[Getting Your Brand Into Costume ]

With this being Halloween season, our thoughts turn to one of our favorite pastimes: costume parties. In particular, we’re fascinated by the way a costume seems to change the person inside it. Your shy friend dons a blue wig and becomes the life of the party. The office chatterbox becomes an eerily silent specter. A costume allows you to step outside your usual role and become someone else... and gives the rest of the world permission to take the new you at face value.

A lot of organizations could learn the value of getting into costume. Often, a bold new product or service needs a bold new look...especially if the market’s perception of your brand is holding you back.

Hershey’s, for instance, has been promoting a new premium line of chocolates, Cacao Reserve, with stylish design and heavy advertising. But, according to Advertising Age, this spring the chocolatier found itself forced to discount the $2.50 bars. The reason is stamped right on the package: “Cacao Reserve by Hershey’s.”

To Hershey’s executives, their name probably symbolizes quality, tradition, and history. But to the marketplace it symbolizes Bars, Kisses, and Kit Kats: reliable, middle-of-the-road sweets. Why pay more for Hershey, even if it is gourmet, the consumer thinks, when I could be buying Godiva, Ghirardelli, or Lindt?

Cacao Reserve might well taste better than its competitors, but most consumers will never find that out. To be successful, Hershey’s should have put on its Cacao Reserve costume and never let the mask slip. Rather than being a badge of pride, “by Hershey’s” is a scarlet letter to premium chocolate buyers.

On the flip side, it’s typically much easier for a brand to explore down-market...and the new offshoot sometimes finds it’s worth it to dress up in the parent brand’s clothing. Hence the success of Filene’s Basement, Nordstrom Rack, and outlet malls. Whether one finds new products, less commercially successful lines, or even remaindered clothing, it all feels like a steal – so what if there’s a stitch out of place? Almost inevitably, the halo of the parent brand’s success clings to the new line: I may be at the Rack, the consumer thinks, but I’m still in a Nordstrom.

Some firms dress up their products to capitalize on other brands’ reputations. This is especially rampant in grocery store cereal and soda aisles. Notice, for instance, how huddled right next to Froot Loops’ Toucan Sam is a generic knock-off also pitched by a bird character. Not confident enough that their low prices can lure customers away from Kellogg’s, many store brands resort to near-piracy of Kellogg’s imagery and packaging as well.

Safeway is the rare company that seems to know how to dress up and down. Unlike most grocery store brands, their Safeway Select line does not try to ape the look and feel of name brands. Instead, with lush photography and elegant design, Safeway Select has positioned itself as a first among storebrands – not Coca-Cola or Kellogg’s, but a cut above its other grocery competitors. More recently, it has opened a line of upscale quick-service restaurants called Citrine New World Bistro. Aimed at those who snack at Panera and Nordstrom, the chain’s connection to Safeway is being kept almost completely hush-hush–awise strategy for a brand trying to woo diners who wouldn’t food-shop anywhere but Wegmans.

Picking the right outfit is tricky, but Safeway knows when to parade in all its finery, and when to go incognito. Hershey’s–and scores of other firms – would do well to take note.

[ Our Two Cents About Your Two Bits ]

You’re in possession of some fascinating examples of branding. They’re probably scattered across your dresser or lurking in your bag. You might even have some jingling in your pockets right now. They’re the new state quarters, produced by the United States Mint.

Since 1999, the U.S. Mint has been producing quarters whose reverse sides each celebrate a particular state. The result is not only compulsively collectible, but also highly revealing of a how each state sees itself. And that’s why these quarters fascinate us: because they are an exercise in branding. Each quarter has one chance to reach an audience. Each message is set in stone...a copper/nickel alloy, actually. Like any marketing effort, each was a mix of art, strategy, and committee process. And each quarter had to please several audiences, including its governor (who determined his or her state’s design submission process) and the U.S. Mint itself.

So if we examine the new quarters the way we do other branding efforts, which ones work? Here are a few of our favorites, a few duds, and a few that fall somewhere in between.

Montana– New for 2007, this quarter is very strong. The bison skull is both visually arresting and speaks to the state’s Native American heritage, and the landscape reminds us of wide-open appeal of The Big Sky Country.

Maryland– Sadly, our home state’s quarter gets mixed reviews. Like our license plate,this coin is spare and stately. But our nickname – The Old Line State – is obscure, and our statehouse, despite its colonial significance, doesn’t seem to evoke enough of the state’s spirit.

West Virginia– We hate to pick on our much-picked-upon neighbor. But a quarter should not be a postcard of a bridge.

Florida– Florida’s Gateway to Discovery quarter neatly juxtaposes a Spanish galleon and the Space Shuttle, effortlessly spanning five centuries of history. Brilliant.

New Hampshire– Originally, the state’s choice of The Old Man in the Mountain seemed odd to those not familiar with the landmark. Now it seems like uncanny foresight– three years after the coin was minted, The Old Man crumbled. From a marketing perspective, this was luck at its height: the event received major (and elegiac) media attention, adding to the strength of New Hampshire’s brand.

Indiana– Our Design Director lives and breathes auto racing, and even he thinks this Indy 500-focused quarter lacks the appropriate gravitas.

Texas– From a design perspective, the Doric simplicity of this quarter – the star, the slogan, the state itself – is commendable. But the size of the state silhouette reminds us that Texas remains, as always, fascinated with Texas.

Alabama– Like any good marketer, Alabama uses surprise to cut through the clutter. In featuring Tuscumbia native Helen Keller, Alabama calls attention to its favorite daughter; in using Braille lettering, the state takes full advantage of the sculptural possibilities of the medium. Bravo.

Wyoming– Simply mystifying. We salute The Equality State’s record on women’s suffrage, but slapping this nickname next to a cowboy on a bucking bronco produces a thoroughly muddled piece. Perhaps all the cowgirls were modeling for other coins...

Utah– We’re excited about this upcoming quarter as well. Proclaiming itself The Crossroads of the West, Utah commemorates the Golden Spike and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad...when the West was still wild and mass transit was cool.

Your Name Here– So what about your brand? Can you distill who you are down to an image on a coin face? Try it! Can a nickname succinctly capture your essence? If you had just one chance to speak to the nation, what would you say? A brand solution worth minting is a brand solution worth a mint.

[ Baltimore: To Be Determined ]

Behind our offices there used to be a giant mural. It featured the bricks of our building melding into a stage curtain, which in turn parted to reveal the prow of the USS Constellation. The ship cut through churning water. The Inner Harbor stood proud in the background.

Actually, the mural is still there; it’s just hidden. No longer visible to cars streaming toward Baltimore’s stadiums, the mural is now part of an alley behind a new building that will house...whatever. And while new construction should be welcomed for the jobs, opportunity, and sheer energy it brings to our city, it’s sad to see this proud image of Baltimore’s sailing past covered up.

But it’s our present image that currently concerns us. By now you’ve probably had more than enough time to digest (or forget) last summer’s much ado about the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association’s tourism slogan. Bright and cheery ads, banners, and a website all trumpeted, “Baltimore: Get in on it.” From almost the moment it appeared, reactions to the campaign were...mixed, to put it kindly.

In an editorial, the Baltimore Business Journal’s Joanna Sullivan blamed the widespread resistance to the branding effort on Baltimore’s continuing “inferiority complex.” We respectfully must disagree: you can love a city and still loathe its tagline. (Similarly, Cornerstone practically runs on Diet Coke...but we vastly prefer The New Seekers teaching the world to sing in 1971 to G. Love teaching the world to “chill” in 2005.)

Meghana Kulkarni, in The Urbanite’s August 2006 issue, summed up the campaign’s central problem in a nutshell: “Seems like we answered the question, ‘What do we have that everyone else has too?’” Of the 14 icons that make up the logo, at least eight are generic to any large town, let alone a world-class city. As for the tagline, what specifically are we supposed to be getting in on? Kulkarni wisely notes
that a successful civic slogan, whether official (“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”) or controversial (“Keep Austin Weird”), emblazons its city with one distinctive notion, from which the rest of its character can be extrapolated.

BACVA’s mistake was in focusing on everything Baltimore has to offer – in their own words, “the totality of the Baltimore experience” – instead of focusing on what Baltimore is – the essence of the Baltimore experience. Branding is an act of peeling away layers to find the core. Slapping on a new facade (or 14) just obscures the central work.

True, last summer is long over; in fact this summer is speedily approaching. But what’s important is what you can glean from the debacle. After all, it’s easy to nod in agreement with these principles. It’s another to apply them – to focus the same coldly critical eye on your own advertising. Are you trumpeting all that you do, or what you do best? Are you merely establishing the credentials that put you in line with your competitors, or are you shouting what makes you unique?

Perhaps this test is the most telling: when you last circulated your marketing campaign for comments, did everyone point out what could still be excised? Or did they start dolloping things back in? Sometimes, everyone getting in on something doesn’t help. In the rush to answer dueling constituencies, you can forget to address who really matters: the audience.

Meanwhile, we’re glad a new building went up behind us. We wholeheartedly want what’s good for Baltimore. But we miss viewing our sailing mural, so emblematic of this historic city’s unique charm.

Huh. “Charm.” Now there’s an interesting notion to attach to a city. Maybe one worth a campaign.

[ WWW: World Wide Widgets? ]

William Gibson, the man who coined the term “cyberspace,” once published a novel called Virtual Light. In an early chapter, the protagonist comments that his roommate had printed out the news just the way she liked it, with no disasters and three times the celebrity romance coverage.

This was in 1996, when Netscape still indexed every website as it appeared. Soon Yahoo! would let users customize its portal. Now, we don’t have to browse bookshelves anymore – Amazon will recommend titles we’re likely to like. We aren’t yet printing out custom newspapers, but we don’t need to – RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) feeds will deliver news from pre-selected sites.

The Internet, as predicted, has put almost unlimited information at our fingertips. But what no one predicted was that we might actually receive less information than before.

Go to a bookstore and you’re bound to pick up something other than what you were looking for. Read the paper, in print or online, and you’re bound to browse an article you weren’t seeking. But with RSS feeds you get only what you already know you’ll read.

This trend is accelerating. For instance, our office’s new Macs now sport the Dashboard feature. Thanks to Dashboard’s “widgets,” we can check the weather, traffic, airline flights, ski conditions...the list goes on. And more widgets are available to download each day. We don’t need to even risk the distraction of Google to get almost all our daily information.

It’s certainly convenient. But is it good? In many ways, society is now less well informed. We’re becoming isolated in our own informational niches, leading to groupthink, narrow vision, and general disengagement.

Or are we?

Since we have the information we need, we’re more free to chase information we want. Every second a widget saves us is one that can be spent discovering something new. We might throw away half the newspaper unread, but RSS feeds link us to articles we’ll probably like, which in turn lead us to still more articles, and so on.

It’s scary for businesses though, because more media makes it harder to reach customers. Are they listening to regular radio or satellite? Do they see your banner ads? Will Google AdWords always work? What about email blasts?

The good news is that creativity still rules the day. The right mix of offerings will continue to hold your customers’ attention, and even make them brand evangelists. We didn’t need to see any ads for Snakes on A Plane; our kids sent us customized phone invitations to the film from Samuel L. Jackson. Last time we got sick, the CareerBuilder.com chimps sent us an e-card. The very prevalence of these widgets, free downloads, and other goodies keep users returning again and again to sites like Apple, MySpace, or YouTube. Strong advertising is now as valued a commodity as a cool music video – the good ones are talked about and shared around.

No question, the Balkanization of shared information and experiences is a disturbing trend from certain social and civic perspectives. But businesses and advertisers should welcome widgets and other new applications as an opportunity...as yet another way to earn customers.

After all, our Dashboard now sports dinner recipes from Epicurious.com. And thanks to the BBC widget, our credit card receipts now show a surprising number of British music purchases. The future of Virtual Light is here, and it’s neither a utopia nor a dystopia. It’s just where we are now.

[ The Kids Are Alright.........And Craving Crullers ]

MTV recently celebrated its 25th anniversary...by not celebrating it. At all.

MTV figured out long ago that it was not Music Television, but rather Youth Television – reflecting, and just as often directing, the culture of America’s teenagers. It’s tied itself to an identity as a rebellious upstart. So MTV wisely realized that to celebrate its 25th birthday would be to mark itself as old, as square, as an institution, as “The Man”...in other words, to compromise its brand credibility. And preserving that credibility is more than worth skipping a birthday...even one this landmark.

Brand credibility matters to consumers, despite the artifice inherent in brands themselves. Or rather, perhaps because of that very artifice: having agreed to identify with an image, and having sealed the deal with a purchase, consumers react fiercely when that image – and their wallets – are betrayed. Rolling Stone has anchored its brand around its reputation as the chronicler of rock throughout the decades; indeed, they’ve seemingly turned every other issue into a top-100 countdown or anniversary extravaganza. MTV, “the rebel,” cannot afford such nostalgia. Today’s teenagers and 20-somethings may know their parents watched the same channel, but they certainly don’t want it pointed out.

Maintaining brand credibility is even more challenging for an organization trying to grow or change. So Dunkin’ Donuts’ rebranding makes for fascinating viewing. After problematic pairings with Baskin-Robbins and Togo’s, Dunkin’ now craves the high-end clientele of Starbucks. But, as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, market research finds that Starbucks and Dunkin’ regulars are practically two separate “tribes” – the former disdaining Dunkin’ Donuts’ impersonal character and standardized offerings, the latter feeling confused by Starbucks’ arcane lingo, specialized choices, and sheer cost.

So how do you expand that loyal customer base? Can you expand your business to make it more appealing to a wider range of customers, but without alienating your core? Without making your regulars feel (as one Dunkin’ focus group member said of Starbucks’ overstuffed chairs and laptop-heavy atmosphere) as though they were “celebrating Christmas with people [they] don’t know?"

The answer for Dunkin’ Donuts has been carefully considered baby steps. It is going after the casual coffee drinker who wants some of the menu options Starbucks offers. It’s phasing in store redesigns, making franchises feel more open, warm, and inviting, with lots of natural light. It’s expanding the menu to include a wider variety of drinks and toying with including lunch foods. It’s staying true to the quick, no-frills service that its customers love – including push-button espressos that take half the time of Starbucks’ manual machines. And with new advertising – an updated logo, They Might Be Giants providing music, and John Goodman lending his voice – Dunkin’ is shooting for hip without ever shooting from the hip.

Dunkin’ no longer wants to simply own their customers’ mornings. They want to supply their coffee and metabolic energy needs at all hours. “America Runs On Dunkin'” goes the new tagline – a claim that both newcomers and Dunkin’s Boston-area diehards can embrace.

So what’s your brand? Chances are it’s not your name or your mission statement. On what does its credibility rest? And do you know how you can grow but still stay true to your brand promise? MTV knows it’s about youth, and is determined to deliver. Dunkin’ Donuts is about something more than donuts and coffee...and over time is very carefully and cannily discovering just what that something is.