secret Weapon.

Until next time, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Advertising: Which Half is Which?
By now everyone has heard the saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Most people attribute it to a friend or business associate, but the comment was originally made by retailer John Wanamaker, a marketing pioneer in the early 1900’s. I guess the reverse is also true…half of the money we spend isn’t wasted…it actually generates a return on investment (ROI) that builds sales and builds the brand. The real question is—how do you know which half is which?
• I just visited PF Chang’s for the first time in a long time. What made me do it? I saw their “20 Lunch Combos for Under $10” TV spot. After seeing it enough, I just had to go. But I didn’t go for lunch; I went for dinner. In other words, the advertising moved me even though I didn’t go for the deal. The PF Chang’s spots do a great job of making the case for the brand and the product and use the ‘deal’ to merely ‘punctuate’ the ad, not as its centerpiece. It’s not about the deal…it’s about the brand, with a big coupon exclamation point at the end of the sentence.
It reminded me that years ago I read that including a coupon in an ad increases readership by 90% (almost double) even if people don’t redeem the coupon. This makes sense…especially when you consider that redemption rates on coupons average 1-2% and are often redeemed at a rate of less under 10%. People are paying attention to the ad and responding to it, even if their ‘response’ is a non-coupon visit. I recently spoke with PF Chang’s president who confirmed that they have experienced lift at both dinner and lunch because of this promotion.
Lesson: the law of ‘unintended consequences” can also work in your favor. Be sure to factor that into your ROI.
• Having recently been at a board meeting discussion where the accountants looked at 5-10% coupon redemption rates as modest and questioned whether it was ‘worth doing.’ Interestingly enough, there was a positive ROI on the promotion, but the accountants questioned whether they might have gotten an even higher ROI doing something else…the grass is always greener. My take on this is that the ROI is the low end of what the promotion achieved when you consider the overall awareness it produced and the energy level it created in the restaurants during what would otherwise be a slow time ) like PF Chang’s). And all we know the best promotion is a busy restaurant.
Lesson: Don’t be distracted by someone else’s green lawn.
• Advertising is like the pill you take to make the symptoms go away. Once the symptoms have gone away, you might think you are fine and decide you don’t need the pill. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There is a “Cumulative Effect of Advertising”—a number of years ago it was found that only 60% of the impact of an advertising initiative is felt in the first year, 25% is felt in year two, 10% in year three and 5% in year four. If you keep advertising year after year, it will build and build until year 4 where you will finally realize 100% of the benefit of the campaign. If you do the same thing the next year, you will get the same 100%. This will make it appear that sales have flattened, but the truth is that the base has moved. A certain level of marketing simply ratchets up the base.
Lesson: Stopping your advertising loses the residual impact and sets you back years building sales. Ultimately, you need to “up the ante” to get bigger impact. Stops and starts rather than a consistent year after year approach leaves money on the table because of the lost impact.
• Reach & Frequency, the traditional measures of advertising in a mass media world, are giving way to Impact & Engagement, the watchwords in a social media world. It’s not an either-or choice. A full marketing approach includes both Reach & Frequency and Impact & Engagement. Anecdotal information that reflects how much powerfully guests respond to your brand is almost as meaningful now as the ROI.
Lesson: Advertising that doesn’t Reach enough people, doesn’t reach them Frequently enough, doesn’t have Impact or is not Engaging, is probably in the half of your advertising that doesn’t work.
• The expression “Go Big or Stay at Home” is as true of marketing as it is in general. Not spending enough may just cause a promotion to fail whereas a little more money would give the program enough to break through and be a success. Years ago, I tested two ad campaigns. One featured a “buy one, get one free” coupon and the other featured “buy one, get one for a dollar” coupon. Our managers thought they would save a lot of money not having such a high coupon cost, when in fact, the number of people coming in for the less compelling deal was so much lower, it didn’t even generate enough revenue to pay for the ad whereas the BOGO with the free offer actually generated a lot of traffic and made lots of money.
Lesson: Go Big or Stay at Home.
So here are my simple rules:
1. It’s important to measure sales gains not only against last year, but also against a realistic assumption of what sales would be if you had done nothing. Ask, for example how your competition is doing. If you are doing better than they are, your advertising is working.
2. Make it about the brand, not the deal. People will seek out the deal…you’ve got to expose them to the brand on the way. That gives you impact today and tomorrow.
3. About the time you are getting sick of your advertising, your customers are just beginning to pay attention to it…the promotions that are working are working because you stick to them.
4. Continuously evaluating your efforts and eliminating the things that aren’t working, and doing more of the things that are, will build the half that works and eliminate the half that isn’t.
Until next time, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A 20-inch baby cobra escaped from the reptile house of the Bronx Zoo about a month ago and became an instant news story. OK, it was probably a slow news day, being that it preceded Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations and the capture of Bin Laden, but that only half explains why this event became such a wide-spread story. The other half of the story is great branding. How did it happen…why did it happen…and what can we learn from it?
When a tongue-in-cheek Twitter feed emerged that gave the cobra a personality and a voice, the cobra became a brand and finally a cyber phenom. The cobra had 200,000 Twitter followers in less than a week. But I would argue that it was less about media and more about brand personality that drove the overnight sensation.
The @BronxZoosCobra feed was written in the voice of the Egyptian cobra—a young, sassy, fun-loving female cobra with a cosmopolitan flair that tweeted up-to-the minute updates that piqued our imaginations, allowing us to project our hopes and dreams on her and imagine what we might do if we were free to experience the “Big Apple.”
• “Holding very still in the snake exhibit at the Museum of Natural History,” she posted on Twitter. “This is gonna be hilarious!”

• “I should take in a Broadway show. Anyone heard anything about this ‘Spiderman’ musical?”

• “Leaving Wall Street. These guys make my skin crawl.”

Well, she was finally found…in the zoo: no adventures, no trip to the top the Empire State Building, no Broadway show, and that might have been the end of the story…except for what happened today. A peacock just escaped from the same Bronx Zoo, and, of course, is tweeting:

“The cobra gave me some escape tips.” 

 The cobra’s response? “Seriously, peacock!? We agreed we’d go tomorrow at dawn!”

And so it continues. What ultimately creates resonance, connection and longevity is the power of the idea.
The idea was original…not copycat. The voice seems real…not contrived. The tweets are conversational in tone…not broadcast business messaging. And most importantly, the voice reflects a brand personality that connects on an emotional level.
Not long ago, I worked on a project to develop a personality and “voice” for my client’s social media program. It was smart of them to realize the need for a well-conceived approach to their social media voice by creating a brand personality that could translate to the “voice of the brand” as they engaged in a dialogue with their guests on line. That’s the secret to successful branding strategy—articulating the brand personality and translating the brand personality to the “voice of the brand,” especially important in this age of social media. This voice connects with consumers in a personal and emotional way, and the connection is what allows the brand to transcend its rational attributes (the cobra was, by the way, a venomous snake) and engender loyalty.

Many brands use celebrities to represent their brand personalities—Jeff Bridges for Duracell, Tim Allen for Campbell’s Soup, Queen Latifah for Pizza Hut. As consumers, our radar tells us if they are on target or off target. In 2007, Wanda Sykes was selected as the “voice” of Applebees, and although I thought she was hilarious, she didn’t quite fit the brand.

The lesson to be learned is the importance of creating a relevant, authentic, emotional connection to your customers and the discipline of maintaining a consistent authentic voice that reflects the brand personality. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I had dinner with a friend last night at a great new little Mexican restaurant, Cabo Cucina. When I met him for dinner a year or so ago, we ate at the same restaurant…well, not actually the same restaurant. It was the same building but a different concept—it was a great little Italian restaurant (the third of three “great little Italian restaurants” which had been in the same space over the last ten years). In this case, the failure was more due to the location than the economy because the site has its challenges. However, over the last year or so, many great little restaurants and even great restaurant brands have gone by the wayside in this economic downturn. Read More »