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While in Michigan a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to present to a graduate class in Strategic Brand Communication at Michigan State University.I was impressed by the enthusiasm and interest in branding at the graduate level, but as I was sharing some case studies of brands that continue to succeed and some that have faded out of the marketplace, I realized that many of the students never heard of these brands.  Given the fact that nearly half were international students from Asia and Eastern Europe and most of the rest were probably born after 1990, it was not surprising that I had to go a little deeper into the backgrounds of the companies I was using as examples.  Yet, there were some that immediately struck a familiar note with the students.  Brands like McDonalds, Lexus, WalMart, and Apple  were already successful when these students were born and they continue to  maintain a strong position that goes beyond top-of-mind awareness  because of the relationships that they maintain with their customers.

Like personal relationships, branding must continue to evolve as the situations (markets) change and as the customers change along with them. I showed the students how brands like Circuit City, Oldsmobile, Gateway, and Kmart have disappeared or are fading fast while the others mentioned above and long-time companies like AT&T, GE, Nordstrom’s, Coke, and Hallmark continue to grow in sales and in loyalty with their customers.  So, what is it that these brands have in common that we can learn from as we continue to strive to make our brands endure and prosper.   I think Dr. Len Berry at Texas A&M hit on the keys when he wrote several years ago about what successful stores had in common.  He studied the retailers that not only had long-term positive sales trends but also were excellent stocks, great places to work and expanding their geographic and customer bases.  Let’s look at how these relate to enduring brands in all categories:

1)   They have a reason for being.   It’s not enough just to be around for a long time and have good awareness.  A brand must continue to be relevant and adjust with the times and the customers.  McDonald’s continues to change its menus, its formats, and  its marketing while still maintaining the great taste of its fries and Big Macs that customers keep coming back for.  Their move to improve drive-thru’s, menu boards, breakfasts and desserts is an ongoing strategic activity and it has paid off as the company continues to grow here and abroad while faced with increased, tastier competition.  Just being a new brand in a growing category is not enough,  you must be differentiated by providing a value that creates an emotional bond with the customer.

2)   They compete on value not just price.   Price certainly continues to be important, but it only gets or keeps your brand on the playing field.  Publix has built its brand on making shopping a pleasure, but other grocers (especially WalMart) continue to hammer away at EDLP as a competitive edge.  Publix has responded with aggressive promotional offers (BOGO’s) but still maintains services and store improvements that the customers love and it communicates its marketing messages in a way that hits the heart as well as the wallet.

3)   Make it convenient.  This isn’t just having a store on every corner like Starbucks and Walgreen’s.  It’s much more.  Today’s customers want the entire experience to be hassle free and reliable.  Being consistent in price, in-stock, service and layout, and quality are all expectations that today’s customer wants.  Simply being online or having a new app isn’t enough to satisfy today’s customers.  Pizza Hut continues to improve its menu while sticking to its pepperoni and mozzarella with new products, services, ease of ordering and ongoing promotions that keep it on top in the pizza wars.

4)   Make it enjoyable.  The experience must be one that makes the customer feel good about buying your brand.  Not only should it be fun to shop but it must be rewarding experience that makes the customer feel good about sticking with your brand.  Walgreen’s latest endeavors in showing how your purchase will help people less fortunate around the world complements their convenience and in-store consistency.  Target’s support of education does the same while making it a fun place to spend your dollars.  Revlon’s long-term support of breast cancer research  helps their customers feel good while looking good as well.

Brand’s will endure by sticking to what got them there while constantly seeking ways to remain fresh and exciting.

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The news last month that George Zimmer had been pushed out of the Men’s Wearhouse, the company he founded and built into the most successful men’s clothing specialty chain in the country, caught a lot of retail watchers by surprise.

Not only was Zimmer the founder of the chain, but he was also the face and the spokesperson for the company which he grew from one store to over 1100 with nearly $2 billion in sales in 40 years at the helm.

George Zimmer founder Men’s Wearhouse

Many trade writers are skeptical that the company will continue to grow without Zimmer’s familiar face and closing line (“You’re going to like the way you look.  I guarantee it.) in every commercial.  It brings up the question of how important a CEO spokesperson like Zimmer (or Lee Iacocca for Chrysler and Dave Thomas for Wendy’s before him) is to the success of the brand.

I believe that Zimmer was critical to Men’s Wearhouse, but not because of his consistent presence in their commercials over the years.  I, too, had the impression that he wasn’t much more than Fast Eddy in New York or  Ollie Fretter in Detroit were as familiar faces on TV.  However, over 10 years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Zimmer at Texas A&M’s Center for Retail Studies Symposium and it changed my impression completely.  It also helped me understand why the Men’s Wearhouse brand was so successful.  The familiar CEO spent a little time talking about the chain’s history and their marketing efforts which featured him.  Then, he went into detail about how critical complementary sales and training were to building profitable and loyal sales.  The key, he said, was the ongoing training that every store associate went through repeatedly to insure they were giving the best service and were committed to selling wardrobes rather than items.

That’s the key to successful retail brands—making sure that your associates live up to the brand everyday, with every customer.  We don’t know whether the board at Men’s Wearhouse accelerated Zimmer’s exit because he no longer believed in the importance of the service and training.  One thing for sure is that if the board and Zimmer’s replacement at CEO, Douglas Ewert, want to move away from these important components of the brand.  The company will, indeed, miss their longtime spokesperson.  I guarantee it.

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One of the things that I experienced during my 30+ years in the marketing business what the propensity for advertisers—especially retailers—to want to change their marketing messages (and often their brand positioning) too often. Usually it was because the company got tired of the message long before the customer even became totally aware of it. We live and die with the process of presentations, revisions, edits, production, edits, testing, edits, and reviews to the point that we get tired of the message before it has a chance to resonate with our customers. Granted we must constantly review our marketing efforts and evaluate the results, but sometimes it is more prudent to stick with what’s working and focus on the key strengths of the brand to make sure that our customers really know what we stand for. Which brings me to the subject of mayonnaise.

This year marks the centennial of one of the strongest brands in CPG—Hellmann’s Mayonnaise and the company’s marketing is celebrating with an effective campaign that sticks with what has made this the number one brand in the category for most of those 100 years. Hellmann’s is the top-selling mayo since Richard Hellmann started selling it in New York a century ago. Keeping the same product formula—and branding formula—throughout the years, the company has stuck with its “bring out the best” theme for the past 25 years. It’s parent, Unilever, has maintained the same recipe for success from its French roots and continues to insure that it has stayed with Richard’s wife’s version of the original recipe while constantly and consistently showing how mayo makes almost everything taste the best.

However, the mayo has not gone stale. Hellman’s has a cutting edge promotional plan to celebrate the first 100 years with aggressive TV and print complemented by digital ads, a Facebook page, YouTube videos featuring chef Mario Batali and a smart phone app with 30 of Batali’s favorite recipes using Hellman’s mayo. It all spreads on the success that has given the brand a 31.1% share of the $1.87 Billion mayonnaise market. Being first in the market isn’t the only advantage to the Hellman’s brand, it continues to build on its heritage and taste with a brand strategy that is consistent, aggressive and on target.

Great brands don’t have to change or stray from their roots. Like Hellman’s, brand such as Tabasco, Rolex, Ben & Jerry’s, Nordstrom’s and others have found that staying with what got them there is a great brand strategy.

DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT AMAZON AND KINDLE FOR “Brain Branding—Activate the Brain, Stimulate Your Brand” by Ken Banks and Robyn Winters. A new way to look at growing your brand—even if it’s been around for a 100 years!

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With the ongoing poor results reported by JC Penney over the past several months, it came as no surprise to me as I arrived in France a couple weeks ago to learn that he had been fired.  No matter how good your resume is, non-stop double-digit declines in revenues and profits—and the resultant plummeting of the stock price—Johnson couldn’t expect to survive the uproar from the board, Wall Street and long-time customers.  I’ve written about the branding makeover at JCP a couple times this past year, but I felt it necessary to give one more opinion on why the guy who was so successful at Apple just couldn’t make it happen at a conventional department store.

First, let’s look at what Johnson had at Apple.  First, Apple is a brand that was truly differentiated from the competition.  Cutting-edge design.  Breakthrough technology.  Futuristic apps and products.  These were all in place before he was so successful at Apple.  Taking the brand principles that were in place and applying them (very well I must admit) to the retail operations for Apple truly set the stores up as a model for a consumer centric experience and one where the people, the design and the operations lived up to the brand promise everyday.

Second, Johnson had a strong, brand evangelist as a leader in Steve Jobs.   While he was demanding and relentless, Jobs set a standard that people half as smart as Johnson would have succeeded by following.  No such leadership existed at JCP.  Johnson’s predecessors were traditional department store veterans who chose more to emulate and copy stores like Kohl’s and Macy’s and really never stood out as anything special.  Business was built on ongoing promotions and awareness and while that generated volume, it didn’t develop a hallmark brand that the board wanted when it hired the new regime last year.

Third, JCP had built its growth in recent years on these promotions and coupons but failed to develop a loyalty to the stores and the people that quickly evaporated as soon as Johnson’s team adopted a new, everyday (somewhat) low price strategy.  As I have written in this blog before, the mistake was to go to the extreme.  JCP should have maintained a consistent (reduced) promotional plan to maintain it’s loyal sale shoppers while it developed the look and messaging that would have differentiated it from the other department stores.

Apple didn’t have to have sales because it built its brand on the products and the service that were so far above the competition.  JCP had to gradually climb out of the hole it had dug for itself over the years with me-too advertising.

Ron Johnson, Michael Francis and the others in this new regime didn’t suddenly get dumb when they got to Plano.  No they just tried to apply the principles of a strong brand to one that needed a lot more repair than they bargained for.

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I was watching television a couple days ago when a new Sears appliance spot came on…and it was really creative and broke through the clutter.  Frankly, I’ve been pretty impressed with the creativity in Sears commercials for several months now and have to give their advertising team credit for making a valiant effort to get the store back on its feet. (Can’t say the same for its sister store Kmart, however.)

Unfortunately, I don’t believe any advertising—no matter how creative or well placed it is—can make up for the lack of a meaningful brand strategy.  Despite all of the aggressive ads, Sears simply isn’t a factor to the consumer anymore.  In many of the groups that I present to or work with, I ask the question “How many of you have shopped or considered shopping at Sears over the past 6 months?”  The answer is almost universally a resounding “None!”  It’s hard to believe, but what was once the #1 retailer in America is no longer a factor for most customers these days.  If you wonder why this happened, I suggest considering what Dr. Len Berry of Texas A&M wrote many years ago about what successful store have in common.  The number one trait that the hot stores shared then—and now—is that they have a reason for being.  And that reason is not just because there are other retailers who offer the same merchandise and services in a similar box.  It’s a real reason for existing and for being firmly entrenched into the shopping lists of many consumers.  Ask yourself (unless you work there) if Sears disappeared tomorrow, would you really miss them?  Would you wonder where you were going to shop for appliances, tools, paint, automotive supplies and service?  All of these were distinguishable strengths that Sears once maintained in the marketplaces.  They not only were top of mind, but they were almost synonymous with these categories in their heyday.

The problem is that Sears forgot what its brand was really all about way back when they tried their “Softer Side” and other failed formats.  It forgot why people shopped them and ignored what the competition was doing in their own backyards with the categories I mentioned above.    With all the negativity surrounding JCP these days, I suspect that despite some really creative print and broadcast advertising, they have moved away from what has made them a factor with customers in the past and their once loyal shoppers aren’t rejecting them.  They simply are not considering because they have no reason to.

The first step in an effective brand strategy is to determine what your value is to your target customer and how will you differentiate your store or product from the competition.  It is not just running a great ad or campaign.  It’s providing a reason for being everyday.