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January 16, 2006

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Guerrilla PR Tough Truth:

"Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation."

Charles Evans Hughes

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"Someone who has completely lost his way in a forest, but strives with uncommon energy to get out of it in whatever direction, sometimes discovers a new, unknown way: this is how geniuses come into being, who are then praised for their originality."

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Recommendation

Refining Your Brands Personality
by Michael Levine

Remember, that doesn't mean we're going to ask people what they want us to be. We're going to find out what people want and then emphasize those aspects of our brand's personality. In order to appeal to the target audience, we will find it necessary to specify the target audience's expectations so that we can then exceed them. This process will entail market research.

Focus groups, surveys, questionnaires, and polls have taken on something of a negative quality among the public, but they are still very useful tools in determining the mood of a targeted population. They are also very helpful in identifying that population.

For Ultimate Treat, our goal is to enter the supermarket ice cream market and eventually to dominate that market's super-premium sub-section. Our efforts will be centered around the three basic flavors-chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry----that are the most popular, and the simplest, available on the market. And in order to avoid being a "me-too" product in an area already dominated by another brand, we will not try to emulate the high-end elegant appeal of Haagen-Dazs or the retro-hippie fun approach of Ben & Jerry's. Our aim is to carve out a new niche, perhaps drawing a bit on each of those market areas, but targeted at a broader range of consumers who might have some nostalgia for bygone days of ice cream cones and want to re-experience that feeling or pass it on to their children.

But our assumption that such an audience segment exists is, at this moment strictly a gut feeling. If we find that people really don't long for a high-quality chocolate cone at the end of a hot summer day, we will have wasted millions of dollars on a premise that could have been revised with a comparatively small outlay of funds, effort, and time.

Therefore, market research personnel should be involved as early in the process as possible, according to Grace Ascolese, president of the Arlington, Virginia-based market research firm Ascolese Associates.

"I would argue as a researcher that [research should be involved] at the very beginning so you don't develop something and then have to retrofit it," she says. "You get to the point where you have a car, and all you do is throw in twenty-somethings drinking latte inside, and that's your Branding. Branding should be organic to the product so you can build it in and develop a sense of 'This is who I am,' if you keep it broad enough."

Having worked with brands ranging from Nickelodeon to AOL/Time Warner, Ascolese understands the power of Branding, but she also knows that research can make Branding more powerful if it's done properly. She does not advocate creating a product based simply on the test scores from research documents, but she does say paying close attention to what the public wants can help make any brand a household name.

According to Duane E. Knapp, author of The Brand Mindset, "most companies don't know what they are in the consumer's mind. Very few brands get to be genuine because very few companies know that's what they want to be. You have to understand, and you have to have a promise, and that promise has to be unique. Webster's definition of brand says it has to be distinctive; it can't be like anybody else's. The only attribute of brand name in the dictionary is "well-known."' It has to be a promise that the customer cares about. It can't be a promise that a bunch of people made tip over a good glass of Chardonnay like a lot of the tech companies did. 'We're going to have the biggest, most powerful network in the world.' Who cares about that? What I care about is that I want to pick up my phone and hear the other person without static."

In the case of Ultimate Treat, if we hire a market research firm like Ascolese Associates, we'll need to ask a number of questions. In order to determine if our product has been designed properly, we'll need to find out if people want a super-premium ice cream in the three basic flavors. If they do, we'll have to begin our work on the brand's identity: In other words, will consumers respond to the nostalgic but playful image we've determined the product should have? If that, too, turns out to be the case, we'll test the name Ultimate Treat versus some others to see which one the public responds to most positively and why.

The why becomes important when we consider the many reasons people might have for answering affirmatively on a form. In some cases, people respond to the first suggestion they're given more strongly than they will to subsequent suggestions. Others will have a negative reaction to either of the words in our brand name, or might have a particular image that resonates for them in one of the other choices. Names can be difficult, and sometimes they are decided less on research data and more on a gut feeling, if the data are not overwhelming.

A focus group, then, will be the place for us to start exposing our brand and its identity to the public. This is a small cross section of the public at large: Focus groups include about 8 to 10 people. They are either recruited in a common place, like a shopping mall, or through pre-mailed questionnaires. Participants are paid a fee (usually $50 to $75 for consumers). Some professional focus groups are held within industries, and pr ofessionals are usually paid as much as $175 to participate, depending on their seniority and position within the company. Research firms keep lists of those who have participated before, and can sometimes put together a group based on income, gender, or other considerations, depending on the product and the type of audience the brand is trying to attract.

Sometimes the focus group is presented with the product itself. Other times, the idea, the name, or the concept of the product can be suggested. The questions are designed so that they are rarely answered with "yes" or 11 no." The group leader (the moderator who represents the product involved) makes sure to ask questions that begin with how or why, to get the group members to talk, expand on their opinions, and start discussions.

Market research done for a consumer product is not all that different than the same research done to gather data about an entertainment personality, a political candidate, or a television program. The questions are often about likes and dislikes; the choices are often between titles or names of products, advertising copy, images, and logos. And every scrap of information collected in the process can easily be ignored by marketing executives if they feel strongly enough about something else. It's not an exact science.

For example, "A friend of mine used to do movie positioning and was testing these titles," Grace Ascolese says. "There were two titles-Flashdance, and Pittsburgh Ballerina-and Pittsburgh Ballerina won. But whoever was in charge said, 'I'm not going to call this movie Pittsburgh Ballerina,' and so it was Flashdance."

When I was helping to establish the Michael J. Fox brand at the time of Family Ties, the network had done testing, and one of the things that had been suggested was to recast the role of Alex P. Keaton. But Gary David Goldberg, who created the program, refused to do so, and a major television and (eventually) movie star was born.

Sometimes, the right thing to do is to go with your gut.

A good deal of excellent, helpful information can be gained from market research, and quite often it can help conceive, establish, and maintain a very successful brand. While marketers have to be wary of the obvious trap-the urge to become whatever the public wants, merely to be accepted-market research information can warn them of possible missteps before they are taken, and can save huge sums of money spent on misguided campaigns.

However, one focus group or even one market research study will not be enough to launch a successful brand. In many cases, entrepreneurs t rying to establish their product and brand identity will find market research too expensive and will have to bypass such activities for the alternative, which is merely to trust their initial instincts and hope they are right. Later, when brand extension or maintenance is the goal, market research might be a very useful tool.

In the case of Ultimate Treat, some basic assumptions will have to be made. First, our imaginary market researchers will have the task of determining if there is a market for the product as it has been envisioned. Our funding should be substantial, but not unlimited. We'll have to make sure the research that is done is done efficiently and is to the point. So, with these criteria in mind, how would a researcher answer the first question: Is there a market for Ultimate Treat?

The members of the first focus group, recruited from previous groups dealing with supermarket-based grocery products, would be asked to describe their most indulgent dessert treat. After a round of conversation that might include such candidates as crème brülée or crepes suzette, the field can be narrowed. With Americans leading the world in ice cream consumption, it's a pretty sure wager that once the topic is brought up, a relatively quick consensus on ice cream can open the discussion to more specific concerns.

When the focus group has concluded that ice cream is a fine dessert, it will be possible to narrow the focus to what the group considers a good ice cream, and what it desires from an ice cream dessert.

Our research should have begun long before the focus group convenes, however. In order to know which questions to ask, it is essential to have the facts on the current state of the ice cream market. For that, we can find much of what we need on the Internet.

For example, the data on annual ice cream consumption in the United States as opposed to other countries comes from the URL www.tigerx.com/trivia/icecream.htm. (Second in ice cream consumption is New Zealand, by the way, and the results are not statistically guaranteed.)

More brand-specific (and more reliable) information can be found at a Web site for the University of Guelph in Canada (www.foodscl.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu).

That site, with far more academic and scientific data, reveals that the United States is (or, at least, was in the year 2000) far and away the leading producer of ice cream, but only the second leading consumer of the product per capita.

(That fact will be significant.) New Zealanders eat 26.3 liters of ice cream each per year, according to the data, but the United States, with a much larger population, comes in second at 22.5 liters.

China is the second-largest producer, followed by Canada, Italy, Australia, France, and Germa ny. After New Zealand and the United States, residents of Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and Sweden eat the most ice cream per person. When we expand our business globally, these numbers will factor into our expansion plans.

From other data available on the Guelph University site, we can determine that in 1999, vanilla was easily the most popular ice cream flavor, accounting for 29.3 percent of all ice cream sold by volume. Chocolate was second at 12.2 percent, but strawberry, at 3.4 percent, came in only eighth. Does this indicate a flaw in our thinking? Should we reconsider our inclusion of strawberry in the three basic flavors that will form Ultimate Treat's product line?

Not necessarily. First, the university's research is a few years old, but we can assume that consumption patterns have not shifted drastically since 1999. In addition, upon closer examination, the third-place flavor listed in the research is not one flavor but many. "Nut flavors" came in third, accounting for 11. 1 percent of ice cream sold. That umbrella can include such wildly varied flavors as butter pecan, almond, and pistachio. Fourth was Neapolitan, a specialty flavor, and fifth was a category called "cookies and bakery," which doesn't apply to our product. After that come two other "combination" categories: fruit flavors except strawberry, and candy flavors. So strawberry really does come in third when dealing with single flavor categories.

Still, does the large drop, from 12.2 percent to 3.4 percent of all ice cream sold, mean we should reconsider strawberry's inclusion in the line? Perhaps that's something our focus group can help to clarify.

Other questions we will broach include public acceptance of the brand name Ultimate Treat and a clear direction in terms of the brand identity. If we discover that the public is repulsed by the idea of a nostalgic, playful childhood treat, that consumers prefer ice cream to be either goofy (Ben & Jerry's), stately (Haagen-Dazs), or generic (Breyer's, Edy's), we might have to rethink our entire brand identity or make a much tougher decision-one that would mean ignoring the research and going with our initial impulse.

That is a much riskier response, and one that can cause tumultuous reaction through company ranks, even if it ultimately proves to be the right choice.

The U.S. Business Reporter (www.activemedia-guide.com/icecream.htm) offers startli ng insight into the ice cream market we are about to invade. While Ben & Jerry's or Haagen-Dazs may have the most visible names (and, the uninitiated would say, the most famous brands) on the market, they are by far not the leaders in market share. Breyer's sells the most ice cream in the United States.

In 2000, the company's market share stood at 12.0 percent, followed by Dreyer's (Edy's on the East Coast) at 10.0 percent, Blue Bell at 5.6 percent, and then Haagen-Dazs at 4.5 percent and Ben & Jerry's at 3.7 percent. Brands like Well's Blue, Turkey Hill, Dreyer's/Edy's Light, and Healthy Choice round out the top brands.

This throws some of our assumptions about the market into turmoil, but reinforces others. Notice, for example, that the biggest brand in the ice cream market holds only a 12 percent share of the marketplace. There is no one huge, dominant brand here, no Coca-Cola or Disney to dethrone even Ben & Jerry's with its brilliant Branding does not dominate the field. This is largely because, until recently, it has been very difficult to establish a national brand of ice cream. Transportation of the product was slow and expensive, and this was a product that required very specific conditions to be transported properly.

In the past decade or so, that has changed. With manufacturing plants set up nationwide (and even worldwide), it has become possible to create and maintain a truly universal brand of ice cream, which is how Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's managed to grow from regional businesses into larger, more global corporations.

Internet sales have made it possible for a small company like Lappert's to sell ice cream from its home in Hawaii (the idea is that local, fresh ingredients like pineapple and coconut are used in the product) to points anywhere on the globe for a relatively hefty shipping fee. The market is primed for a dominant brand, but none has emerged. It might very well be time for Ultimate Treat.

Our initial focus group, which is now discussing the merits of ice cream and the types of feelings and memories it evokes, can help us determine a direction for our brand identity. While we have hired a market research firm to conduct the focus group, the data it reports following the group session will definitely address our initial assumptions, as well as concerns we might have taken for granted.

Grace Ascolese explains the focus group process further: "The moderator guides the conversation from a very loose guide. Questions are open-ended; not too many yesses and nos. Usually clients are in a back room behind a two-way mirror. Groups are taped (audio and usually video).

Follow-ups depend on the research objectives. If testing creative work (advertising copy, footage of TV personalities, posters, etc.), sometimes qualitative research is all that's needed. Often it's used as a preliminary step to a quantitative project. In these cases, groups are used to explore the range of responses and questions as well as to refine the questionnaire that will be used to measure consumer reaction."

That questionnaire is a next step. Consumers are called on the phone either at random or from a list purchased by the research firm, based on specific demographics or previous willingness to participate in a survey. Once the consumer agrees to participate, very specific questions-in our case, about ice cream, nostalgia, flavors, and brand names, among many other topics-are asked in a multiple choice format, in order to best qualify the answers when assessing the data.

Questions on our form could include: "Ice cream reminds me of- (a) summer evenings; (b) carnivals; (c) salespeople in trucks; (d) childhood treats." Answers of (a) or (d) might support our proposed brand identity, whereas (b) could mean something other than supermarket-style ice cream and (c) definitely refers more to ice cream novelties rather than scoops, something we are not marketing at the moment.

In other words, if our final report from our market research firm indicates a 30 percent response to answers (a) or (d), we might have to seriously consider reinventing our brand identity, or at the very least revising it. If we get 60 percent or better from those two responses, we can safely assume we are on the right track.

Another question might be: "I consider ice cream: (a) a rich reward; (b) the ultimate treat; (c) just the best or (d) sweet revenge." While this question does not directly address the name of an ice cream product, it is exactly that issue we are trying to gauge here. Because it deals with the consumer's feelings about ice cream, the question can help tap into emotions that will strike a chord with consumers in the name of a product. Should we find that answers to (b) are disappointing, or that one of the other choices is especially strong, our name might have to change.

Various questions on the form will address the issues of nostalgia, what associations the consumer might make between ice cream and fun, whether children or young adults would respond to the playful nostalgia we intend to convey, and whether the absence of wild, unconventional flavors would help or hurt a new brand trying to enter the supermarket ice cream marketplace.

"Groups are great for questions like: How? Why?" Ascolese says.

"The preferences should be on creative, in-depth responses. You don't quantify the number of consumers who will choose a product. That's in a follow-up phase." In other words, it's the consumer's impressions, the feelings and emotions associated with the product, that are examined in a focus group, while more quantitative work, with real Percentages and hard numbers attached, will be found in the follow-up telephone questionnaires and responses.

Group polls are one indicator of how a brand is being accepted (or rejected) by the general public. Public relations is more a science and an art of influencing the public to accept a brand, and uses polls as a guideline but never a law.

My work in public relations has led me to create a concept I explained in Guerrilla P.R., called the Tiffany Theory, which has been taught in the 25 top business schools. The Tiffany Theory states that a gift delivered in a box from Tiffany's will have a higher perceived value than on e in no box or a plain box. That's not because the recipient is a fool; it's because in our society we gift-wrap everything: our politicians, our corporate heads, our movie and TV stars, and even our toilet paper.

How does that relate to Ultimate Treat? Because the perceived value of a product will be increased with its association to other products, names, or concepts that already have value in people's lives, the idea of a warm summer night with a pure, smooth ice cream treat is essential to our success. In other words, ice cream alone won't make the difference in the market, or someone would have dominated by simply putting out the best product. We need to make a great product and have the public associate it-wrap it in Tiffany paper-with a pleasant memory of a seemingly lost experience that our product will recreate.

Dick Morris took a trait of President Clinton-his propensity for making people feel like he would give everyone whatever it was they wanted, and turned it into a positive attribute. Clinton wasn't a manipulator; he was a statesman who could broker peace agreements with some of the least probable parties on the p***t. The reality was there; if Clinton hadn't w alked away with the agreement he did, Dick couldn't have manufactured one to make the president look good. But once the work was done, Dick could take it and wrap it in his best Tiffany paper, to make what had been perceived as a negative Clinton trait and turn it into an asset.

We can take what could be seen as a questionable move (associating our ice cream with an earlier, simpler time) and transmogrify it into something much more positive, something marketing textbooks years from now could hail as a bold move that helped establish a dynamic brand identity. But we have to look first at our market research data to see how much room we have to maneuver.

For the sake of our fictional product, let's examine a fictional market research report compiled after a nonexistent focus group and telephone survey. The focus group indicated that consumers are very attached to the idea of ice cream, that they are emotionally pleased with the idea of rich ice cream treat after a hot day, and that the two most popular flavors by a wide margin are vanilla and chocolate. But beyond that, what does the data tell us?

First of all, we must resolve the question of our flavors. Will we stick with the two most popular, vanilla and chocolate? Should we add s trawberry? Or will the consumers tell us that more exotic flavors are exactly what they've been craving, and that our loyalty to the simplest flavors is misguided?

Our research, taken primarily from the telephone survey, indicates that while vanilla (35 percent) and chocolate (22 percent, strongest on the East Coast) are the favorite flavors chosen by consumers, our audience does not want to stop there. Other flavors were widely split in terms of preference: Among single flavors, strawberry (the only kind we surveyed) as third, but far behind chocolate, at only 7 percent in a survey of 1,422 consumers across the country. Not far behind it was butter pecan at 6.4 percent and chocolate chip at 6.1 percent. No other flavor managed a number above 3.2 percent.

However, consumers were overwhelming in their desire for a third flavor. Asked if they would prefer an ice cream brand that sold only vanilla and chocolate or one that offered vanilla, chocolate, and one other flavor. An impressive 71 percent of consumers responded that three flavors arc better than two. The question now is which flavor to add.

Because strawberry came in third, it would seem the logical choice. However, it was not an overwhelming favorite by anyone's standards, and it has another difficulty attached to it. If we were to adhere to our philosophy of high quality and the best ingredients, we would want to add fresh strawberries to our ice cream. This would add prohibitively to our manufacturing costs, and might even compromise the quality of the product, since fresh fruit tends to freeze in ice cream and sometimes includes pits or debris. By the same token, nuts (such as in butter pecan) add many steps to manufacturing, including processing the nuts to maintain sanitary standards and avoid bacteria, and storage at a specific temperature to reduce rancidity.

On the other hand, chocolate chip, which was not far behind butter pecan, is easier to produce, particularly since we are already manufacturing vanilla. The addition of chocolate chips adds a step to manufacturing, but does not seriously complicate the process. So chocolate chip will be our third initial flavor for Ultimate Treat.

Asked about a brand name, consumers in our market survey were not terribly enthusiastic about the name Ultimate Treat. In our multiple-choice question, our chosen name actually came in third, behind just the Best and Rich Reward, although it did beat Sweet Revenge (which might be a better name for a low-fat ice cream, anyway). In fact, just the Best was far and away the most popular choice, with 33 percent of the respondents choosing it. Ultimate Treat was favored by only 17 percent of the consumers surveyed.

Clearly, our product name was not well chosen. It's better to know that now rather than after the brand identity is cemented and the product is in stores, but it is a warning sign that not everything we've assumed can be trusted to resonate with the public. After much debate among the members of our marketing team, it is decided that just the Best is a better fit for our brand identity, and it is adopted as the new product name.

Luckily, our chosen brand identity has scored much more favorably among the target demographic audience. In the question regarding the consumer's feelings about ice cream ("Ice cream reminds me of."), our choices... (a) summer evenings and (d) childhood treats-were much more received than (b) carnivals and (c) salespeople in trucks. This, along with responses to six other questions in the telephone survey, indicates that the public will warmly receive our brand identity of a playful nostalgia.

Market research has reinforced some of our original perceptions, it has deflated some assumptions we made, and it has given us a clear direction in which we should be moving. Public relations can take this research and interpret it, as we just did, to better determine our future moves. When use the research data as an indicator, rather than a bible, for future choices, it is a useful tool. If we become slaves to the research, we may not make any huge mistakes, but we are almost as certain to create something that will never have a chance to dominate its market.

Remember what Dick Lyles said; "The message may not come out in exactly the wording you intended, and it might be distorted in one way or another or grouped with the message from other corporate entities, even competitors." But while control of the message is important, it is the fact of the message itself-the placement, in public relations terms, in a media outlet that tells even part of your story through a third party that is seen as credible-that is the ultimate goal here.

The Tiffany Theory once again is at work. If you wrap your message in the imprint of the Wall Street Journal, some of the cachet of that brand will rub off on yours. It's impossible to overestimate the impact that a message delivered by a third party-not by you through advertising-can have on a consumer. And now that Just the Best has an identity to launch, we can do so confidently, knowing that the power of public relations can help consumers understand what we are and why they're going to love us.

Mare about Michael Levine's latest book can be found at...

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