For years, 7-Up used "the uncola" as its advertising tagline. Many marketers apparently felt this was such a brilliant way to talk about a brand, they adapted it for their own purposes. As a result, 93% of brands today can proudly say they are "the unpositioned." But while 7-Up's strategy paid off for that brand—helping to differentiate it from the other big name competitors in the soda category, namely Coke and Pepsi, and generate awareness and, ultimately, sales—the unpositioning of brands has serious negative consequences

For instance, Advertising Age recently reported on "The Death of Beer," and described the factors contributing to beer's precipitous decline in share in the $50 billion alcoholic beverage market. "Following the lead of A-B's [Anheuser-Busch] powerhouse Bud Light, brewers served a steady stream of humorous ads where entertainment value frequently overshadowed any effort to build or differentiate brands." Adds Darrell Hursa, a managing partner at consultancy Liquid Intelligence, "There's nothing intriguing" in the category; "it's like water and soft drinks, and it's advertised like water and soft drinks." Now beer consumption is down, particularly among the coveted male 21-29 demographic group, and growth in beer volume is expected to increase at a paltry rate of .5% for the next five years—less than the .9% for all alcoholic beverages, 2% for spirits, and 3.5% for wine. Executives at the major beer manufacturers are likely echoing Rick Wagoner, CEO of GM, a company car buyers have universal asked for years to supply a meaning for its many brands: "If we had a chance to rerun the last five years, we probably would have done a little more thinking about making sure each product was distinctive and had a chance to be successful." Incidentally, GM's North American auto operations showed a loss of $1.2 billion for the second quarter.

Al Ries cited Hilton as another example of a brand with a serious unpositioning problem. When ask to describe what a Hilton is, according to Ries, a company marketing executive explained, "People can't necessarily articulate it. If we....give people an experience that says, 'Yes, I'm proud of what it says about me to stay here, it makes me feel good; I'm in charge if my stay.'" Neither Ries nor we can pinpoint exactly how this statement is any different than what Hyatt or Starwood is doing. A few months ago, Hilton initiated an advertising agency search, recently selecting Y&R, to help it "reenergize" the company's flagship Hilton brand. One executive familiar with the company explained Hilton is trying to fix several problems: "an old fashioned brand image, inconsistent products [i.e., the inequality of accommodations among its hotel groups], and not being as unique as trendier hotels."

Still, there are many in marketing today who don't believe a positioning is a necessary requirement for a successful brand. "Differentiation is besides the point," wrote Faith Popcorn in a Ad Age editorial late last year. More recently, in an article entitled "Simply Better," appearing in the summer edition of Marketing Research magazine, authors Patrick Barwise and Séan Meehan added more fuel to the unpositioning movement by directly challenging Jack Trout's monumental pronouncement that companies must, "differentiate or die." They begin their article acknowledging the growing similarity of brands, but maintain that, "consumers are increasingly resistant to marketers' attempts to differentiate their brands through advertising—and in most cases simply don't care." Therefore, instead of worrying about a unique selling propositions, Barwise and Meehan believe marketers should focus on delivering the basic needs a consumer has in a particular category "better or more conveniently than the competition."

We find this line of reasoning disturbing. What the authors are suggesting is the leading cause of brand similarity in the first place. A tragic and, today, all-too-common marketing mistake is to take an attribute or benefit buyers say is most important to them and turn it into a brand's positioning. Yet saying something is an important attribute isn't the same as saying you presently have a problem with it. Many of the characteristics buyers say are most important are often the basic needs and requirements of a product or service—what Barwise and Meehan wryly call the table stakes—and are, therefore, already addressed by every brand. They're the price of entry for doing business in a particular product or service segment.

"We taste even more refreshing!" or "Our bank statements are even more accurate!" may be simply better to Barwise and Meehan, but incremental, often imperceptible and subjective differences on attributes and benefits that consumers aren't currently bothered by, get a lukewarm market reaction—if they get one at all. Brand commoditization and advertising campaigns that return 54 cents for every dollar spent (the U.S. averages) are the inevitable result, as we've seen again and again.

"Powerful, long-lasting brands are built by owning a word in the mind," said Al Ries. In this day and age, to believe otherwise is a zero sigma notion.

Branding this, branding that.....everyone is talking about branding these days. Once the purview of consumer companies only, today it's harder to find a company that's not talking about branding than one that is, particularly in B2B circles. Following the lead of brand powerhouses like Caterpillar, GE, IBM, Intel, and 3M, B2B product and service firms—even industrial marketers of commodity products such as silicone and cement—are investing heavily in brand-building efforts. What shape do the efforts take? Have they had a positive impact on the bottom-line? We turned to B2B marketing communications guru Bob Lamons for insights into the recent explosion in B2B branding.

Bob, a long-time columnist for Marketing News magazine published by the American Marketing Association, has dedicated most of his 35-year career to improving the practice of B2B advertising and marketing, both as a client-side marcom manager and as an agency representative. He's a past chairman of the Business Marketing Association and has written the first-ever book on the subject of B2B branding, The Case for B2B Branding, due out in August.

Here's what he had to say:

Copernicus Mzine: It has taken centuries for most B2B marketers to embrace branding. Why are they turning to it now?

Lamons: Many of them moved into marketing from scientific or technical backgrounds. They truly believe that "features and benefits" are the things that drive customer buying decisions.

Just as consumer companies have discovered over time, features and benefits will get you in the game but, in most cases, they won't differentiate you from the pack. Customers are much too busy to perform an exhausting feature/benefit analysis of every supplier's offerings. As a matter of necessity, customers make decisions today as often with their hearts and they do with their heads. That means they go with choices they trust to do the job at hand.

Branding is about expectations. When people see or hear your name, what do they expect? Companies that have highly evolved brand images are clearly associated with one or several attributes that help customers understand what they can expect from that supplier. Caterpillar makes rugged, dependable products. Intel makes computers perform. IBM is now your "integrated solutions" source instead of the mainframe computer company.

To make the business case for B2B branding in my book, I included 21 case studies which demonstrate that the companies with strong brand images have doubled the market share of their next closest competitor.

Copernicus Mzine: What are the characteristics of an exceptional B2B brand?

Lamons: It's one that is simple enough that employees and customers can understand and accept it. The exceptional B2B brand generates an expectation that is, in effect, a brand promise that is sufficiently straightforward so that customers can hold the brand owner to that promise, and employees of the brand-owning company can understand what they have to do to deliver on that promise.

Some examples: BASF is the chemical company that helps make its customer's products better. Miller Electric helps welders do better welding jobs. SAS Institute gives you the power to make better business decisions. And UPS is moving from small package delivery to supply chain management experts.

Copernicus Mzine: We're in a new era of accountability and CEOs and CFOs in every business segment demand marketers demonstrate a return on marketing investment. What are the marketing metrics that seem to be the hot buttons among senior management at B2B firms?

Lamons: Well, stock price is the main one. When you can show brand values moving up and down the same as stock price, you have their full attention.

But CFOs, like all top managers, are strategic thinkers. If the company has targeted a new market segment as being important to its future, you'd be wise to track brand attributes in that segment. The more customers accept those attributes, the faster your penetration of that segment is likely to be.

Another metric that might be important is average sales per customer. If your branding program is aimed primarily at certain market segments, and you can show increased sales per customer in those segments, the financial people tend to get as excited as the marketing people.

Copernicus Mzine: So B2B marketers can show a return on investment for the branding dollars they spend?

Lamons: Yes. It's not easy, but we have to make an effort to show a return on all marketing dollars spent in today's economy—and that includes branding. If you work for a super large company that is listed in some of the annual brand value rankings, then a third party brand consultant will do at least part of your work for you. Most of us, unfortunately, don't live in that world.

In the book, I talk about a variety of brand valuation approaches, from home-grown and inexpensive all the way up to customized and very expensive. One thing that's important for small and mid-sized marketers to understand is that CFOs can and should be brought on-board with branding metrics. You should ask them what measurements are important and make sure you include those metrics in your tracking studies.

Copernicus Mzine: If you had the ear of every CEO in the world for five minutes, what would you say to them about B2B branding?

I would tell them three things. First, the CEO is the ultimate brand champion. It's not something that can be delegated. You have to make a place for it among your various CEO duties. One of the CEO's primary legacies will be the way the company is viewed by all its many publics. You just can't leave that to chance, or assign it to someone else in the company.

Secondly, I would tell CEOs to work on the "vision" thing so that it becomes a workable brand strategy. Most company executives want to be all things to all people. That just isn't possible. Customers can't and won't give you that much credit. B2B companies with powerful brand images are usually associated with only one or two attributes. The CEO should spend some serious time deciding what he or she would like that attribute to be.

And thirdly, I would encourage the CEO to insist on consistently fine execution. Don't cut corners. Don't start and stop the branding program to make short-term profit objectives. And don't let division managers strike out on their own in separate directions. It destroys or significantly undermines your ability to build a strong, focused brand image.

Bob Lamons wrote The Case for B2B Management: Pulling Away from the Business-to-Business Pack, published by Thomson Texere and the AMA Book Division, in response to the dearth of B2B branding examples available to the general public. "I was writing a column on branding about four years ago and realized none of the examples I had cited were B2B," Bob explained. "It has taken me more than three years to pull together twenty-one compelling case studies involving B2B marketers. But now, at least, we can say we have some good B2B examples of branding excellence." The book brings together examples many different industries and marketing situations, so, says Bob, "it will be very difficult for marketers to look at this body of evidence and not see at least part of it as being relevant to their situation." He can be reached at lamons@ads2biz.com.

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When Robert J. Coen, Universal McCann's famed industry forecaster, recently revised downward his estimate for advertising spending he, "added weight to an emerging consensus that the ad industry is heading into more difficult times, a result of both economic concerns and changing attitudes toward advertising," or so said The Wall Street Journal. He wasn't the first industry analyst to lower his/her prediction; Merrill Lynch's Lauren Rich Fine did the same and in her research note theorized that this year's reduction in spending is at least in part the result of "advertisers seeking more measurable and less expensive activities."

These forecasts are just the latest confirmations that the major paradigm shift that's all anyone in marketing can talk about these days—the move from traditional (television, radio, and print) to non-traditional, or alternative, media (events, sponsorships, mobile, internet, product placements...the list of options seems to grow daily)—is well underway. A comment by a former executive at TBWA Worldwide, now partner at self-described "creative agency" Anomaly, sums up the new marketing communications mentality that pervades the practice today: "Our last resort is an ad if we can't think of anything else."

Marketers are running from traditional media like a scalded dog from the fire specifically because of negative ROI news. Yet while the non-traditional world appears to have a bottomless arsenal of options for reaching, or in popular parlance, "touching" customers and prospects, they offer even less in terms of measurability and solid ROI data. To quote The Wall Street Journal, "As marketers start to toy with new media options, they also must contend with a new challenge: how to advertise on media outlets that reach a limited audience and lack reliable third-party audience measurement data." If CEOs and CFOs have anything to say about it, we don't expect marketers to remain in a state of blissful ignorance for long.

"There are those looking for the new media to be the saviors for advertising," explained Yanklovich Partners' J. Walker Smith in a New York Times interview recently, which means as marketers redirect more and more dollars into non-traditional, their performance expectations will only increase. Not being prepared with performance information and to do something about disappointing numbers when they start to roll in has seriously—and perhaps irreparably—damaged traditional advertising and, to a great extent, advertising agencies. Unfortunately, there's no indication that marketers and their agencies are armed and ready with tools and models to measure and fix non-traditional programs.

Mass media may be dead, as McDonald's CMO Larry Light eulogized; the traditional marketing model may be broken, as P&G's CMO Jim Stengel claimed; and any company not moving away from the :30 second advertising spot may be out of step, as Starwood's CEO Steve Heyer declared. But non-traditional media programs will soon engender the same sort of negative comments if nothing is done to report and ensure better ROI results.

For more insightful marketing discoveries, visit http://www.copernicusmarketing.com/discover/index.htm

Have a hot discovery for our next release? Contact us at info@copernicusmarketing.com

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We read Ram Charan's best-selling Execution from cover to cover and continue to recommend it, so we're reading his new book Profitable Growth with relish. We share his disdain for cost-cutting as the corporate cost-cutting and mergers and acquisition as the "growth" strategy of choice. "The balance has gone too far in the direction of cost-cutting at the expense of revenue growth. More thought and time have been given to tools like Six Sigma and actions like restructuring, achieving size through acquisition, and looking for opportunities to consolidate in an industry undergoing upheaval than to revenue growth," writes Charan.

As an alternative, Charan offers what he calls "building blocks" for profitable growth, including one of our favorites, "Beef up upstream marketing." He also offers suggestions for involving the whole organization in the growth process, an important executional point. We find it hard to believe anyone who reads this book will ever turn to cost-cutting as a first resort to boost profits again.

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There's an exciting conference coming up this Fall that every brand management professional should put on their calendar. Brand ManageCamp 2005 will take place November 1-3, 2005, at the Hyatt Regency at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, PA, and has an incredible line-up of speakers—all recognized and respected authorities in their areas of expertise.

Speakers including the father of positioning Jack Trout; retail and consumer trend expert Phil Lempert (who you may also recognize as the NBC Today Show's food trends editor); President and CEO of BBDO Worldwide Andrew Robertson; the mother of cause branding Carol Cone; and Copernicus' own Kevin Clancy will "deliver to you the relevant information and actionable insights you crave to become a stronger, more successful brand manager while helping you unlock the full potential of your brands."

We'd like to extend our brand-minded Mzine readers a special discount price of $1899—a $200 savings off the current early registration price and $600 off the full price of the conference—through the end of August. To receive your discount, enter the promotional code BMCSP648 in the "Promotion Code" box at the bottom of the online registration page at www.managecamp.com/register.php. This special offer expires August 31, 2005, so reserve your spot today at THE conference for anyone involved in brand management.

Also visit the Brand ManageCamp Blog for au courant musings from the speakers: www.managecamp.typepad.com.

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