By Jonathan Salem Baskin, Ad Age Columnist and Author of Branding Only Works on Cattle

 

In this article, you'll learn these things:

1. That focusing on what people think about your brand is wasted energy -- instead, you should focus on what people do with your brand;

2. That the reality of consumer purchase behavior is constructed of two broad components: context and experience.

 

When Gillette introduced its new Fusion, a five-bladed razor, there’d been no hue and cry from the marketplace about razors, no dissatisfaction with the shaves available from the already ludicrous (to some) less-bladed models. You can imagine the attributes that Gillette saw attached to the brand, and which they likely heard about when they asked consumers to think of things to say about shavers: innovation, leadership, technology. Assuming these vague perceptions were relevant, their belief drove them in the direction of developing a more complicated and expensive shaving solution. The magic of branding would enable the company’s marketers to make consumers care about something they didn’t ask for, don’t need, and wouldn’t want to pay for. They’d buy instead the abstraction of the Gillette brand.

So far, the miracle of branding isn’t working for them. Sales are lagging beyond expectations, though not for the lack of marketing expenditure, which started with a debut on the über-expensive Super Bowl in 2006. The branding consultants are advising patience, I’m sure, suggesting that it’ll be years before the branding works. This would be in keeping with the Brand Guru Statute of Limitations (you can’t expect results until I’ve moved on to another branding job, or won a new client who can replace you when you fire me). Gillette might succeed if it can simply stay the course, and in-store availability pushes out enough of the competition. But it remains to be seen whether it’ll be able to do so with its predicted profit margins intact. Perhaps it can hope to win a branding award instead.

Starbucks is a different story. Many of us remember a cup of coffee as a fungible commodity, worth about 50 cents. It came in a waxy paper cup, sometimes coated with prints of faux Grecian urns. You bought it from just about anybody who was willing to sell it to you. Starbucks changed all that, “Holiday Inn-ovating” the tastes, cup sizes, store configurations, locations, and pricing, just as a new generation of consumers felt ever more chronically tired, and fashionably hesitant about appearing so.

It sure helps that is primary product is chemically addicting. But Starbucks is smart enough to recognize that its patrons don’t consume image or any of the abstractions of brand associations. The Greek chorus of marketing media sings the praises of Starbucks as a brand, while its customers drink a potent brown liquid, and prefer comfortable and convenient places in which to purchase and consume it. So Starbucks focuses on making that reality better, faster, and easier. The few ads it runs—about bean farmers or the holidays—have so far remained a small expenditure, perhaps in passing deference to the output of Starbucks’ consumer focus groups.

So call what Starbucks is doing branding, experience marketing—or call it Fred, for that mater. It works, because the company realizes that consumers no longer need (or want) the brand to mediate their experience. The conversation is not determined by the abstractions of color, imagery, or feeling, but rather the timing and the context of how consumers experience life.

How a company describes itself is a tactic. The strategy of experience is branding.

Jonathan Salem Baskin has 26 years+ of experience working with many of the leading brand names around the globe. He is an active speaker, writes a regular column on marketing leadership for the CMO Strategy section of Advertising Age magazine, and pens the popular, daily dose of fantastic and foolish brand marketing on the blog Dim Bulb.

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