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I N S I T E S C O N S U L T I N G
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The average lifespan of a company has dropped from 61 years in
1958 to a mere 15 years today. This reduction in lifespan can be at-
tributed to the demanding environment brands and businesses are
operating in. It is getting harder and harder for a brand to stand out.
Brands are not only (more and more) limited in the use of claims,
they are also under increased time pressure. They are being copied
faster than ever, with these replicas even outperforming the origi-
nals. In this fast-pacing environment, established brands are being
kicked off the throne by new market entrees.
So how can a brand avoid its own zombification, where just like zom-
bies you may think your brand is alive but in fact its been long dead?
Many books have been written capturing marketing theories, frame-
works and models on how to create future-proof brands. Yet this abun-
dance of visions and beliefs often results in two types of scenarios. The
first type consists of brands that paralyze, which do not know what to
do and as such are almost waiting for their own grave to be dug. The
second type are the brands that are switching around panicking; they
change frameworks as soon as someone comes along sharing a new
set of beliefs or visions.
Yet in this paradox of choice, focus is required. Marketing visions and
models bring this focus to brands and marketers. They provide them
with a framework as for the drivers to grow their brands and on the di-
mensions and key performance indicators they should use to measure
brand strength. Brands need to choose and follow what we like to call
a religion. Because just like the definition of religion, we believe that
brands should use these frameworks to guide them in everything they
do and follow this with great devotion.
If you ever took a course of marketing, you were probably introduced
to the Philip Kotlers principles. Think STP (Segmentation, Targeting,
Positioning), the importance of differentiation and the creation of a
USP (Unique Selling Proposition). He is the father of modern market-
ing and together with thinkers like Kevin Lane Keller, David Aaker
lay the foundation of what we could call the Classic Religion. And just
like the classics in food and music, they are still of great value today.
Many brands are still using their thinking as a framework to set up their
marketing plans or branding strategies. Yet in this postmodern world
we see that this Kotlerian thinking is challenged by new beliefs and vi-
sions which, as a matter of simplification, can be bundled in three main
school of thoughts: the Penetration Religion, the Influencer Religion
and the Relationship Religion.
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A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion
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I N S I T E S C O N S U L T I N G
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This is a very recent school of thought inspired by Byron Sharp,
professor of Marketing Science at the University of South
Australia, who published How brands grow in 2010. The book
and its sequel, published in 2015, introduce new marketing laws
based on the analysis of behavioral and purchase data that
challenge the Kotlerian marketing thinking.
PENETRATIONRELIGION
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Basically, penetration is king. What defines big brands? Well, they have
larger customer bases, more people buy their product(s). This religion
thus suggests that sales growth comes mainly from growth in the size
of your customer base. This is in contrast with classic, more Kotlerian
thinking, which states that sales growth can come from both the growth
in the number of customers as well as from an increase in the custom-
ers purchase frequency.
Yet research by Byron Sharp reveals that brands with different market
shares vary mainly in terms of the size of their customer base. When
zooming in on a set of brands within a particular category, sorted ac-
cording to market share size, you can see that these brands will have
a fairly similar purchase frequency. The larger brand will be bought
somewhat more frequently and the smaller brand a bit less, but all in all
the difference is minor. What truly drives growth is penetration, with an
almost linear correlation between penetration and market share. Pen-
etration will also indirectly drive things like purchase frequency. This is
demonstrated in the following example, where Byron Sharp refers to
the concept of double jeopardy.
This concept was originally defined by Andrew Ehrenberg. It states that
larger brands, compared to their smaller competitors, have many more
customers who buy them somewhat more frequently. This pattern ex-
plains how smaller brands get hit twice. Their sales are lower because
they have fewer buyers who buy the brand less often. It is the curse of
being small.
#1PENETRATION IS THY SOLE PATH TO GROWTH
Byron Sharp, 2015
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So how do we reach penetration? As marketers, we are all familiar
with the saying that it costs five times less to retain a customer than to
acquire a new one. Yet, according to Byron Sharp this is a classic myth
that has never been proven with hard data. Marketers need to stop
thinking about customer retention and start focusing on acquisition,
because defection is largely out of a brands control. Defection levels
do not vary significantly with brand size; all brands lose some buyers
and this loss is in proportion with their market share. The number of
customers a brand loses depends on the number it has to lose; big
brands lose more customers though this represents a smaller portion of
their total customer base. Gaining market share by halving the defec-
tion rate would be nearly impossible. Getting customers to buy with
100% loyalty is unrealistic; even big cult brands like Harley Davidson
(33%) and Apple (55%) have less loyalty than one might expect (Byron
Sharp, 2015).
This religion emphasizes the fact that loyalty in its pure form does not
exist; 72% of Coke drinkers also buy Pepsi (UK), only a small minority
of people will stubbornly refuse Pepsi when ordering Coca-Cola or vice
versa. People are in fact promiscuously loyal, meaning that they switch
between rival brands based on availability. The norm is polygamous
loyalty, having a repertoire of brands and switching between them.
People are loyal to a repertoire of brands rather than to a single brand
and they are more loyal to the brands they see and buy a bit more
regularly. All brands enjoy loyalty; bigger brands enjoy it a little bit more
(the double jeopardy law is also present here).
#2RETENTION IS AN ILLUSION
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#3THOU SHALT TREAT ALL THY BUYERS AS EQUAL
When looking at the customer base of a typical brand, we can see
that it has a skewed distribution, the minority of customers being the
heavy buyers while the big bulk consists of light buyers. In order to
maintain and grow sales, marketers must reach these masses rather
than to focus on a select few.
This religion emphasizes the importance of mass marketing, including
those light buyers (who are often neglected in more classic thinking).
Light buyers are important to target and this strategy is also considered
as a more lucrative one, because it is nearly impossible to target light
buyers without also reaching heavy buyers: in targeting light buyers,
brands are automatically also targeting their heaviest buyers.
maintain and grow sales, marketers must reach these masses rather
than to focus on a select few.
This religion emphasizes the importance of mass marketing, including
those light buyers (who are often neglected in more classic thinking).
Light buyers are important to target and this strategy is also considered
as a more lucrative one, because it is nearly impossible to target light
buyers without also reaching heavy buyers: in targeting light buyers,
brands are automatically also targeting their heaviest buyers.
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In these mass marketing efforts, brands should focus on building
and repeating memory structures. Brands should not differentiate yet
establish brand distinctiveness through memory structures. And this all
starts with building distinctive assets and focusing and repeating these
assets. Brand distinctive assets are brand identity elements that signal
the brand name to consumers. It is a portfolio of assets which are
visual, aural and verbal; examples are colors, slogans, logo, packaging
shapes These assets allow a brands communication to work. Even if
a brands advertisement is noticed, according to Byron Sharp it cannot
work unless it refreshes or creates useful memory structures for the
brand. The goal is to be consistent in everything you do and repeat
these brand identity elements in order to build mental availability or
brand salience. The latter refers to the probability of a consumer notic-
ing, recognizing and thinking of your brand in a buying situation. This
is critically different from brand awareness, which is simply the link to
the name of the product category and depends on a single and specific
cue. You could say that it closely links to Pavlovian conditioning, where
you want consumers to unconditionally associate the asset with the
brand.
A brand that truly succeeds in this is McDonalds, just like this 1994
advertisement demonstrates. The double golden arch is a more recog-
nized symbol than the Christian cross and, according to Eric Schlosser,
author of Fast Food Nation, children often recognize the McDonalds
logo before their own name.
#4THOU SHALT REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT
http://insit.es/2jp1oNB
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Apart from building strong memory structures, Sharp emphasizes the
importance of being physically available - being as easy to notice and
buy as possible, for as many consumers as possible, across as many
buying situations as possible. As purchases are driven by availability,
you need to be where they buy. A textbook example is Coca-Cola: it
is a brand you can literally find anywhere in the world. This was also
the brands BHAG (i.e. Big Hairy Audacious Goal). Robert Woodruff,
the companys leading figure from 1923 until his death in 1985, aimed
to put the Coca-Cola products within arms reach of desire and you
could say he succeeded. Regardless of where you are in the world,
there will be Coca-Cola; be it in hotel bars, supermarkets, restaurants,
vending machines, even in smalls stores along hot dusty roads or in
the most remote villages in Africa.
The latter is also something The Global Fund understood. They had
problems getting medicines to the people in the more remote villages
in Tanzania. Yet to their surprise Coca-Cola was available there. This
is why they teamed up with Coca-Cola and started using their distribu-
tion system to get the medicines to the people in those hard-to-reach
regions.
#5THOU SHALT BE EVERYWHERE
http://insit.es/2jp1uEX
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The Influencer Religion is the second school of thought to gain
momentum in this post-modern world, especially since the rise
of social media. The core idea is captured around the impor-
tance of influencer and word-of-mouth marketing and is inspired
by books like Jonah Bergers Contagious, Jennifer Aakers
Dragonfly effect (who is in fact the daughter of David Aaker from
the Classic Religion) and Steven Van Belleghems Conversation
Company.
INFLUENCERRELIGION
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Conversations are this religions currency. Its supporters emphasize
the fact that traditional media is dying. People are watching less and
less traditional television. This does not mean we are consuming less
media, we are rather switching formats (on demand, Netflix, You-
Tube). Next, consumers are bombarded with advertising messages,
according to a number of sources between to 4,000 and 10,000 brand
and advertisement messages reach us on a daily basis, only a small
minority of which gets absorbed. Yet conversations cut through this
clutter, because they are perceived as more reliable. Previous research
by InSites Consulting showed how recommendations from peers are
perceived as four times more reliable than those coming from com-
panies. New media and channels are replacing traditional TV adver-
tisement and the impact is great, as now everyone can say what they
think. Everyone is a marketer and a very powerful one, as what we say,
share and do can literally make or break brands.
#1CONVERSATIONS ARE THY SOLE PATH TO GROWTH
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As such, in this religion it is all about marketing through people, not to
people. Influencer marketing is key. It is about developing a connection
with the people who can create visibility for your product or service. Un-
like marketing approaches that focus on masses (as in the Penetration
Religion), this approach focuses on the individual influencers, who can
range from niche bloggers to well-known celebrities, this by creating a
ripple effect.
An example brand which used this approach is OnePlus when launch-
ing their product on the market late 2014. The smartphone market is
a hard-to-enter market for a new player, with severe competition from
big established players like Apple and Samsung. OnePlus approached
this through invite-only sales. People could only purchase a phone if
they had received an invite; these were distributed through contests or
people who already bought a OnePlus phone. This system allowed the
brand to spread through peers while also avoiding the risk of having
too much stock. It created a huge ripple effect and resulted in OnePlus
becoming the respected and grown brand they are today.
Bloggers can function as impactful disciples; not only can they outreach
traditional media relations, they can also target precise demographic
groups and are often linked to specific topics. The same goes for their
video counterparts, vloggers. Vloggers have become the reality stars of
our times. What was once a hobby for an increasing number of social
media users is now their lucrative career. Brands which want to target a
young demographic are increasingly keen to work with vloggers.
http://insit.es/2jsuNq9
#2THOU SHALT LOOK FOR DISCIPLES
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Every activation should be the start of a conversation. Research by
professor Vincent F. Hendricks from the University of Copenhagen
showed that conversation bubbles follow a similar pattern as financial
bubbles; you have stealth phase where story takes off, an awareness
phase where influencers pick up the story, a mania phase where the
story truly takes off and gets media attention leading to the ultimate
high and eventually there is a blow off phase where the conversation
melts down. In conversation management, all your activations should
be the initiation of those bubbles and you should keep the conversation
going avoiding those spikey movements. This means that it is important
to understand what makes people talk about your brand. What are the
conversation drivers?
#3ALL THY ACTIVATIONS SHOULD BE THE START OF A CONVERSATION
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Not only should you know who to talk to (i.e. who your influencers are)
and what drives people to talk about your brand, it is also important
to think about the content of those conversations. Your conversations
should have a purpose. Or as Jonah Berger puts it, conversations or
content become contagious if it is STEPPS. In this acronym, the S
stands for social currency, which refers to the fact that those who talk
about it or share content should feel remarkable (interesting, exclusive,
successful). The T stands for trigger: good content is associated with
ideas, activities or context in peoples lives so that the brand is top of
mind. The E refers to emotions; when we care, we share. The first P
stands for public, as your content should be publicly available so that
people can copy it and make it their own. The more public something
is, the more likely people will imitate it. The second P stands for prac-
tical value: it should be news you can use. Lastly the final S stands for
stories. Your product or service should be wrapped up in a sharable
story or narrative.
An example of a brand that succeeded in creating contagious content
and which is also mentioned in Bergers book, is Blendtec, a company
that sells professional and home blenders. The story goes (which is
the final S in STEPPS) that one day, George Wright, a new marketing
hire, walks into the office and notices a pile of sawdust on the floor. He
asks what it is and his colleagues tell him it is the result of the CEOs
daily activity of trying to break the blenders. Every day the CEO would
take a random object and throw it in the blender, to see if the blend-
er would break. So this brought George to an idea: with a 50-dollar
budget he bought a white lab coat and a pair of security glasses and
started filming the CEO doing what he was already doing: trying to
break blenders They sent the videos to their mailing list and before
they knew it, it caught on like wildfire. People saw it and they wanted to
pass it on and share it with their friends (which brings us to the first S in
STEPPS).
#4THOU SHALT CREATE CONVER-SATIONS WITH A PURPOSE
http
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The ultimate goal is to create a ripple effect and within this religion, a
key metric and performance indicator to measure success is the Net
Promotor Score. The metric, originally defined by Fred Reichheld,
Bain & Company and Satmetrix Systems, measures the likeliness of
people to recommend your product or service to family and/or friends.
This is measured on a scale from 0 to 10 and provides a score when
deducting the detractors (those attributing a score from 0 to 6) from the
promotors (scoring 9 or 10). The NPS can be as low as 100 (every-
body is a detractor) or as high as +100 (everybody is a promoter). Sky-
Team is one of the brands which tracks their NPS performance across
airlines and hubs.
#5THOU SHALT AIM FOR POSITIVE RECOMMENDA-TIONS
www.insites-consulting.com/presentation/research-as-a-customer-service/
I N S I T E S C O N S U L T I N G
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The last school of thought, which we like to refer to as the
Relationship Religion is inspired by Kevin Roberts, global CEO
of Saatchi & Saatchi, who wrote Lovemarks and also by Susan
Fourniers work Consumer-brand relationships and by How Cool
Brands Stay Hot by Joeri Van den Bergh, Managing Partner at
InSites Consulting. Again, we will highlight five key beliefs that
go hand in hand with this religion.
RELATIONSHIPRELIGION
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Research by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio showed that when the
emotional centers of our brain are damaged, not only do we lose the
ability to laugh or cry, we also lose the ability to make decisions.
More than 95% of our decisions are taken automatically, impulsively,
intuitively by the so-called type-1 processes. Only a small number of
our decisions are taken by the more rational part of our brain. When
making decisions we do not say what do I think about this; we rather
guide ourselves by using how do I feel about this as a key heuristic.
Emotions are at the core of our decision-making processes. In fact, re-
searches argue that the very point of choice is arguably always based
on emotion. If you want people to take action - whether it is voting or
buying a product - you need to appeal to their emotions. In neurologist
Donald Calnes words: Emotion leads to action, while reason leads to
conclusions.
There is a lot of discussion regarding the emotional spectrum, yet most
agree that there are such things as primary and secondary emotions.
Paul Ekmans research even uncovered six universal expressions of
emotions, namely happy, sad, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.
In advertising, many brands play on emotions. We can all probably
recall an ad which made us laugh or left us with a positive feeling, yet
there are also narratives out there that tap into the other sides of the
emotional spectrum. Here is an example of an ad that triggers surprise:
And there are even those that tap into things that make you cry:
Therefore, emotions are a key metric when evaluating an advertise-
ment execution. This is also how we approach ad testing at InSites
Consulting, where we use different tools and techniques to understand
the emotions conversed by an ad (e.g. eye-tracking, Implicit tool). As
emotions are type-1 processes, we should also use measures that tap
into this thinking. An example is the implicit association task, where an
ad is shown and afterwards participants see different (emotional) items
for a limited amount of time (1 or 2 seconds). They press the space
bar if they feel the item can be linked to the ad. This method filters out
over-rationalization, which is essential when wanting to measure the
prompted implicit emotional associations linked to a stimulus.
http://insit.es/2jZvzvE
http://insit.es/2joOwXD
#1THOU SHALT PUT EMOTIONS AT THE CORE
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So, in this religion it is all about creating an emotion connection with
your consumer. Research has shown that consumers do feel some
affinity with the brands around them and that these relationships are
conform concepts from the interpersonal relationship space. Authors
like Miller, Fournier and Allen explored these inter-brand-consumer
relationships and uncovered different relationship types. Some
examples are:
- Exchange: where one gets a straightforward benefit at a
reasonable cost - it does its job, nothing more and nothing less.
A common example is Colgate toothpaste.
- Adversarial: a brand you refuse to buy or that you are actively
against. This could be Microsoft for an Apple user or vice versa.
Another brand which could fit in this category is Monsanto, which
is apparently rated fourth most hated brand.
- Secret affair: a brand you downplay or keep hidden; you do not
want others to associate you with it. Common examples are
brands like Tampax or Kotex, the latter with a campaign that
included a strong message linked to this:
- Communal: a brand that you go out of your way for to support.
You have a strong desire to help it succeed. An example is the
supermarket chain Wegmans, which is top of the list when it
comes to being the most loved brand. Some people even wrote
love letters to the chain to share their love with the brand and their
wish to have a store near their homes.
http://insit.es/2jp1Vz5
#2THOU SHALT BUILD A RELATION-SHIP WITH THY CONSUMERS
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Relationship marketing starts with building a strong brand identity
that consumers can identify with. The core is to know yourself as a
brand. Before you even meet the consumer, you must fully understand
yourself. If you dont know who you are and what makes you different,
better, or special as a brand, how do you expect a consumer to do so?
Next, it is about knowing your type. Every brand has an ideal consumer
who feels that brand was made for him or her. The trick for marketers
is to identify that ideal consumer, their functional, emotional and social
needs and to match those needs with what your brand has to offer.
Identification is key here and as such serves as an important metric in
this religion. Identification refers to the extent to which a consumer rec-
ognizes an overlap between their personality and a brands. Academic
research (Lam et al, 2012) has shown that brand identification does not
just result in preference, it also reinforces purchase behavior. This is
also something that Diesel understood when, on their Pinterest page,
they wanted to provide content in line with their target audience.
You do not want to have a fling; the aim should be to have a long-last-
ing marriage with your consumers: true love. So, this is really about a
long-term investment; rather than about trying to encourage a one-time
purchase, relationship marketing tries to foster customer loyalty for
the long run. And as Kevin Roberts puts it, love equals loyalty beyond
reason. In a love relationship with a brand, people will do whatever
it takes to protect and help that brand. Remove the brand and people
buy a replacement. Take a love brand away and you have got a protest
on your hands. The latter is also what happened a few years ago when
Burger King removed their Whopper from the menu as a stunt:
This religion, in contrast with the penetration thinking, believes in loyal-
ty in the long run. According to this thinking, brand loyalty comes with
positive financial results, because loyal customers typically buy more
of the brands products, buy them more often and are willing to pay a
higher price than other customers. Next to that, they can also function
as brand ambassadors, which we could say brings us back to the Influ-
encer Religions we previously discussed.
#3THOU SHALT CRAFT THY DNA
#4THOU SHALT BUILD TO LAST
http://insit.es/2joSKhW
http://insit.es/2kvRfwb
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Just like human relationships, a (love) relationship goes with its ups
and downs. We all know that love is hard work. Similarly, brands should
work to keep the spark alive. You need to keep on understanding and
collaborating with consumers to keep that love in place. If not, the dis-
connect will grow and you are on your way to a divorce.
A brand that failed at keeping the spark alive is Abercrombie & Fitch,
as their extreme positioning to the cool kids backfired. They did not see
how their target audience had enough of the six packs, the half-naked
torsos or the dark fitting rooms and that walking around with hoodies
with a huge logo no longer matches the definition of cool.
An example of a brand that did manage to keep the spark alive is AXE.
If I ask you what comes to mind when you think of the typical AXE
advertisement, you would probably say things like a guy with a six pack
being chased by a group of gorgeous women. AXE understands that
the definition of masculinity is changing. One of the things they do, is
connect with their target audience in an online community to under-
stand what makes them tick and to learn from their feedback. Below,
you can see one of their latest campaigns, which still reflects the brand
image yet differently and more in line with their target audience.
http://insit.es/2joLHWS
#5THOU SHALT WORK FOR THY LOVE
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The pace at which change is coloring the business environment is
faster than ever, putting brands under increased pressure to be better,
faster and stronger. Yet in this world characterized by change, focus
is needed. Marketing frameworks provide brands and marketers with
this focus; a vision on what to emphasize and how to grow their brand.
Although they are contradicting in some aspects, all religions have their
truths. There is no right or wrong. The religion a brand should focus
on depends on its focus, life stage, vision and view. Although a clear
strategic focus is required, brands need to be careful not to be too rigid,
as in time they may need to alter their strategy. To use the analogy of
religions: extremism is dangerous.
At InSites Consulting we do not stand behind one particular religion.
We have expertise in all these frameworks and as an agency we sup-
port our clients in their brand religion strategy and we provide research
solutions, methods and techniques in line with their focus. We think
along and at times challenge our clients to make sure the right met-
rics are in place and the right techniques are used to measure brand
strength and growth alongside the frameworks they use.
Would you like to learn more about which Brand Religion is right for
you and which metrics go alongside this thinking? Lets have a chat or
organize a workshop with your team.
@insites
www.insites-consulting.com
