Lessons from a Tide Brand Manager – Brand Building

Procter & Gamble has had a reputation as the premier brand builder over the years. Many companies have copied his methods, not just in consumer packaged goods, but in a wide variety of industries. The company is fully dedicated to providing its consumers with brands and not just products. What does that mean? It means that they are committed to establishing that their products and their performance promise something specific to consumers and then delivering on that promise. Consumers get a product that not only works and works better than most, but also the confidence that the product will do exactly what it says on the tin.

There are a number of important lessons that have been learned over the course of a 23-year career at Procter & Gamble like mine. This is part of a series of articles that will share some of those lessons.

Here are some thoughts on brand building:

A great brand can be in any industry.
As I said earlier, it’s not just consumer packaged goods brands like Tide, Olay, Pampers, and Crest that have recognized the value of brand building rather than product sales. Some categories may lend themselves to branding better than others, but almost any product offers the opportunity to create a unique mood. Nike, for example, is tapping into the emotional connection people have to sports and fitness. In the technology industry, most people don’t know what Intel processors do or why they are superior to the competition. All they know is that they want to have a computer with “Intel inside”. And they are willing to pay more for it.

A great brand understands what and who it is.
To build a great brand you have to understand who you are. Target consumers and find out what they like or dislike about the brand and what they associate as the very core of the brand concept. That helps you get started. To keep a brand alive for the long term, to maintain its vitality, you have to do something new and revitalize it. It has to be related to the central position of the brand. A lot of mistakes are made trying to make the brand something it’s not and, more importantly, what customers don’t think it is.

A great brand is relevant.
Knowing yourself leads to establishing relevance. It meets what people want and works the way people expect. The delivery of the message may change to stay current, but the basic promise remains unchanged and relevant. Consumers are looking for something that has lasting value. There is a search for quality, not quantity.

One great brand changes the game for the entire category.
Procter & Gamble brands have dramatically changed their categories: Tide in fabric care, Crest in dental care, Olay in beauty care, Pampers in baby care. Other brands such as Disney, Apple, Nike and Starbucks have the explicit objective of being the protagonists of each of their categories. Disney is the star of fun, family entertainment and family values. Apple was not just a player in the information revolution, but a player in making the individual more productive, informed, and contemporary. They have changed the flow of information with the iPhone and iPad. A great brand raises the bar: adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience.

A great brand capitalizes on emotions.
The common ground among companies that have built great brands is not just performance. Emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions. Not many people talk about the benefits of high performance Mercedes engines. But they imagine themselves sitting behind the wheel of this luxury car. A brand comes in with that kind of powerful connection experience. It is an emotional connection point that transcends the product. And transcending the product is the brand.

A great brand has consistency in design.
Fashion brands may be the most obvious example. Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, for example. have a consistent appearance and a high level of design integrity. They refuse to follow any fashion trend that doesn’t fit their vision. They are capable of pulling it off from one season to the next. Strong brands like Levi’s, Gap, Disney, and Procter & Gamble have design that supports the brand image in the mind of the customer.

A great brand operates for the long term.
Many of Procter & Gamble’s brands are close to a century old, and in the case of Ivory soap, a hundred and fifty years old. These brands are built on strong value propositions. On the contrary, in the last two decades, many companies stopped creating strong brands. As a result, there were many products with very little differentiation. All consumers saw was who had the lowest price. Many of these products are off the shelves and many companies are out of business.

There’s a key lesson from Procter & Gamble, which has a stable of billion, yes, billion-dollar brands around the world. In an era of accelerating product proliferation, enormous choice for customers, and increasing clutter and clamor in the marketplace, great branding is a necessity, not a luxury. By taking a long-term approach, a great brand can travel the globe, transcend cultural barriers, target multiple consumer segments simultaneously, create economies of scale, and drive higher margins in the long run.

Thanks

John