Meet Vic Firth.  Every heard of him or his company?  If you play the drums you probably have. Vic Firth drumsticks are the undisputed Killer Brand in the drumstick category.

Vic himself, now in his 70′s, was for years the chief timpani player for the Boston Symphony.  Never satisfied completely with his drumsticks, he began to experiment and make his own.   Soon, he was making sticks for snares, quads, bass drums, etc.  Then one day the real magic happened.

Vic dropped a lapful of snare sticks on a cement floor one day by mistake, and realised as they rattled on the concrete that they made different sounds.  Therein was born the idea of tuned drum sticks, a pair of sticks with exactly the same percussive characteristics and tuning, the Perfect Pair, his invention and his trademark.

Sounds suspiciously like “compelling differentiation” to me.  Since the introduction of the Perfect Pair for snares, quads, every kind of drum you can imagine, Vic Firth has contantly grown until now it is both a Killer Brand and a dominant brand among high school, college, drum corps, rock, symphony and all serious drummers.

It would be hard to find a better example of a true Killer Brand than Vic Firth’s Perfect Pair drumsticks.   How would you like to have a 62% share of your category?

The manager is dressed like a physician and carries a stethoscope as do the waitresses who are all dressed as nurses.  Since the clientele is almost all male of course, the nurses outfits are more interesting than found in a hospital.

This is a perfect brand construct.  The name, Heart Attack Grill tells you exactly what they serve and allows you to self-select yourself as a target customer or not.  And nothing on the menu is off-strategy with everything in the restaurant itself perfectly aligned to the expection and the name.

She said, “Sometimes you just need a Tiara!” Isn’t that a fabulous line, and thought?

First, it differentiated her forever in my mind from other women.

Second, think about how many brands out there at any given time are all dressed up to be taken out and waiting for someone to choose them, and take them out.  If we thought of Sales Promotion as temporarily adding a Tiara to a brand’s outfit, I wonder if more of them would not sparkle off the shelves on any given day.

NOTE that adding a Tiara is opposite from “taking a little off,” price promotions.  Add something extra, and make it glitter.

Stok brand black coffee shot is a shot of caffeine (40g equal to a shot of expresso) delivered via an aceptic package like a dairy creamer.  In fact, it is from White Wave Foods which markets the International Dairy Creamers brand.

Stok (the logotype has a long sign over the “o” which I cannot do on my keyboard) is currently sold at convenience stores, truck stops and coffee shops.  I tried one on its own, and could easily have downed a half dozen.  Package warns, “Limit 2/day” contains high caffeine.

It was only a dime.  WOW!  When’s the last time you paid only a dime for anything?

After learning more, I realized that it is meant to be added to a cup of coffee to boost the caffeine.  In many places, it is free with a cup of coffee. I think that this brand has focus, alignment, and linkage, all of the components of a true Killer Brand.  Kudo’s to the company and to the people involved.

Never once did I believe that anything as cool as the SK II Air Touch Foundation product would be introduced.  There are no good photos of this on the web nor any good video’s of its working, but it is the first battery driven package I have ever seen for a product.  It shoots out a perfect spray of foundation that one can apply very accurately to the face with no need to rub in or even touch the face.  The finish on the face is far superior to anything that I have ever seen in cosmetics or skin care.

You can buy refills and it works on one “A” battery.

Think of it as painting your face with an air brush.  It works so well that I personnally am just dazzled by it.  I recommend that every marketer and R&D person go to a department store for a demonstration, not because you can use its patented process, but because it will open your mind to real innovation.

Splenda introduced into a category of chemicals with a “made from sugar” differentiation, a more natural, or at least less artificial formula in an artificial category without harping on either claim, focusing instead on “made from sugar so it tastes like sugar.”

The brand’s march towards market leadership has been hindered by their own inability to make enough of it to serve all customers. One of the big reasons all diet colas are not yet made from Splenda traces to Splenda’s continuing capacity issues. They add capacity and the market soaks it up.

Their alignment is very tight. Everything that they do is in Spenda yellow. Every consumer packette now carries a sweet saying, such as “If only everything were this sweet,” or “The packet holds the key to sweetness,” or “Caution; May result in extreme happiness. Sprinkle at your own risk.”

Just a very strong example of Focus, Alignment and Linkage (although of the three, linkage is the weakest to the name, and actually stronger to the color). Waffle House waitresses tell me that customers ask for the “yellow” stuff.

One such example of a new package that should be compelling is the new Giro Gratta package for cheese. It contains 8.9 ounces of Grano Padano cheese, a close imported cousin to Parmesan. When you turn it, freshly grated cheese comes out. It can be purchased from $4.99 to $11.99 depending on the retailer. I have only seen it in New York.

Apparently this idea was not patentable because Kraft has introduced their own version, Kraft Grate-It-Fresh Parmesan at $4.99 for 7 ounces.

Both products are disposable, non-reusable packages.