Using brand names to enhance your brand reputation



Part of an email sent by Bang and Olufsen

There are a very few brands that are also such hallmarks of quality that they are presumed to be understood by customers all over the world.

For Bang and Olufsen's consumers in North America, Carnegie Hall is probably a pretty safe choice if you are talking about highly respected venue for live music. As one of the most storied concert halls in the world, the inclusion on Carnegie Hall in the English-language version of this email reflects the hall's place in musical history, and the respected place it has among music fans.

But it does raise the question; can you really fit all 2,804 seats of Carnegie Hall into a Mercedes Benz?

One problem with truncated fields in database forms

DVD Cover

Checkout receipt from the library's self-checkout terminal

Detail of checkout receipt

For some reason my daughter decided she had to borrow this DVD from the local library. Libraries use massive databases as their catalogues. These databases include information on everything from the author, publisher, and distributor to date of purchase, price paid, and cover art.

While the database fields can be pretty much any length, on some of the forms that library patrons use and see, the field length must be truncated. This can have some unfortunate results. This checkout receipt is one of the them.

I don't think that the cataloguers at the library really intended that this DVD be described as "Growing up with Hello Kitty 2, Hell". The "Hell" is just the truncated version of "Hello Kitty Learns To Share".

Depending on the field contents, the truncated version of the item description could have been more objectionable than just "Hell". But after being forced to view about 15 minutes of the DVD I think that "Hell" sums up the video's content pretty well. 

Perhaps it stands for "Off Track Betting"?

I was this on the side of a bin outside a home undergoing renovations. I immediately wondered what OTB stood for. Off Track Betting? Open to Buy? Over the Bars?

The company's name, OTB, means nothing to me. I looked on the firm's website and could not find any hint about ht the firm had ended up with OTB as its name. I guess that OTB might be the initials of the founders. But the name does not really say anything to me as a potential customer. I wonder why OTB has hung onto the name?

Is it hurting the firm's business? Probably not, but I can't see it helping very much either.

Why is this not in English?

Glysomed poster in bus shelter on Marine Drive in West Vancouver, British Columbia

I actually don't have a problem with multi-cultural advertising. If you are selling cricket bats in Surrey British Columbia, then Punjabi is probably a good choice, or if selling moon cakes in Richmond, British Columbia then Mandarin might be a good choice.

But this is an advertisement for a hand cream at a bus shelter in West Vancouver, and it has been up for weeks.

So, is this language appropriate for the consumers in West Vancouver? 70% of West Vancouver residents claim English as their mother tongue, and over 80% speak English at home. The hand cream also originated in Europe.

Either putting this up in West Vancouver was a mistake by the billboard company, or for some reason someone at the advertising agency thinks this choice of language is correct.

Either way, I can't see anyone at Glysomed being happy with the situation. The reality is that they probably don't know. And if the client has no idea what is happening with their media buy, it is not a good sign.

A campaign that lives up to its concept

IKEA poster in the City Centre Skytrain Station, Vancouver



The IKEA promo team in downtown Vancouver

I saw these guys, and the members of the team were all male, in downtown Vancouver on Monday, April 23rd. In Vancouver one of the most popular places to market anything is on the corner of Granville and Georgia. Right outside a busy skytrain station. outside the biggest downtown shopping centre and right next to the two flagship department store locations, there is a ton of foot traffic.In addition to stunts like this, it is also a very popular place for product launches (Fiat 500) and product sampling.

On April 25th, IKEA opened a new store in Richmond. Part of the campaign was "Everyone is a coupon" The start of the campaign was the posters in the Skytrain stations and on bus shelters. This was follow up by the walking coupons.

I think that this a great connection to the poster campaign. They certainly got a lot of attention from passers by and lots of people took their photos.

But did i go to the store opening to use myself as a couple and get a great deal? What are you, nuts? Go to the new IKEA on opening day? It will be a mad house. Is there any discount in the world that is worth that chaos and mayhem? Well, for lots of people obviously, but I just could not face the ordeal. I'll check it out in a coupe of weeks, when things settle down.

I've even worked out a route to take my daughter there by bicycle that avoids all of the main streets. She wants to go for a hot dog and ice cream. And who am I to resist the entreaties of a four-year old?.

Luckily the two world's don't overlap very much

Yesterday I saw this graffiti on the side of the Sears store in downtown Vancouver, and this morning I received an email about the "Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement" webinar.

Luckily for Kony Solutions, the organization behind the webinar,not many people on their email distribution list saw the graffiti. But, as I mentioned before, the first time I saw an email form Kony Solutions, I thought of the Kony 2012/Joseph Kony campaign.

But luckily for Kony Solutions, the two world's (Kony Solutions and Kony2012) don't have much overlap. But if Kony 2012 gets more publicity I can see the common name becoming increasingly troublesome for Kony Solutions. Will it force a name change? I'll keep an eye on things and see what develops.

Just when they had my hopes up

This morning I saw a headline on Mediapost.com and clicked through. The headline was, "Cricket Targets National Audience".

I thought that was a bit optimistic, the sport of cricket trying to break though in the US. But once I read the story I discovered that Cricket is a mobile phone company and the firm was planning to make its mobile telephones available though more than 1,500 Target stores across the US.

I sure that very few people were confused, so it is not really a big problem for the firm. But I'm sure that a few people in the US would like to see some cricket matches.

What does this mean?

I know what an excavator is, but I have no idea about their sizing. (And a quick Google search didn't yield a conclusive answer.)

But that may not be a problem for the person offering the "Excavator Service". They are probably selling their services as a subcontractor to larger firms in the construction trade. That is one of the issues of B2B marketing. Quite often the people in a specialized industry use jargon that might as well be  foreign language to outsiders.

And that is what I am, an outsider, so there is no need for me to know what what "Size 60 Machine" means. But still, I am a bit curious.

Sorry, we only have one blueberry

I love wacky English on signs. According to this sign, the Farmers Market (Don't get me started on the missing apostrophe.) only has one blueberry on sale. This could mean that there is only one blueberry available at the sale price and the rest are regular price.

The thing about this that is most disappointing is that this sign is in Richmond, British Columbia. I'm used to weird English on signs in places where English is the second or third language. (When I was visiting factories in Korea in 1988 I saw a sign in a shop that proudly proclaimed, "You want it? We had it!")

I guess the owners of the market hope that their potential customers will make allowances and assume that poor English means better prices.

Or does Yellow = Sucralose

In an earlier post I wrote about yellow and cancer, particularly the Canadian Cancer Society's use of yellow and the daffodil. But I've also written about the use of yellow in the artificial sweetener market.

Yellow is the colour that is used on Splenda (sucralose) packaging, but it is also the colour used by Sugar Twin for its sodium cyclamate sweetener.

Not surprisingly Costco, selling under its Kirkland private label, is using yellow for its sucralose sweetener.

So, it looks like in artificial sweeteners colour sweepstakes, yellow division, the score is sucralose 2, sodium cyclamate 1. I'll keep an eye out for late results.

Yellow = Cancer

Yellow has some strong associations. In cycling it is the colour of the leader's jersey in the Tour de France. In power tools consumers associate it with DeWalt. It is also the colour used by the DHL courier, and the now bankrupt Kodak.

When it comes to diseases, people link yellow with cancer.

From the millions of silicone rubber "Livestrong" wristbands sold by Lance Armstrong's Livestrong Foundation, to the Canadian Cancer Society's long-term connection with daffodils, yellow is the colour that people in North America associate with cancer.

This association is an enormous benefit when it comes to both awareness and fundraising. And if you think back to the AATPRP model (Awareness-Attitude-Trial-Purchase-Repeat Purchase), the connection that people make between yellow and cancer must make the Canadian Cancer Society's job of building awareness much easier.

And awareness is the first step on the road to fund raising.

Does it help if no one know who owns it?

The Pattison Group is the third-largest private company on Canada. In 1985 it purchased Ripley.

Now those two facts are only interesting if you notice the name at the bottom left of the Ripley billboard in the photo above. Yes, the owner of the billboard is advertising its own products on the billboard. But since most people don't know of the connection between Pattison and Ripley they would assume that this was a real advertisement from an outside party, not a deal between related parties.

So, who benefits? The customers of billboard companies buy space for a specific period of time,. When that period of time is up the advertisement is replaced by that of another advertiser. But if there is no new customer many billboard companies just leave the old advertisement up. (Hence the out of date Purdy's Easter advertisement that I wrote about in the previous post.)

But I'm increasingly seeing Ripley ads on Pattison billboards. Why? Ripley, a Pattison subsidiary, gets the publicity and Pattison does not have to give free advertising to existing customers. Smart move all round.

Easter is over, so why is the billboard still up?

Easter is an odd religious celebration. Odd because the dates move around quite a bit. At the Council of Nicea in 325 the date was established as the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox. As a result it can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25.

In 2012, Easter Sunday was April 8th as the billboard above notes. Now that is not all that remarkable, but I took this photo on April 17th.

Why was this billboard still up a week and half after Easter? There could be a couple of reasons.

1. The client, Purdy's may have purchased the placement for the period after Easter.
2. The billboard company, Pattison, has not sold the billboard space for the subsequent block of time.

Either situation does not make much sense. The benefit for Purdy's, given the products they are promoting on the billboard, pretty much ends on April 8th. And for Pattison, the fact that old billboards are still up tells me that they have not sold all of their available space. If I'm a media buyer and I see this billboard up it tells me that I can negotiate a better price because Pattison has some excess inventory available.

I have found one method that Pattison uses to mitigate this problem. Quite logical and one that will be the subject of a subsequent post.

Green means go! (Or rather stop, but only for 5 minutes)

I saw this sign at the Broadway and Cambie SkyTrain (Vancouver) station yesterday. I'm interested in colour and how marketers can use colour as a branding device. In the traffic world there are well-established meanings of various colours. (As any small child will tell you, "green means go".)

You more frequently see red on parking signs as a warning to drivers not to infringe on the rules and run the risk of getting towed. But here green is used to indicate that a certain course of action, parking for up to five minutes, is permitted.

Of course this makes perfect sense and by itself does not really call for any comment from me. But the use of green is in contrast with how it was used on the golf prohibition sign that I wrote about previously.

And while the two signs were not put up by the same municipal department, there are somewhat related. So why can't they use colour more consistently? Maybe the golfers never take the SkyTrain.

So, you were good 9 years ago! Who cares?

I saw this sticker in the window of a women's wear store yesterday. While getting a recommendation from the editors of Vancouver Fashion magazine was probably a great thing in 2003. But it is now 9 years later and frankly who cares?

If the store had received the editors' recommendation every year since 2003 than having the 2003 sticker on the window might make sense. But as a one-off, a sticker from 2003 just tells me that the store might have been really good at one time, but since then it has not managed maintain those standards.

My recommendation? Either do what it takes to get on the list again, or pull the sticker off the window.

Promotion with an illegal act

In virtually all North American jurisdictions the double yellow line means do not cross. It is generally painted on the road in places where it is unsafe to pass. The visibility is limited and crossing the line is dangerous.

During bicycle races and tours, riders are generally given strict instructions to to cross the yellow line as this will lead to disqualification.

So why would this publication use a photograph showing riders crossing the double yellow line on its cover. Yes, it is a lovely photo, but what message does it send to riders about their need to abide by the rules. If the photograph showed a huge pack of riders who were having to ride four or five abreast to deal with the traffic it might be a bit more understandable. But these people have lots of space.

Of course there is a possibility that the riders just don't know the rules. But given that the vast majority of adult cyclists have driving licenses, at some point they must have had to learn the rules of the road.

It was probably safe for these riders, but it sure sends the wrong message; to everyone, cyclists and motorists alike.

Metric or Imperial? (Revisited) (Again)

I can remember a time when product reviewers would stick to one measurement system. If the backpack volume was measures in cubic inches, the weight of the backpack was measured in pounds and ounces.

That sort of consistency seems to have flown out of the window with Boulder, Colorado-based Skiing magazine measuring backpack weights in ounces and backpack volumes in liters/litres.

Will the US ever go fully metric? It is slowly creeping in. I'd give it another 20- years or so.

Can you identify the brand and model?

I saw this ad on an eMail that I get from Mediapost.com. Interesting that the car shown front-on is completely generic, while the car shown side-on is obviously a Volkswagen Beetle.

There are very few products that are immediately identifiable, especially from the meagre visual cue of a cartoon silhouette. In far too many categories you could change the brand name on the front and 99% of customers would not notice.

And if they don't recognize, and reach for, your product, are they really your customer?

What makes this a Business-to-Business advertisement?

I found this advertisement on the back cover of BC Home magazine, a trade publication for home builders in British Columbia.

When I teach marketing I usually have students asking about Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing. Most of them have had very little exposure to B2B marketing. And there is a good reason for that. Consumers, like my students, are not the target for B2B marketing, so marketers should not waste their money placing those advertisements where Business-to-Consumer (B2C) customers will see them.

Another big difference between B2B and B2C advertising is that B2B advertising talks about value and long-term costs much more than B2C advertising. And that is one reason why consumers are flocking to dollar stores and buying, as my brother-in-low describes it, "cheap crap made in China". Low acquisition cost, but much more frequent replacement. So, higher overall per-use costs.

How many times have I mentioned, "penny wise and pound foolish"?

Who cares if it is "new and improved"?

When the cap of your bottle of glue clogs, sometime the only way to get glue out is to either disassemble the cap or take the whole lid off. Disassembling the cap if effective, but a one-time solution. Taking the cap off makes dispensing the glue more difficult.

I saw this ad in the April 2012 issue of Popular Science. I thought that an "Anti-Clog Cap" would seem to be a great idea. This is an easy improvement to sell to customers. Virtually every customer has had the experience of a clogged cap on a bottle of glue and would appreciate the improvement.

As a sometime user of wood glue, this design looks like a logical improvement of the existing designs. I've never purchase Gorilla Glue before, but this new cap design might be enough to get me to try it.

As I've mentioned before, when marketers communicate with customers, and prospective customers, they have a linked sets of goals. They are trying to move the customers along the action continuum; Awareness-Attitude-Trial-Purchase-Repeat Purchase. This ad deals with the first two steps; Awareness and Attitude. While I was familiar with the brand before, I can see the advantages of the "Anti-Clog Cap". While Gorilla Glue may be a more expensive than other brands, the cap should reduce wastage, which will drive down the cost per use.

And while the B2C customer is generally not as concerned with the total cost of ownership as the B2B customer, the B2C customer should be.

"The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten." Benjamin Franklin

Cheap and single-use may be attractive in the short term, but very often turns out to be more expensive in the long term. The challenge is to get customers to think about the long-term.

In the sweetener market yellow may mean sucralose, or perhaps sodium cyclamate

Colour is a key part of branding for many organizations but if you use the same colour as your competition then your customers are likely to get confused about which product is which.

So, both SugarTwin (sodium cyclamate) and Splenda (Sucralose) are using this rather fetching yellow for their single-serve packaging.

As I don't use either products it makes not difference to me, but I'm sure that lots of consumers have got confused. And for a marketer, confused customers are never a good thing.

Red means enter?

This is the entry to a grocery store near me.

This entry is the primary way into the store. (You can sneak in through the cash register lines, but that is obviously not what the owner intends.)

But this sticker on the gate seems intended to confuse the customers. In North America, red is pretty much universally used as a warning, so why would Brascon, the Entech gate manufacturer, make the background colour for the "Enter" sign red? Red is most commonly used to inform used not to enter, or that they are going the wrong way.

Proper use of colour can have a HUGE affect on the customer's experience. The problem is that far too few manufacturers pay enough attention to how they use colour.

What colour is sweet?

I picked up these four packages at a local coffee shop. I am not an artificial sweetener user, but I am intrigued by the use of colour as a branding tool.

Equal (yellow) is filled with aspartame, Splenda (blue) is filled with sucralose, Sweet'n Low (pink) is filled with sodium cyclamate, and Sugar is filled with, well, sugar.

I am going to keep looking at packages of artificial sweeteners to see if there is some standardization between the chemical and the colour.

Luckily it was released on the 13th

Yesterday, I saw this back-lit sign on a DVDPlay dispenser at my local Safeway.

I have two problems with this sign. The first problem is that the sign is promoting a film that was released four months earlier. Not really a current release that is likely to attract a lot of attention from prospective customers.

The other problem is that the date is listed at "12-13", which must mean December 13th. But if the movie had been released a week earlier the date would have been listed at "12-6" which could mean either December 6th, or June 12th.

But the biggest problem with the DVDPlay machines has nothing to do with the date. In all of the hundreds of times that I've been to this Safeway, I've never seen anyone using the machine. Might explain why the movies are a bit out of date.

Another problem with metric measurement in Canada

I was just looking at this real estate listing for a rather nice house. When I looked at the room measurements I noticed a really neat trick. On a lot that is 24'11" wide the master bedroom is 32'10" by 46'7". Perhaps someone has a Tardis hidden behind that front door?

Of course there is logical explanation. When the room sizes were being entered someone used metric for some room and imperial for others, and this room is actually 10.033 feet by 14.1986 feet. (Which sounds a much more likely size for a bedroom in a house that is less than 25 feet wide.)

But no one noticed and potential customers are confused. And the realtor either does not check his listings, or just can't be bothered to change it.

And, as I've said before, it does beg a rather serious question. If the agent is sloppy about this, where else are they not paying enough attention?

But it is only a million dollar home. What could possibly go wrong? And how much could it cost to fix it? You start writing the cheque and I'll tell to when to stop putting on the zeros.

How do you measure? Metric, imperial, or both?

I saw this notice last week and was a bit puzzled.

In theory Canada has adopted metric measurement. In some areas, road distances and temperature, metric units are used consistently.

But this notice is an example of one of the things that is wrong with metric in Canada. Some things are regularly in metric, other are imperial, and some are in both. In most grocery stores the fruits and vegetables are marked with the price per kilogram and pound.

Australia changed to metric about the same time as Canada, but made a clean break. This made the transition much easier. But Canada is blessed/cursed bu its proximity to the United States. And for virtually all consumer products the units of measurement still imperial. (Think Quarter Pounder etc.)

I do find it ironic that there are few areas where metric measurements has entered the popular domain. One of this is the 2-litre softdrink bottle. But apples are still sold by the pound.

Does red means you can't do it? Or does green mean you can't do it?

I saw these two signs, on the same pole, in a Vancouver park today. Normally the colour red is used to indicate danger or to tell people that some activity or practice is prohibited. And as I tell my four-year old, "green means go".

Using the colour red on the park closure sign makes perfect sense. So why would the parks department use green on the sign to tell people that golfing is not permitted? It goes against every convention is colour usage in North America. And if you don't read English it is quite conceivable that you could think that golf is permitted in the park.

But everyone in Vancouver reads English, don't they?

You've got to look for the details (Or, we're not lying to you, you're just not paying attention to the truth)

BC Hydro, the public utility that provides electricity in British Columbia, is in the midst of installing "smart meters" all over the province. Many people have expressed concerns about the EM (electro-magnetic) radiation from the wireless meters, and about the potential loss of privacy inherent in the data collection and transmission process.

Another common concern is about the affect that BC Hydro spending hundreds of millions on "smart meters" will have on customer's electricity rates.

But in a brochure delivered to homes where a "smart meter" has been installed, BC Hydro seeks to allay the fears.

"Customers will not see a line item on their bill for their smart meter." Does that mean that you will not be paying extra? Most likely you will be paying extra, you just won't see it as a line item. The cost will be buried in operating costs for the utility and you'll likely see it in higher charges, but just not as a separate line item.

You really need to pay close attention to the subtle English used here. Otherwise you might think that the cost of the "smart meters" will not be passed on to customers. And on what planet are higher costs not passed on to customers? Certainly not Earth.

How big is your child?

If you are a parent in North America, then Tylenol is probably a mainstay in your medicine cabinet. And if you are dispensing Tylenol to your child you need to pay attention to the dosage chart.

No longer can you just calculate the dosage based on your child's age. The "Single Oral Dose" chart lists the child's weight first, rather than their age. But the interesting thing for me is that according to the chart children are getting fatter. My daughter is four, but according to the chart she weighs less than the top limit for a 2-3 year old. While she is not the tallest child in her pre-school class, she is far from the shortest.

But some of the children in her class weigh as much as the 6-8 year olds on the chart. Are children getting fatter, or taller? From my totally unscientific survey, I think it is a bit of both. But the diabetes statistics, and McDonald's share price, tell me that kids are eating more junk and putting on more weight.

Will Tylenol have to adjust this chart again some time soon? Probably. But it makes me wonder what the chart looks like in markets outside North America.

No honest, we maintain everything else really well

When I was in the "rag trade" (wholesale garment business) there were a couple of lines that we told to our customers. If the samples were a bit lacking in quality the story was, "It's only a sample, production will be much better". If, on the other hand, the samples were great we'd tell the retailers that, "Production will be just as good".

I don't know how many of the retailers bought these stories. The reality was that the samples were usually a pretty good indicator of the quality of the finished goods.

Lots of other businesses also "telegraph" their quality to customers and prospective customers. Movie studios use the trailer, which can either be a teaser to get you to come and see the movie, or give away the entire plot and include the best scenes and all of the good jokes.

For retailers, a sign outside their premises tell the public what to expect inside. But what if the sign is just about falling over and obviously in need of maintenance.

Earlier this week I saw this sign in front of a Jugo Juice location in downtown Vancouver. The obvious lean on the sign does not give me a lot of confidence about the level of quality in the shop. Will it stop from being a customer? Well, no. I am not really a juice shop sort of guy. But it may affect other people. (And yes, I did look at the sign holder and the angle is not a funky design, the base of the sign holder is coming loose.)

These days can any retailer really afford to send a negative message to their prospective customers? Not if they want to stay a retailer, and not end up as a statistic.