Santa and Numero Cinq. Iconic Storytelling.

I love brands and I love this most wonderful time of the year. Why? Because I love stories.

Christmas=story time

This is the time where stories reign supreme. The repetitive story of Christmas and Santa primarily. With various individual versions with the ones you love, sometimes sad, mostly merry I hope. One brand does its utmost to keep connected to this story with its ice cold hero product. Pretty impressive if you ask me in the coldest time of the year. But of course entire categories are trying to leverage this emotional connection. For example perfume.

Icons ignite stories

This year one of them is present in outdoor with something very simple and at the same time extremely powerful: their iconic bottle and their iconic bottle only: número cinq, number 5, Channel. I love this simplicity. Some people will say “this is just a product”, but see, that’s exactly the difference between normal products and icons such as the Coke and the Grolsch Swingtop bottle, the Nivea tin and the likes. They are so iconic that the simple appearance make stories springing to life. My Grolsch story for example includes my dads shed with those heavy crates where 16 beautiful swingtops sat. I couldn’t await until I could pop one open with him when I was of alcohol age.  With Nivea this has the do with that very simple but recognizable scent out of that classic blue tin that my mother used when I had a sore spot on my skin. Everyone has their own stories.

What makes an icon?

1-They have to have been around for a while first of all. Of course marketers sometimes literally make statements such as “a new icon had arrived” but that’s actually something consumers decide over time.
2-Just being around is not enough though. Of course icons are sometimes more and sometimes a little less popular over time, but within a certain group of consumers there needs to be some form of constant likebility.
3-Don’t touch (too much). An icon doesn’t and more importantly shouldn’t change with every new brand manager that enters the team. Its design or format is so strong it doesn’t need change to get attention. Read this for the way hiphop icon Jay-Z does this?

How to keep an icon?

a. By not touching it (too much)

b. Evolve communication but don’t drastically change it. You’ll puzzle the people who love the icon and it’s a question mark if the new consumers you want to impress will be so loyal as the old ones

c. Tap into new consumer pools, but make sure they are not too far off from your current crowd, in line with the just said.

d. Smartly use media to get the iconic message to your target audience in a clever and innovative way, using the unparalleled and smart formats digital can provide nowadays with interactiveness, voice power, automatic video play using on the go functionality through mobile and tablet formats. The possibilities are endless and the you’ll boost the innovativeness of your brand, without ruining you icon.

So, let’s cherish our icons. Not because brands want to, but because they spark stories, our own stories. Merry Christmas!

ALWAYS COCA COLA?

As a consumer one of my favorite Coca Cola commercials of all times is the guy in the bus singing “Always Coca Cola“. Cheezy? Yeah, whatever, it just made me feel good and connected that good feeling to the brand Coca Cola, which probably was its purpose.

Coke still number 1
Coca cola still is the number 1 brand in the world according to Interbrand, but faces a lot of challenges in the new day and age. The overall goal of the brand is to keep the Coke message of optimism consistent and relevant for every generation, said Coke’s Cristina Bondolowski | Vice President Global Brands at E-Day 2012. So what the brand does is adapt the optimism message to each era, leaving the core of the message always the same. though. And adaption is very important Mrs Bondolowski illustrated: in the 60s women starred in Coca Cola commercial as moms and housekeepers, nowadays you see kids literally pushing moms back to work in ads.

Relevancy
So, how do you keep your brand relevant? Four tips from Coca Cola:

1 – Understand your consumer through research. And yes the classical research ways are still great for that. However, you also need to spend lots of time listening & talking to consumers online, creating a dialogue.

2 – Always In – Always On. In this day and age you need to be in sync with your consumers constantly and consistently: from 360 (degrees in a couple of bursts) activation to a 365 (days a year) dialogue. You need to post and react and listen to your consumers every day, every week and every month, because consumers expect you to do this. And they will switch to brands that take them more seriously and really listen if you don’t. So always in tune with your consumers, inside their community and always on, i.e. never off. For Coca Cola this actually had an impact on for example their marketing calendars, who used to be separated in various media (online, pr, TV, etc.) and divided in bursts (January Flight 1, March Flight 2, you know the drill). It changed from bursts to year round and all media is now intertwined and each in its own way adds value to one single message.

From my personal experience as a marketer I’d like to add to that: make sure you(r organization) is flexible enough. First of all to do something spontaneous that just feels right for your brand at that moment and secondly you gotta realize the year at the end is not going to be what it looked like at the beginning, which was always true, only now more than ever. Todays digital world is all about letting go and dealing with less control of your consumers – and more control of your brand by your consumers.

3 – When you have chosen what your brand promise is: do it & be it (Coke has chosen one word: “Happiness”). Make sure everything you do confirms your brand image and make sure your it’s true and relevant to consumers. You can’t spend millions of bucks to state you are the best in customer friendliness and have paid telephone support teams costing consumers real money when they call and have to wait 10 minutes to get a grumpy, unknowledgeable customer service employee on the phone.

4 – Paid Owned Earned is great, but add one: Shared. Coca Cola’s example was: Consumers opened lots of their Facebook fanpages. The VP said “its their brand and we know it! Where would Coke be without its fans and consumers? We’ve decided to work together with our consumers to build our brand. Inspire your consumers to make them your brand ambassadors (…)”, because it’s so much better to get a great review from a consumer than from a brand. Of course I can only agree.

If all Coca Cola employees think and act in line with what this smart & charming Coke big shot said, I’d be quite confident in saying it’s true what the guy on the bus once sang “Always Coca Cola“.