Dropping a well-known company name from a product or marketing activity might seem counterintuitive, but some businesses are doing just that – employing a debranding strategy to make their companies appear less corporate and more forward-thinking.

Starbucks is experimenting with this strategy in an attempt to position itself as a friendly local coffee shop. Its ‘Starbucks’ moniker was removed from coffee cups in the UK last year, leaving only the siren symbol. And last month, its staff started asking customers their names, so they could write them on its takeaway cups, to make its service seem more personal and less corporate. ‘We’re Starbucks. Nice to meet you’ is the line used in the TV advertising that explains this decision.

While some customers might wonder why the chain needs to be on first name terms with them, the marketing strategy has certainly attracted attention. At its launch, Starbucks gave away free lattés for one day, resulting in its highest ever buzz and attention scores, according to YouGov’s BrandIndex, which measures response to brands via its online panel.

But this is not the chain’s first attempt to rid itself of its distinctive corporate branding.

Nobody calls the Mini the BMW Mini even though it belongs to BMW. So why would we call ourselves RBS Coutts?

In the US, the business has experimented with stores called ‘15th Ave Coffee & Tea’, with ‘Inspired by Starbucks’ on them, to provide a more independent coffee shop feel. The chain has also just launched its first Evolution Fresh juice store in the US, where references to the corporate name are entirely absent.

In the UK, Starbucks’ debranding strategy means that no two shops are the same. The chain says that its recently opened cafés in London and Edinburgh are designed to fit into the local environment rather than shouting out its corporate heritage.

Meliá Hotels International vice-president of marketing Tony Cortizas, says one of the first brands to use this strategy was Nike, which has moved away from using its name, preferring just the ‘swoosh’ logo. He adds that Starbucks faces similar issues to the sports brand.

“There is an issue of maturity with a brand. Starbucks’ problem, which is the same that Nike has faced, is that it is everywhere. The saturation of the brand has reached the point where people are [seeing] a Starbucks on every corner. You reach a point where your logo is no longer cool.”

While this isn’t a strategy that Meliá is currently using – in the UK it is working on reinforcing its brand with the launch of high-end boutique hotel ME London this June – Cortizas can see the benefits of a debranding strategy.

This debranding strategy is an emerging trend that sectors as diverse as finance and fashion are employing to make their brands more desirable.

The private bank Coutts has recently removed RBS from its international logo, following the financial turmoil dogging its parent company. Ian Ewart, global head of products, services and marketing, claims that by removing RBS it is helping to simplify the branding in the UK and internationally (see Coutts, below).

Other brand owners are taking the debrand concept further and having no reference to the parent brand on products, as in the case for most of Tesco’s venture brands. Its Chokablok ice cream, Lathams pet food and its latest launch, Llama’s snacks, show no link with the retailer other than to state in advertising that they are available at Tesco.

Brand development director Sidonie Kingsmill says the retailer carries out research as to whether its name should feature on own-label goods or not (see Q&A, below).

“We consistently do research where we check whether products are better with the Tesco name on or off. Almost without fail it is better for Tesco to be on it because customers get it. They see it as more reliable, they know it is good value and where it is coming from.”

She adds that whether the Tesco name appears on its venture brands also has no hard and fast rules, pointing out that its Naturally Powered cleaning products do bear its branding. She says: “It depends on what is right for that particular product.”

Having these venture brands that are developed by the retailer and exclusively available in its stores helps to encourage shoppers into Tesco. The products can be offered at lower prices than other branded goods because little money is spent marketing them, claims Kingsmill. However, she doesn’t feel that they are necessarily debranded products, being strong brands in themselves.

The US store JCPenney is another brand that has developed separate ranges that do not use its name, including The Original Jean Company and Xersion. After posting an operating loss of $171m (£107m) in the third quarter of 2011, the business is restructuring and is using a debranding strategy to help push forward its private label brands.

JCPenney declined to comment, but a statement from the company says that newly appointed senior vice-president of strategic brands Bill Gentner will be “responsible for reinvigorating JCPenney’s portfolio of high-performing private brands, including ensuring brand integrity in how they are merchandised, marketed and presented in the company’s private brand in-store shops.”

The revamp comes in the wake of the end of a deal with Ralph Lauren, which produced garments exclusively for retailer JCPenney which were marketed under the American Living label – no use was made of the Ralph Lauren branding.

Senior vice-president of advertising, marketing and corporate communications David Lauren has previously explained the strategy to Marketing Week. He said:

“We have started brands from scratch like American Living which do not say Ralph Lauren and they reach a totally different customer.

“No, they do not know [that Ralph Lauren makes American Living clothes] and it does not matter, it is just us reaching a customer who is looking for less expensive products and in a store where we would not sell Ralph Lauren products.”

Other luxury brands are experimenting with whether their logos should feature on products or not. Gucci is working on finding a balance here, to make sure that it reaches ‘the more sophisticated end of the market’, presumably in response to its logo being flashed on handbags by those in the public eye deemed ‘unsophisticated’. Parent company PPR says: “This new strategy is not simply based on finding a new balance between logo and
­no-logo products, but also on defining the appropriate mix of fabric, leather and precious materials.

“The success of this means that today the brand has achieved an enhanced positioning and exclusivity, recapturing the more knowledgeable clients as it continues to attract aspirational customers, especially from the newer markets, with an increasingly higher average price-point.”

Indeed, Gucci says it is moving towards an emphasis on logo-free leather products, contributing to a 25% increase in annual profit to nearly €1bn (£837m), as reported in February.

Other brands are using debranding in their advertising to appeal to specific audiences. Unilever’s VO5 Extreme Style hair products were advertised last year in an unbranded ‘teaser’ TV spot, later followed by a branded commercial in the same style. It featured the ‘Pliktisijiteur Pageant,’ a show in a fictional village and set early in the 20th century.

Brand manager Richard Whitty says the focus of the campaign was engaging content rather than pushy branded ads. “It was all about the story, it was about a village and its talent show and pageant. The more focused you can keep it to telling a story rather than pushing a product, the more sharable it is.”

Targeted at 16- to 24-year-olds, the aim was to get the video to go viral. “Giving them something unbranded adds to the product’s credibility. This is about building brand equity, it is not just about pushing products and saying ‘how many extra pots of fibre putty can we sell on the back of this?’”

Indeed the teaser has now been viewed 130,000 times on YouTube, and the following branded advertisement 214,000 times. The full 90-second version will run in cinemas later this year.

Whitty says this strategy helps to differentiate VO5 from the other brands he also manages, including the recently launched Lynx hair products and Brylcreem. He explains: “We have been watching closely how sales have been affected since the advertising went live. We have spent a long time pulling apart those two brands [Lynx and VO5] and very much see a Lynx user as entry-level, whereas we see VO5 users as more confident and experimental.

“We’ll be watching how sales of VO5 are affected by the Lynx launch, but our feeling is that the two attract different customers.”

As businesses continue to experiment throughout 2012 with a debranding strategy, it appears that just churning out goods and marketing activity bearing famous brand names is no longer a winning strategy.

All for now,

Pat Rigney Managing Director Fastnet Brands

My full time passion is my full time business which is building, creating, refreshing and reinventing brands at Fastnet.

We aim to excite consumers, engage the trade and add value to your business.

We bring our International experience and network to bear on supporting your business, grow. We strive to improve and deliver exponential shareholder value.

Patrick Rigney Managing Director Fastnet Brands

In the spirit of saving you a few lifetimes of pain, here are some common mistakes that seem to happen routinely:

1. Wait until your company is up and growing before you formalise it. Some entrepreneurs can’t decide if they want to be a Limited Liability Company (LTD) or a partnership or to put in place a shareholders agreement, so they put off doing anything until the first venture capital round, or until the first lawsuit occurs.

The simple answer is to do something, and start simple. You can incorporate as an LTD Company with a minimal effort with a shareholders agreement. This step shows everyone you are serious, and limits your liability on any mistakes. It also forces you to pick a name for your company and put other intellectual property stakes in the ground. 

Move up Move down

Professional advice in this area is highly advised.

2. Rely on informal agreements with partners. You may all be friends, or spouses, today, but things do change quickly in the stress of a growing company. The same principles apply to strategic partners. Early co-founders often drop out of the picture due to disagreements, and you forget about them, but they don’t forget about the verbal promises you made. Later, when your venture is trying to close on financing, or even going public, that forgotten partner surfaces, demanding their original share. This problem can be avoided by incorporating immediately after early discussions, and issuing shares to all founders.  I know two former friends who are still killing each other financially years later over an unwritten agreement, remembered differently by each.

3. Quick to hire and slow to fire. If you are growing quickly and desperate for help, you may skip on the homework of a proper job description, or validating applicant credentials are a fit before you proceed to interview. The message here is that if you don’t know exactly what help you need, you probably won’t get it. Hiring after one interview is like hopping a red-eye to London to get married after one date. Equally bad, you may know what you want, but you are trying to force-fit the candidate into the position.  Maybe she’s related to the boss, or you are confident that the candidate will be a good helper, and can learn a lot from you. Helpers are expensive, since it often takes longer to jointly do a job than it would take one qualified person to do it alone.On the other end of the process, don’t hesitate to pull the trigger fast when a new hire isn’t working, but don’t forget to be human and follow all the steps. Carrying a non-performing employee probably triples the costs, since you are paying two people to do the job, and at least one other is de-motivated by the inequity.

4. Only hire people who like you or think like you. Flattery feels good, but it doesn’t pay the bills.  Look for the thoughtful challenge to your ideas, and practice active listening, when you are selling your vision. High three-digit intelligence has value. Some executives think they can mix business with pleasure, with inter-office relationships.    We all have our favourite story on this one. Make it a rule to not fraternise with your employees, and choose your partners wisely.

5. Be super-conservative on your cash needs. Double-check both the money you need before funding, and the size of investor funding requests.  You will be amazed at how many items you forgot to cover, and how fast the cash disappears. You should buffer the first by 50%, and the second by 25%. Severe cash flow problems are a big mistake, and may not be recoverable. When you have people and their families depending on you for their income, and you are strapped for money, there certainly won’t be any money for growth. Even if you can find someone willing to help, it may be a very expensive proposition.  Cash is more important than profit.

6. Let your accountants manage the expenses. Too many founders think it’s more important to work on products and customers. In reality, the most important task of a every small company CEO is to review every expense with a miserly hand before the money flows out. Do not delegate this task. A variation on this theme is promising a burn rate to investors than you can’t deliver.  That means managing a bottoms-up budget process, and living within the budget.  The result of budget and expense overruns is not only lost growth opportunities, but lost credibility and lost support from investors and vendors.

7. Make all the decisions yourself.  One person making all the decisions doesn’t mean better decisions, and certainly not faster ones.  For a company to grow, the team has to grow, and decisions must be delegated.  Smart growth companies hire decision makers, not more helpers. Even early in the startup process, you need someone like-minded but complementary in skills to help you with the startup plans. It’s always good to have someone to test your ideas, keep your spirits up, and hone your business skills. Lastly, make good use of your Board Members. One or two “experts” who have “been there and done that” can head off many mistakes and suggest a calm recovery plan for the ones you make.  Resist the ego urge to “go it alone” or to convince yourself that you are smarter than your competitors.

8. Defining the strategy is a one-time process. Assume your initial strategy will be wrong. Most startups I know have “refined” their target market and “pivoted” their operation several times during their rollout and growth phases. So be alert and be flexible. Plan for strategy changes by scheduling an adjustment review every month. Watch out for the unknown, such as an economic recession you hadn’t counted on, or a new competitor with deep pockets, or the changing trends in the industry. Be sure to communicate changes to the team effectively and often, so it doesn’t look like you are making random changes.

9. Let the daily crisis keep you from the “most important” issues. It takes practice and effort to focus on the most important things first. In business, “most important” means time to market, customer service, low cost, and beating your competitors. It also means knowing when to delegate, when to rest, and reserving time for effective communication with your team. If you allow yourself to be driven by the crisis of the moment, you will lose the ability to set priorities and focus on goals. Personal discipline is the key word here. Working in isolation and handling all the issues is fine during the creative phase of the startup, where the founder is often the designer and architect, as well as the builder. Now this same individual has to graduate from short-term thinking to long-term thinking.

10. Ignore the mistakes of others. The biggest mistake of growing companies is failing to learn from the mistakes of others, or even from your own mistakes. You can only learn from your mistake after you admit you’ve made it. Wise people admit their mistakes easily, and move the focus away from blame management and towards learning. The list goes on and on. But the reality is that making mistakes is part of every successful growth effort.  Therefore, mistakes should be celebrated and learned from.  But the one unforgivable mistake you should never make is to repeat a previous mistake. In the end, ask yourself this question: Is it better to try and fail, or never have tried at all? To grow in the business world, never trying is not an option

Pat Rigney Managing Director

My full time passion is my full time business which is building, creating, refreshing and reinventing brands at Fastnet.

We aim to excite consumers, engage the trade and add value to your business.

We bring our International experience and network to bear on supporting your business, grow. We strive to improve and deliver exponential shareholder value

Patrick Rigney Managing Director

Toys”R”Us is playing in the mobile space in the US.

The retailer, never known as a big innovator in digital, this holiday season is equipping its retail outlets with scanners that can read coupon bar codes on mobile phones and is launching a text messaging program alerting shoppers to deals.

Customers can get the coupons by joining the Toys”R”Us and Babies”R”Us mailing lists. When the mobile version of an e-mail is displayed on a smartphone, the retailer can scan it in a store.

The effort builds on last year’s introduction of eGift cards. Last year, Toys”R”Us customers had to print out those cards to redeem them, but now, they can get them scanned from their phones as well.

Starbucks began testing a similar program in late 2009 and Target launched one back in February. “It’s a really powerful program and right in the sweet spot,” said Michael Becker, managing director of the Mobile Marketing Association in the US.

The update, called Facebook SDK for iOS, makes it easier for users to link content from iPhone apps to their Facebook profile to share with their friends.

In a blog post, Yujuan Bao, a Facebook mobile engineer, said, “With more than 150m people actively using Facebook from mobile devices, we have a commitment to not only developing our own mobile sites and apps but ensuring that developers can also build similar social experiences.”

He added that Facebook had been working with some of the biggest-selling games publishers on the App Store, such as Electronic Arts and Zynga, to improve integrating their products.

Pat Rigney Managing Director

My full time passion is my full time business which is building, creating, refreshing and reinventing brands at Fastnet.

We aim to excite consumers, engage the trade and add value to your business.

We bring our International experience and network to bear on supporting your business, grow. We strive to improve and deliver exponential shareholder value

Patrick Rigney Managing Director

Gladwell’s effort to share emerging insights into how our brains work is timely. In this decade, we are learning more about how humans think and feel and what drives our behaviour than the whole of our discoveries in the time since Sigmund Freud dreamt up the idea of psychoanalysis. This has profound implications for marketing and brand professionals.

Malcolm Gladwell enlightens our thinking with his book Blink, a fascinating exploration of how decisions are made in the blink of an eye, before consumers even realise they’re making a decision. He suggests “we think without thinking.” These developments are revealing just how faulty and inadequate conventional research methods are when it comes to truly understanding consumers.

WHAT’S BEHIND BLINK?
In Blink, Gladwell urges that people make decisions through rapid cognition and a concept known as thin-slicing—the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience. More than we realise, we evaluate a situation or a brand and frame our response before we ever consciously think about it. When we thin-slice, we recognize patterns and make snap judgments, we do this process of editing unconsciously. We first see and perceive a colour several hundred milliseconds before we can think or say “red light.” Our foot seeks the brake long before we actually think about stopping, that is, if we think about it at all.

As Gladwell warns, “while people are very willing and very good at volunteering information explaining their actions, those explanations, particularly when it comes to the kinds of spontaneous opinions and decisions that arise out of the unconscious, aren’t necessarily correct. Finding out what people think of a rock song sounds as if it should be easy. But the truth is that it isn’t, and the people who run focus groups and opinion polls haven’t always been sensitive to this fact” (Gladwell, 2005, p. 155).

FINDING BLINK
Brains are pattern machines. (Hawkins and Blakeslee, 2004) These patterns make blink moments possible. But, if you are a marketer looking to capitalise on a blink phenomenon, be aware the brain cannot command itself to go into “think blink” mode. Instead, it involuntarily retrieves from memory the feelings that drive blink encounters. Our brain does not remember exactly what it sees, hears or feels. We don’t remember or recall things with complete fidelity—not because the cortex and its neurons are sloppy or error-prone, but because the brain remembers the important relationships in the world, independent of details. (Hawkins, 2004)

The relationships we feel are important in our world are stored as images in our unconscious mind and are linked directly to our emotions. In fact, we don’t really think in words, but more in pictures or images. The brain is elegantly designed to store whole concepts within an image. We store memories as images because they are more meaningful and easier to access quickly and automatically. Emotions are largely responsible for creating these memories and are the key to unlocking the meaning within.

It is critical for marketers to understand the role of emotions in human decision making and behavior. Raised in Western culture, we are well indoctrinated in the forces of logic and reason, but we’ve lost sight of the essential role emotions play in determining human behaviour. In fact, all human behaviour is driven by emotional input derived from these stored visualisations. There are two systems in the brain. One is for logic and reason. It resides in the neocortex, the outer layer.  The other is found in the limbic system, the emotional part of the brain. The emotional components appear in very discreet, well-identified and interconnected regions of the brain. The interconnection occurs in a handful of brain sites that are collectively known as the limbic system. One site in the system, the amygdala, is the brain region responsible for the subjective experience of the emotion. Another site, the hypothalamus, is responsible for triggering the physiological response of the emotion. The hypothalamus, amygdala, and cortex all feed back on each other in a complex alchemy of emotion and reason to coordinate the appropriate behavioural response. This information is also saved and stored by a third member of the limbic system, the hippocampus. All of these brain regions, from the higher cortex to lower limit systems, converge in a single brain region known as the cingulate cortex.  It is in the cingulate cortex that decisions are made. Reason and emotion commingle and we are able to coordinate our emotional response to direct our actions and thoughts.

One very important scientific aspect of this whole process is that we know the decision making process does not work in the absence of an emotional signal from the limbic system. Left to its own devices, the consciously thinking part of the brain is incapable of making a decision. The implications of this for marketers are inescapable.

FROM THE HEAD TO THE HEART
Revealing patterns in the brain through a methodology called Emotional Research, a psychoanalytic-based technique designed to tap into memories, makes it possible for consumers to access emotions that drive their behaviours. Through directed relaxation and visualisation exercises, consumers can recall experiences and reveal underlying emotions that cannot be accessed via conventional research. Visualisation is critical to unlocking the emotional drivers. Jim Hawkins, creator of Palm and Handspring and the founder of the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, discussed this in his provocative book, On Intelligence. “The next time you tell a story, step back and consider how you can only relate one aspect of the tale at a time. You cannot tell me everything that happened all at once, no matter how quickly you talk or I listen. You need to finish one part of the story before you can move on to the next. This isn’t only because spoken language is serial; written, oral and visual storytelling all convey a narrative in serial fashion. It is because the story is stored in your head in sequential fashion and can only be recalled in the same sequence. You can’t remember the entire story at once. In fact, it’s almost impossible to think of anything complex that isn’t a series of events or thoughts” (p. 70).

You can easily experience firsthand how Emotional Research works as you read this. Follow these steps as described. First, think about a time and place when you were very relaxed. Close your eyes so you can see it better. In your mind, go to that time and place. Now, scan the scene very slowly from left to right and describe what you are seeing. Notice all the little details. Who is there with you? What time of day is it? What colors do you see? What is the light like? What are you thinking about? What are you feeling?

Now, did you go to the beach or some body of water as we see most of the population do in our research? This is because the desire to be near water is very primal human behavior and a clear indication how this research can powerfully tap into the underlying emotional drivers.

FINDING BRAND BLINK

As a result, we’re confirming brands are about feelings, not facts.  Buying decisions are made on promises that transcend products, and promises are rooted in human emotions.  Quite simply, brands are built on trust. Making and keeping promises builds trust which is among the most basic of human emotions. To impact our company’s bottom line, we need to get in touch with our customers’ emotions.  As marketers, we must have our own blink moments and embrace the reality that branding is about “brain surgery” and psychology. Because how your customers feel about your brand isn’t a casual question.  It is the crucial question.

SOURCES:
Gladwell, M. (2005), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Hawkins, J. and Blakeslee, S. (2004), On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines. New York: Times Books.

The power of brand Icon’s!

A year after the brand played a major role in a meltdown that prompted a  federal bailout and a worldwide economic downturn, Merrill Lynch and its bull are back, with a $20 million campaign in the US offering consumers “help.”

Bank of America, Merrill Lynch’s new owner, is launching the campaign, themed “help2,” to reintroduce its newly acquired  Merrill Lynch Wealth Management group.

The classic Merrill bull—a mascot that was first introduced in 1974. The target: affluent Americans. Research, however, showed that their  goals differed depending on age, which is why the campaign addresses different notions of help.

Younger consumers, for instance, were concerned about the economy’s impact on their finances, near- to-young boomers were preoccupied with retirement and older Americans were worried about inflation zapping their life’s savings, she said.

Hence, print ads that say “help2achieve,” “help2cherish,” “help2discover” and “help2begin.” As a marketing campaign, the superscript 2 refers to the one-on-one, personalized relationships financial advisors have with clients, their “exponentially better” advice and the combined distribution, scale and services offered by the two entities. The average Merrill Lynch client stays with his/her financial advisor for 13 years.

Merrill’s bull, “Dollar,” has also been updated. The mascot retains its classic blue coloring, in a new, white silhouette. There is also the BofA attribution below to reinforce the new relationship.

(Interpublic Group’s Hill Holliday is the creative agency for the campaign. Starcom handles media buying duties.)

This week’s campaign marks the first time Dollar has been featured prominently in the ads. The mascot was not present in a summer campaign for the bank’s global corporate and investment banking business called Bank of America Merrill Lynch! Guess why! 

But for now “The bull is alive and well,” and “He is on your side” or so they say! Time will tell!

Pat Rigney Managing Director

My full time passion is my full time business which is building, creating, refreshing and reinventing brands at Fastnet.

We aim to excite consumers, engage the trade and add value to your business.

We bring our International experience and network to bear on supporting your business, grow. We strive to improve and deliver exponential shareholder value

Patrick Rigney Managing Director

Dear Visitor,
Welcome to our blog dedicated to Fastnet Brands contribution to the Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign.

Last year, like many others I stood back more than I should have, convinced, to be honest, that a Yes vote was a foregone conclusion. I was wrong.  This time, after discussions with my colleagues, as a matter of personal responsibility we believe that we have a duty to speak up. As a company, Fastnet Brands invests a considerable amount in Ireland, in developing brands for Ireland, European and International markets. Being at the centre of Europe has been a huge benefit to our company & suppliers.
The dynamics of Ireland fully connected to Europe have been powerful and positive for the people of Ireland – good for Foreign Direct Investment, good for jobs, good for prosperity and ultimately good for business.

We are convinced that for future growth and innovation Ireland needs to stay fully connected to Europe. Ireland as a fully connected player in the EU, matters to us.

Our question to the Irish people is – how imporant is growth & prosperity to you?

Best wishes,

Pat

Pat Rigney Managing Director Fastnet Brands

My full time passion is my full time business which is building, creating, refreshing and reinventing brands at Fastnet.

We aim to excite consumers, engage the trade and add value to your business.

We bring our International experience and network to bear on supporting your business, grow. We strive to improve and deliver exponential shareholder value.

Patrick Rigney Managing Director Fastnet Brands

Breaking the news of Michael Jackson’s death boosted weekly traffic at TMZ.com, putting it ahead of all other celebrity news sites for the first time since it posted an exclusive police photo of a bruised Rihanna in February.

“That set the record for us back in February and this one severely trumped that,” TMZ General Manager Pam Russo commented.

TMZ’s traffic rose 70 percent year-over-year, attracting an incredible 7.95 million visitors in the week that ended June 28, according to tracking firm comScore. Three days earlier, TMZ reported Jackson’s death at least a half hour before other news organizations were able to confirm details.

Sky News in Europe ran with the TMZ website stream on screen for the initial 3 hours after the news broke

Category leader omg, a unit of Yahoo Inc., was second during the period with 7.84 million visitors.

TMZ is a unit of Time Warner Inc.