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Subaru Love: IT'S All About Story.

4/30/2015

- Image © Brian E. Faulkner -

Tags: Subaru, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Nikon, Kodak

Do you own a Subaru?

If so, you probably love it – because a Subaru is versatile, safe, lasts a long time, is great to haul pets around in, performs well, makes a statement about larger community issues and drives you to adventure.

People write love letters to Subaru:

Dear Subaru,
This morning was cool and although it had not rained, the road was damp from morning dew. I was driving in the left lane of a two lane highway. I came over a crest in the road to find three cars stopped in the right lane …

Somehow, the driver of that Subaru, a 2013 Legacy sedan, not only avoided an almost certainly serious accident – twice – but escaped without a scratch on either him or his car, thanks to the Subaru’s handling.

My Subie never skidded uncontrollably. It never failed me. I cleared the entire accident scene completely unscathed. I love my Legacy today, not for helping survive an accident but for completely saving me from having one. Thank you Subaru, you've earned my respect, my gratitude and my loyalty.

Marketers who want customers to maximize the use and enjoyment of their products will do well to take a page from Subaru’s book. More than any brand of any product category I can think of, Subaru has consistently and successfully painted a compelling picture of customers in their target market – in their advertising and on their Web site. The idea, of course, is that if you see yourself reflected in product marketing, you’re likely to want to buy that product, which is one reason why Subaru’s conquest sales are so high.

Subaru buyers are relatively young, well-educated and have higher incomes than the average car buyer. And they are thrifty; according to a 2011 study, 36% of Subaru customers pay cash. They support causes, too; check out the first Subaru you come to in a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s parking lot. Its bumpers likely will be festooned with stickers heralding all kinds of political and environmental values.

Last year, my 30-something daughter and son-in-law, who live in the Pacific Northwest, one of Subaru’s strongest markets, bought a slate gray Subaru Forester. Their family of three fit the car’s profile to a T, and as you might suspect, they did not choose their Subaru on a whim. They knew what they wanted and went for it, after riding for years in a blue ’78 Volvo 240 wagon (that my daughter now uses to transport her landscaping tools).

I think people “tune-in” to Subaru, and when they buy one, it seems to be an experience-based decision – plus a dash of emotion.

“The brand has a razor-sharp understanding of its owners,” writes MediaPost automotive reporter Karl Greenberg in an article profiling a Subaru TV spot that ran last September. You may recall the ad: a hippie grandmother tries to explain her long-ago “Summer of Love” to a young granddaughter, both of them riding in the back of the family Outback while Mom and Dad look on quizzically in the rear view mirror. In a single creative sweep, Subaru stretches their appeal over two-plus generations while airing a spot people enjoy – and remember. The entire family ends up hugging a tree.

Subaru is strong on story. No matter where you go on their Web site, you’re never far from one:

Dear Subaru,
This is the story of my wonderful parents. After 65 years of working his whole life, my father and my ‘stay at home’ mom embarked upon a cross-country adventure with their dog Buck, a Subaru Outback and a small teardrop trailer … following their dream to travel the country. After a lot of planning they set off from the Florida Panhandle all the way to Washington State and back. I cannot help but think they are using their Outback for the EXACT purpose it was made. They are wonderful people and deserve to enjoy life …”

Nikon gives cameras to ordinary people and then posts their pictures online, a story without words. Kodak understood that a long time ago; they didn’t sell film as much as they sold pictures. Story was at the center of their marketing strategy … and should be at yours. Because it’s the only way to get into people hearts. And stay there.

“What makes a Subaru a Subaru?” the company asks. The answer, of course, is … LOVE.

TakeAway: Sell the experience, sell the enjoyment. Sell the pleasure of using your product. Then the customers you want most will want you, too.

Content © Brian E. Faulkner

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Don't Mess With Your Brand Story.

4/29/2015

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Image © by Brian E. Faulkner

Tags: Microsoft, NPR, George Zimmer, Men’s Wearhouse, Joseph Abboud, Jos. A. Bank, Ford Motor Company, GM, Cadillac, Buick, Ford, Lincoln, Apple, Coca-Cola, New Coke
Every brand, company, product or service has a story – just like people. People’s stories are a combination of image and reputation, which can be anything from well focused to wildly irresponsible.   Some businesses may be well-positioned (in a controlled, strategic sense) while others cast their reputation to the wind, allowing the marketplace to define who they are and what they represent.   Call it default positioning.   The example that most often comes to my mind is Microsoft, which hasn’t done a great positioning job. There are many “Microsofts” out there, depending on who's doing the talking.

Heard an interview with George Zimmer on NPR this morning. His topic was paying people more, even at the expense of company profits. But what grabbed my attention was his distinctive gravelly voice, the one he used on television when he was boss of The Men’s Wearhouse – you know the one:

“You’re going to like the way you look. “I guarantee it!”

Every spot had a story, and as leader-spokesperson, Zimmer was deeply imbedded in the Men’s Wearhouse image -- along with that famous tagline. I can’t help but notice that the Men’s Wearhouse strategic positioning has become less distinctive since Zimmer was forced out, supposedly because of management disagreements. Something’s missing from their advertising, and it’s not just Zimmer. Despite the few recent Men’s Wearhouse spots featuring signature suit designer Joseph Abboud, their marketing seems focused more on price, like their long-time competitor, Jos. A. Bank, which Men’s Wearhouse purchased early in 2014 after a turbulent takeover battle.

The takeaway here is that a strong brand story should not be discarded so readily, although I’m sure the Men’s Warehouse board thought long and hard about the strategic consequences of dumping Zimmer. I find it discouraging, however, that they’ve fallen back on price advertising after such success with set-apart positioning, although it must be working or they wouldn’t do it. But I’ll bet their margins aren’t as good as when Zimmer was hawking the wares, because price was hardly mentioned in his spots and, as I recall, Wall Street liked the stock.

I have several friends and acquaintances, each with a business in the same retail category. Two of them ride a high-price wave supported by a brand story that's more than 150 years old. They don’t have to sell on price and, as a result, get high margins. Another friend sells the same type of high-end merchandise at market prices, although different brands. His business story has been established for well over 50 years; customers seek him out because of his quality reputation. Still others I know in that same business always seem to be wrestling with price. They don’t command the margins they could because their business stories are indistinct. They don’t have a Marketable Truth© to stand on.

Both Ford Motor Company and GM currently are wrestling with their image stories. GM is in the latter stages of rebooting its Cadillac brand to compete with the best German luxury performance sedans; they've had enough success that Cadillac is no longer seen as exclusively for oldsters seeking a luxury nameplate and plush ride.   Buick, another GM brand that used to have a fuddy-duddy image, is experiencing a surprising sales renaissance driven by rising demand in China, where the brand has become a status symbol. Different time, different story.

Ford also is into a bit of image retooling of late. Lincoln (finally!) is thinking about abandoning its confusing alphabet soup model designations in favor of real names like Continental and possibly even Zephyr.   All while Ford grapples with a negative quality blip brought about in recent years by a dashboard communication and entertainment system that has proven troublesome and hard to use – so much so that auto enthusiast Web sites are recommending that people wait ‘til a redesigned system comes out on the 2016 models later this year to purchase their new Fords and Lincolns.

When I think of brand image, however, I think most often about Apple. They were an upstart at first, but gradually built a business, operating system and reputation that out-shined the king of personal computers at that time, the venerable IBM. Will gutsy moves into new product categories like luxury watches and even automobiles sour Apple’s reputation? Not likely, because they’ve told and retold their brand story so well – and so long – that they’re as close to invincible as any business or brand out there.

Even so, in this day of social-driven media, there are new voices everywhere, and some percentage is quick to broadcast bad news. One exemplary misstep marketers are quick to recall is the New Coke debacle of 1985, when Coca-Cola almost lost its way -- and that was before the Internet became so widely available. This very day, April 29, 2015, online rumblings are afoot about a second brand of listeria-laden ice cream and a major beer maker’s label that seems to make light of rape.

Reputation or image -- call it what you will -- can bite you in the backside any minute … but also can help lead you to greatness. All the more reason to consider whether your brand, business, product or service is solidly positioned in today’s uber-competitive, uber-critical world.

TakeAway: Shape your strategic position carefully. And guard your brand story for dear life.

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner         Marketable Truth © by Brian E. Faulkner

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Getting Paid What You Ought.

4/16/2015

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- enthusiastic Gravity people -

American media has been all a-twitter lately about a young Seattle business leader’s decision to increase the pay of his employees to at least $70,000, even as the national conversation continues about increasing the minimum wage.

Under this 30-year-old leader’s imaginative plan, the pay of 70 out of 120 people who work at his company, Gravity Payments, and are not presently making that much money, will see their income rise by $5,000 per year until they reach $70,000. They should all get there in 2017. There’s also an immediate pay raise to $50,000 if an employee is not there already (average pay at the check processing firm now is $48,000).

Why is CEO Dan Price making this move?

“I think CEO pay is way out of whack,” he says, tapping into the growing notion that CEOs make far too much money compared to the people who work for them. These days that ratio is said to be about 300:1, with the average CEO salary reported in the $11-14-million range.

“The market rate for me as a CEO compared to a regular person is ridiculous,” Price told the New York Times. “It’s absurd. My salary wasn't $1 million because I need that much to live,” he admitted (to ABC News), “but that's what it would cost to replace me as a CEO. There is nothing in the market that is making me do it.”

So why did he do it? Some talking heads accused Price of publicity seeking after the story appeared widely on cable and network news yesterday. Others practically rolled their eyes at the absurdity of such a boneheaded move and suggested that his company would soon be out of business because he’s paying too much in salaries.

Price himself says that he was led to the idea by conversations with friends who make $40,000 a year and find it a constant challenge to make ends meet, never mind get ahead. Median U.S. household income currently is around $52,000, lower than before the recession. In Seattle, median income is $15,000 more and the cost of living is much higher. Real estate site Trulia.com reports that the average home in Seattle lists for $700,000 (and can be bid even higher in Seattle’s most desirable neighborhoods). In contrast, the average U.S. home sells for around $175,000.

But what prompted Price to make the move was a news story he came across suggesting that people need an income of $70-$75,000 to have enough money to live on and be happy, based on a 2010 Princeton University study. Researchers discovered that “the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant” increases as income goes up – to about $75,000 a year, that is, where happiness apparently plateaus.

Price seemed refreshingly genuine in the few television interviews I’ve seen – and if a bit of an idealist, so what? He’s earned the right to his private experiment in income equality; eleven years ago, he was a Seattle Pacific University student trying to start a business in his dorm room, where he no doubt consumed many more ramen noodle meals than steak dinners.

He also sees the generous pay raise as a good business move, if not in the short term certainly in the long run, “because I want the company to be sustainable even if something happens to me.”

To help things along, he’s cutting his own pay to $70,000 and will leave it there until profits return to a level where the big paycheck can be supported once again.

"I may have to scale back a little bit,” Price admits, “but nothing I’m not willing to do. I’m single. I just have a dog.” And still drives the old Audi he got from a dealer in return for services provided when his business was just getting underway.

What About Minimum Wage?

Amid TV footage of joyous Gravity Payments employees celebrating their new good fortune, it seems instructive to consider the issue of a national minimum wage. Several months back, I authored a post suggesting that “minimum wage should be stricken from our business vocabulary” in favor of a much more productive system of “performance pay put in place by employers.” My take on the politically (and even morally) contentious issue of minimum wage was that paying people more does make sense -- if their wages reflect performance and potential.

Clearly, some people aren’t worth hiring at all – at any price. But many others are, because given a reason (and the tools) to excel, they likely will. Their pay should reflect their increasing value as they progress, as they grow into their jobs and help their employers attract more customers, become more efficient, expand, make more money, etc. Business does not owe warm bodies a living, people who could care less about performance but believe that they are, indeed, owed a job. Employers are not welfare providers.

Let’s say, like Seattle, our national government decrees a $15 per hour minimum wage and applies it to all employees everywhere in some time frame (Seattle’s is seven years) without tagging the raise to performance. Some employees will grab the brass ring and fly because they are made that way while others shuffle along without a concern in the world. These under-performers eventually should find themselves back on the street but likely will not, because "that wouldn't be fair". Dan Price, on the other hand, is working toward a minimum wage of $70,000 at his company and is not likely, short of charity, to keep people on if they're not performing – at $70K or $48K or any price. As I opined in my earlier blog post, if your performance excels, you should earn more. If you're a slacker, however, content with just hanging around and collecting a paycheck, you should be re-introduced to the state of unemployment.

So keep one eye on Seattle, as its government-decreed $15 minimum wage settles in. And keep the other eye on Gravity Payments. See which minimum wage one approach works out best.

TakeAway: Your employees are a potential source of competitive advantage. Pay them in step with performance, and you will succeed together.

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

My earlier Minimum Wage Post: http://www.brianefaulkner.com/blog/minimum-wage-should-be-stricken-from-our-business-vocabulary

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Why Toyota's Camry Is Like The Velveteen Rabbit -- and Cadillac's CT6 Is Not.

4/6/2015

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- image courtesy of Toyota -

Tags: Toyota Camry, Cadillac CT6, Buick, Ford Fusion, The Velveteen Rabbit

Two creative approaches to automobile advertising have caught my eye of late: spots on TV and online for Cadillac’s revolutionary new CT6 luxury performance sedan and a television / online campaign for Toyota’s competent but non-revolutionary Camry. One campaign engages the mind, the other tugs at the heart. One campaign is daring, the other is bold. One is cool and self-centric, the other warm and other-centric. Both ads are effective.

Let’s start with Toyota, for whom Saatchi, LA has created a series of spots declaring the heretofore ordinary Camry now to be bold – at least by association, because the car only plays a bit part in the ads. The real drama happens in stories that wrap themselves around the car:

A young woman finds B.B. King’s guitar in a storage unit, and after “tracking down a legend” in her Camry, returns it to him.

Another young woman escapes from her wedding just in time, and the getaway car is … a Camry.

A man comes to realize that “being a dad is more than being a father” as he reflects on those growing-up moments with his daughter, intercut with scenes of them together in a Camry.

Then there’s Sochi medalist Amy Purdy’s paean to her dad, who not only encouraged her through her many physical trials but donated one of his kidneys to save her life.

Not to mention the spot featuring Amy competing, dancing and modeling as Mohammed Ali narrates.

- image courtesy of Cadillac -

This is heartfelt stuff. And although the Camry spots barely move the cool-meter, they do a good job of whacking you in your emotional center (especially if you’re a dad) – and millions of people seem to like them given the YouTube plays they’ve racked up. But bold?

Like Cadillac and other auto brands (Buick has been notably successful), Toyota has been trying to crank up their style to generate wider appeal. Will their “Bold” campaign help attract new buyers, as cars like Ford’s fast-selling Fusion (with a much cooler name) take a bead on Camry’s sales lead?

Marketing experts are divided. Some say Toyota is headed in the right direction with their Bold campaign but that turning around brand impression takes years, if not generations. Other say “not so fast,” a Camry is a Camry and no matter how good it may become, it was born to blend in.

Cadillac, too, is all about changing prospective buyers’ impression of their brand – and in recent years they appear to have been succeeding for the most part. In fact, they appear to have just about exorcised the image of the slab-sided, boat big ‘80s and ‘90s models from people’s minds. Short of buying up and crushing all the clunky old Caddys left on the road, about all Cadillac can do is (1) design cars that truly stand out in their market niche and (2) have something truly bold to say about them.

Thus, the CT6 “Dare Greatly” campaign, created by Publicis Worldwide, a low-key exercise in creative edginess that presents the car in SoHo, slo-mo style.

“How does a fashion intern (Jason Wu) become an arbiter of style?” the spot asks.
“How does a college dropout invent the personal computer?” it asks of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
“How does a director take 12 years to shoot a film?” the spot asks of “Boyhood” director Richard Linklater.
And in conclusion also asks, “How does a 112 year old carmaker reinvent itself?”

The CT6 launch ad, created by Publicis Worldwide and set to Edith Piaf singing Non, je ne regrettes rien (No, I regret nothing), presents thumbnail descriptions of “only those who dare” in a noir-like New York setting that evokes a sense of mystery and glamor as the newest Cadillac lurks in the background, almost as if an afterthought.

One does not so much “like” this ad as inhabit it – that is, if you’re in the demographic that GM hopes will lust after this car, which has been designed to raise the game against their European competitors, not so much by emulating them but by establishing a new standard of automotive performance and luxury.

The CT6 and Camry ads both wrap their product in an image they hope will attract buyers – Camry warms the heart and speaks of “love stuff” while Caddy quickens the pulse and addresses the “daring”.

Both carry off their creative well. But only Cadillac’s approach seems authentic.

Ironically, I prefer watching the Camry spots (which makes me older-than-cool and more in their target market). I like Camrys, which perform their middle-ground, mid-sized sedan function admirably and without pretending to be cool. When I rent one on an out-of-town trip, I am assured of enjoying a competent, quality, unpretentious ride. Which is what makes a Camry a Camry and part of the reason that nameplate remains the best-selling one in the U.S.

I think of Margary Williams’ story of The Velveteen Rabbit when considering whether Toyota may be missing the strategic mark with its otherwise well-executed Camry creative. You may recall the story, where a stuffed bunny yearns to become “Real”.

“Real isn't how you are made,” the rabbit is told. “It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

Camry is already “real” in its market’s mind. So why go to such lengths to pretend it really is something else?

TakeAway: Don’t sell bold unless you’ve got bold to sell. Instead, communicate what’s really real. Be authentic!

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

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sample blog:

This is a sample blog for writer Brian E. Faulkner. It presents stories about brands that do a good job communicating competitive advantage. Stories are gleaned from the business press, personal experience and occasional interviews. Updates are made from time to time, and every so often there will be a post of general interest -- about things like success, passion, social trends, etc.

Author

Brian Faulkner is a writer and strategic communication consultant who helps business clients explain their competitive advantage in compelling and enduring ways.

He also is a five-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer & narrator for a highly-rated and well-loved magazine series.

Subaru Love: IT'S All About Story.

Don't Mess With Your Brand Story.

Getting Paid What You Ought.

What About Minimum Wage?

Why Toyota's Camry Is Like The Velveteen Rabbit -- and Cadillac's CT6 Is Not.

sample blog:

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