“Who has time to slim slowly?”  Slimfast.  WOW!

Perhaps all ideas already exist, and we merely need to discover them?

Will  your grandchild know what an OREO is, or was?  How about a Reese’s?  Our experience is that a brand has one single pivot foot and that it can move one step from the pivot foot only, much like a power forward in basketball.  Take the second step or pivot on the second foot and you are walking.

In the case of both OREO and Reese’s, their individual brand pivot foot was a form factor, not a taste.  In my opinion, both brands are walking.  OREO has so many form factors on the market now that the next generation will not know the original brand from which they were extended.  And OREO even has line extensions that are vanilla and vanilla, not even consistent with the black and white taste combo.  Makes no brand sense.   There are Reese’s now that bear neither taste nor form relation to the parent brand which is for those of you who might have never known is the peanut butter cup.   Note that I did not say “a” peanut butter cup.  Reese’s was “the” peanut butter cup.  Will it be in twenty years?

I predict that this may not end well.

If it is possible to overdo branding for a city, Columbus may have done it.  The reason for the differentiation is real.  The logo is just downright cool.  The slogan, “Unexpected, Unforgettable” is really good, (except that I forgot it and had to look it up while I was writing this blog.)

The idea exceeds the reality in my estimation.  At least a dozen of the world’s most famous architects are represented, Meier, Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Kevin Roche, etc.  There are some neat buildings and the parks and landscaping is exceptional for a town of 40,000 people, but a vast majority of those people have houses and yards and businesses that detract from the town’s brand image.  And  of course, many of the town’s modern buildings did not age well.  They look out of date now.

I found myself deeply enjoying the town’s reputation for the first hour, being ho hum for the next hour, and finally deciding, “what’s the big deal?” in the third hour.

Margot first made waves back in the late 60′s inventing Warm Fuzzies, the very first sheepskin bedroom slipper with the wool inside.  Yes, all the fuzzy  footwear since then, including fuzzy versions of Crocs, owe their heritage to Margot’s original idea.

She and her sister Leslie then opened the Chapman Sisters Calorie Counter on Michigan avenue in the Wrigley building, the first restaurant to ever price their food by calorie and let you know what you were really eating.  It was 1977.  It was a Monday-Friday lunch-only concept that did over $1 million a year in revenue.  Today, restaurants like Seasons owe their heritage to Margot.

In between Margot helped hundreds of CPG companies come up with innovative new products.

Most recently, Margot and her partner Pam Rose created Swirls near the zoo in Chicago, and literally started the trend toward cup-cake bakeries.

Goodbye Margot.  No matter how desperate things must have seemed to you, the business will remember you through your many innovations.

The line buried in the copy was “One brush stroke does the work of two.”  The visual demo had two brushes laying two side-by-side stripes of paint that converged into one.  But it was shot at an angle which made it hard to see, and was built into a montage of multiple images which was beautiful but unimpactful.  Thus the client and the agency took a potentially meaningful idea and hid it in :30 seconds of me-too copy.   The footage is beautiful and I am sure it is on the agency’s reel, but it could have also been great advertising.

There is a lesson in this for all of us.  If you are lucky enough to have a real idea, don’t hide it.  Focus on it.

Today, let’s look at a different destination that was re-branded closer to home.

In the late 1970′s The Herschend family purchased a small, Smoky Mountain theme park called Gold Rush Junction. It had a steam train ride, a few general store type shops and a saloon with a family oriented saloon show and that was about it. The brothers already owned a very successful theme park in Branson, Missouri called Silver Dollar City. When they bought the TN park they re-named it Silver Dollar City, TN. They added a few rides and 1880′s craftsmen and attendance grew to several hundred thousand per season. Not bad for the little tourist town of Pigeon Forge.  But wait.

In the fall of 1985, it was announced that the Herschends had done a “Joint Venture” with Dolly Parton (the details of the JV were never made public). The park was going to receive an extensive makeover and open the next season as Dollywood. Because Dolly is a living legend and folk hero in the East Tennessee area, the park’s fame spread like wildfire and within a very short time annual attendance reached the millions.   All they really did was re-brand a current park and re-open. Quite a success story of what a great brand can do.

Well consider what Muzak did years ago when they created the idea of using music in the background in the workplace.  Muzak is known as elevator music.  It even created the term “elevator music.”  Now it’s in office buildings, lobbies, restaurants, schools, etc.   And the category that resulted, Business Music, has competitors.

I assumed this category began in the 1960′s, but research showed me that it is much older than that.  The company Muzak Inc was incorporated in 1934.  This brand gained credence after a British study in 1937 showed that music increased work efficiency.  Then another study in New Jersey showed that music added in a manufacturing plant reduced absenteeism by 88%.   The brand Muzak introduced a form of franchising in 1938.  William Benton of Benton & Bowles advertising was an owner of the brand at one time.

Technology has changed but the fundamental idea is the same.  Even the Ipod owes its success to the same basic idea.  Background music increases work efficiency, whether in the hallway, at the desk, or in the gym.  What an idea to brand!

I understand that when it came time to send out resumes, he got the highest return of his class.  But vs. the previous blog on The Chief Story Teller, I am going to give this young man’s effort a “Near Miss” because when I went to Google to find him, I was not able to.  I could track him down thru the school and would do so if I wanted to discuss a job with him, but all the pieces were not put together quite well enough for him to benefit completely from his differentiation.  He has some more work to do.

You don’t become a KILLER BRAND just by following the principles, you have to finish the drill.   The principles put you in position to become a KILLER BRAND.  They don’t get you there.   My new book, in development now, KILLER BRAND™ Marketing, is about converting strategy to marketing plans and finishing the drill.

In fact, if  you go to the website of The Chief Story Teller, you will note that he does not use his name one time.  He might be a one man shop.  He might have a staff of hundreds.  I am very impressed with his use of branding principles to create his own story.  Focus is clear.  Alignment is solid.  And Linkage is right there in his name.

I am not endorsing his work.  I know nothing of whether he is good or not, but he has done an admirable job for himself and I find him compelling.  And thus suspect that he has something to offer.  I am going to find out.   Watts Wacker the futurist once told me that he consulted by “dominant anecdote.”    I have always remembered that phrase.  I read once about a one person company where the founder made herself the Executive VP, automatically suggesting that she was part of something larger.

Point is that branding, and the principles that are involved are not just for big companies.

Overall, it is always time to improve.  It is rarely time to change.

No matter how good your position, you can always improve.  I call your attention to Aflac.  Their new campaign (woman on crutches coming to watch the kid’s soccer game)  is the best yet at getting the point across on both their difference and why you need it, as well as building the linkage stronger (four quacks of the duck in 30 seconds.)

Aflac is still improving.  Note:  Here is the first question to research if you are Aflac.   “What brand first comes to mind when you think of supplementing your health insurance?”  Here is the second question to research if you are Aflac.  “Do you have supplemental health insurance, and if you do not have it, why not?”

Here are the principles.  Once you have compelling differentiation in place, manage it like this:

1.  First, keep trying to increase the unaided awareness of the number of potential users who are aware of your compelling differentiation.  Do this until there is no more room for increased top of mind awareness (90% of prospects are aware not just of your brand unaided, but of your difference).

2. Second, when there is no potential left to increase awareness, make your differentiation more compelling.  Show aware prospects why they need your brand.  Make your brand difference more important to the people who already know about it.

Only when you are have maximum awareness of the most compelling proposition, and it is as compelling as you can make it, is it time to change the idea.  And then only if you are not reaching your volume or share objectives.  Far too few brands lack this discipline.  They change while there is still awareness not developed and sustained, and they change before they have maximized their differentiation.