By Michael Levy
As a young graduate trainee at Ted Bates Advertising (the now defunct inventors of the USP), I attended a meeting with the global advertising manager of a very famous cigarette brand. “I have called you down here because I want one global campaign for one product” – was his opening salvo. My account director asked why and the reply he got was “Look at my wall – it’s so untidy with all these different campaigns and product variants”. But does tidiness make money?
It is true to say that consistency within a brand can be a message in itself – a brand that speaks with one voice is confident and to be trusted. But that is sometimes turned into a company wide drive for global uniformity within brands and, worse still, a simplifying of the portfolio – rationalisation.
The realities of life are that:
- It is good to be consistent for a single brand within a geographic market but consumers vary and one global campaign can often mean a blunt message everywhere leaving local competitors the scope to cut through. Take something as apparently simple as saying “this is a brand people want to show off with”. In the UK showing off means discreetly placing your car keys on the table so everyone can see you drive a BMW. In Latin America the showing off volume control starts higher up so really to show off you have to make sure you turn up at all your friends’ houses in the BMW within days of getting it. So the brief might be the same but execution must recognise these cultural differences.
- Cutting down the number of brands is fine if they are doing similar jobs for you but consumers are different and have different needs within markets. Even with luxury goods they sometimes want bling and sometimes a more discerning feel. One brand cannot comfortably be sharp against all needs and careful deployment of a portfolio means you can cover the market better. Complex doesn’t have to be difficult – going back to the rule book and setting out precisely the role of each brand and sticking to that can at least provide clarity.
So why the drive for tidiness if it’s not about profit? Well people – especially busy people – love it when their life can be simplified. My favourite answer to that is something a marketing director at Diageo once said when hearing a whinge about the complexity of the portfolio a local team was being asked to consider: “you know what, it is complicated and that’s why you’re paid so much money – if it was simple we wouldn’t need such good people and we wouldn’t have to pay so much to make it look simple to the outside world”.