Building Brand Authenticity

Would anyone care if your brand disappeared? As I write this, the Morgan Motor Company (a small UK-based car manufacturer) is about to celebrate its centenary. Morganeers around the world (from as far away as New Zealand) are shipping their ‘Mogs’ to the village of Malvern Link to take part in this once in a lifetime celebration of a brand many business consultants predicted wouldn’t see out the end of the twentieth century. At the same time, the ‘Big Three’ (Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors) are receiving financial aid (much to the consternation of the American taxpayer) from the US government. Chrysler has filed for bankruptcy protection (with General Motors likely to follow) as part of a merger deal with Fiat. The contrast in fortunes between the two sets of companies is as obvious as the contrast between their respective resource bases, including budgets for marketing and research and development.

Under the stewardship of Quaker Oats, Snapple shouldn’t have failed — not if you believe in branding and marketing. Quaker’s strategy was simple — take a brand that had been built by amateurs to the next level through the application of marketing’s famous four P’s (price, product, promotion, and placement). The Quaker team did a superb job of developing market-driven innovations, accessing mass retailers, and investing in mainstream advertising. How could it be that four years after buying Snapple for US$1.7 billion, Quaker was forced to sell it for the markdown price of US$300 million (and some thought this too much)? Simple, the Quaker team forgot that consumers drank Snapple because of its quirks — consumption of this drink was a reaction to impersonal mass production and mass marketing. Drinking Snapple was a powerful cultural display in an age of conformity and artificiality (Deighton 2003). The very marketing amateurism evident in the pre-Quaker days gave the brand authenticity — the central driver of its equity.

For the past 90 minutes Lynne McEwan held the Melbourne-based audience in the palm of her hand as she regaled us with stories of Bruichladdich (pronounced ‘Brooke Laddie’) — the Islay distillery resurrected by her father and legendary whisky maker, Jim. This was no corporate-sponsored, power point-based whisky tasting; rather this was akin to listening to a saga of old, where the audience added their own stories about the brand (many had been to the distillery) to Lynne’s narrative. Being a marketing researcher, one story in particular appealed to me. Such is the love that customers have of Bruichladdich single malts that webcams are placed in the distillery so fans can monitor the progress of each batch (it really is a thrill a minute). Lynne recalled the day the sales staff received an email inquiry from the US wondering when a faulty camera would be repaired. Staff replied that the camera would be running soon and asked, ‘Are you a single malt fan?’ The reply was unexpected — ‘no we are not single malt fans, we are the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and believe you are making weapons of mass destruction!’ The agency had been training their staff on the production of biological and chemical weapons using the webcams.

Altoids mints are a great example of an authentic brand. Introduced in the nineteenth century as a remedy for indigestion (largely due to the poor state of British food), Altoids (the ‘curiously strong mint’ (Figure 4.1)) achieved cult status through their old-fashioned tins (introduced in the 1920s), quirky promotion, weird flavours, and high-quality paper wrapping (Morris 2004). In fact, Altoids advertising and collectible tins are highly sought after by collectors on ebay (Figure 4.2). In a remarkable article, Claudia Kotchka (VP of Design, Proctor and Gamble) identified why Proctor and Gamble (P&G) couldn’t produce brands with the authenticity of Altoids. Recalling Snapple, Kotchka (2006) noted how Altoids brand authenticity would be destroyed by the ‘P&G effect’. First to go would be the Altoids tin. Tin is more expensive than plastic, is heavier (thereby increasing shipping costs), is old fashioned, and the unique moulded design is difficult and expensive to change in response to changing the trends. Second to go would be the high-quality paper inside the tin that protects mints from being damaged when the tin is shaken. Again, too many parts, too much expense, and paper would be unnecessary in a newly designed plastic container.

I’d recognize that picture anywhere — Max Schubert, legendary Australian winemaker and the inspiration behind one of the world’s greatest wines, Grange. What intrigued me more was the story. I’d just exited the arrivals hall at Melbourne airport and was waiting for a taxi. To my surprise there was a large billboard in front of me celebrating Schubert and Grange. The message was simple — ‘To those who do things for love, not money.’ Ironic, I thought. Penfold’s is now owned by conglomerate Fosters, a company that has long chastised the wine industry’s poor understanding of financial returns (and one at time of writing was delivering less than stellar returns itself due to poor wine sales). However, the message was a signal — Grange was being returned to its roots. After years of less than stellar wines and a commercially motivated brand extension, perhaps the marketing team behind this icon was recognizing why people paid over US$300 a bottle for this brand.

Ayn Rand’s classic 1943 [1994] novel The Fountainhead involves two characters of relevance to our discussion on authentic branding. The novel tells the stories of two friends and architects — Peter Keating and Howard Roark. In the first two-thirds of the novel, Keating rises to prominence, winning large commissions, fame, fortune, and a trophy wife. However, Keating’s success is an illusion — his buildings are mere copies of previous designs or those he stole and adapted from his friend Roark. His happiness is also an illusion — he gives up the love of his life twice (his painting and childhood sweetheart Katie), marries a woman who despises him, and knows in his heart he is a parasite. Rand originally titled her novel Second Hand Lives because Peter puts aside his own beliefs and desires and instead adapts to the views and demands of others.

Want to question someone’s sincerity? Just say their work or ideas are ‘focus-group tested’. Authentic brands never ask customers about innovations. After all what would they know? As one designer said, ‘How would customers know how to use an iPod if their only experiences were with CD players? If Apple had asked customers about an iPod prototype, customers would have wondered, “How do I load songs onto it? Where are my CD covers with the words on them? How will I know what songs are coming up?” They would’ve been bamboozled by the iPod, but now everyone can’t imagine life without one’ (Beverland and Farrelly 2007, p. 10). As academia’s best marketing writer puts it (referring to the decrease in spontaneity in the later Harry Potter books):

Most mainstream marketers, admittedly, will maintain that the customer is always right, that the sales figures speak for themselves, that the public gets what the public wants. This may be so, but it’s also true to say that the customer is always right wing — conservative, reactionary, stuck-in-the-mud — that sales figures don’t always speak the truth, and that the public shouldn’t always get what the public wants. (Brown 2007, pp. 189–90)

As Charles Morgan says, ‘customers always have a viewpoint, but they’re often wrong.

One can’t help but be entranced by Chateau Margaux. The estate grounds and signature building are simply stunning. The walk (or drive) down the tree-lined driveway is simply romantic. And the wine — well if you can get it, it’s to die for. The wine itself is a product of place — both of the area ‘Margaux’, the unique topography of the estate itself, and centuries of estate and Bordeaux winemaking tradition. The brand is much more than this. No discussion of wine history can be had without mentioning the wines of Bordeaux, the 1855 Bordeaux Classification (which gave Chateau Margaux Grand Cru status), the Grand Cru Estates (of which Margaux is one of just five), and the wines themselves. Quite simply, for wine lovers, it is impossible to imagine a wine world without Chateau Margaux given that the estate is so embedded in the shared history of the wine trade. Much of the authenticity of the brand comes from its connection to time, place, and culture.

Mention the name Gordon Ramsay to a group of people and you’re guaranteed to provoke an emotional response — there is no middle ground on Ramsay you either love or hate him. The major source of complaint relates to how Ramsay treats his staff — he swears, bullies, manhandles, throws things, fires/demotes them on the spot, denigrates their efforts, and demands nothing less than perfection. To those of us brought up in a politically correct environment where schools and universities focus on enhancing student’s self-esteem rather than providing honest feedback about performance, where harassment laws result in us tiptoeing around each other for fear of giving offence, and parents are encouraged to indulge children’s tantrums, Ramsay’s behaviour seems outrageous and even immoral. Except that is to his staff — Ramsay has retained 80 per cent of his staff over the past ten years.

Imagine having to live a lie. Every second of every day you would have to consciously be on your guard, ensuring you said the right thing, in the right way, all to present an image that isn’t true. The time spent, the emotional cost, and the likelihood of eventually getting caught means such a strategy is impractical (even the worse serial killers get found out, and they are often loners not burdened with regular social interaction) and frankly, undesirable. Intel found this out with their Pentium chip in 1994. The ‘floating point problem’ eventually cost the company US$500 million. Since denying there was a problem just made things worse, Andy Grove asked his management team, ‘what would we do if we walked out the door and came back to the problem without the baggage?’ The answer was to admit there was a problem, recall the chip, and move on (Jackson 1998). To their credit Intel did, and their subsequent success (the brand is rated as one of the world’s most valuable) has been attributed to their response to this problem and their Intel Inside campaign.