A short study of great consumer brands
This is a summary of my notes from studying a few of my favorite brands.
This is a summary of a study of a few my favorite brands. Most of them employ some sort of a “us vs them” positioning (relevant for our challenge at Rows), which is why I picked them. But instead of keeping them in my notes app, they are here.
First, context. Borrowing from Harrys’ Marketing examples, there are 5 ways to position a brand:
Through contrast: What I refer to “us vs them”, these brands position themselves against others (typically incumbents). These are the focus of this article.
Through values: Brands that rally around more than their product. The canonical example Patagonia.
Through category creation: These brands invent new product categories and in the process become unique. When it works, it works as forcing function for others to build around the category, thus strengthening the category creator. Examples: Drift (Conversational Marketing), HubSpot (Inbound marketing), Qualtrics (Experience management).
Through personality: Brands that are first (and mostly) about the face of the brand. The product is the person. Examples: Ryan Reynolds’ Aviation Gin, Kanye’s Yeezy.
Through limitation: These brands are about a niche (Head & Shoulders shampoo), a feature (Bumble, the dating app where women make the first move), or are position themselves as “X for Y”. Examples: or HipCamp (“Airbnb for Campsites”).
Yahoo
Challenge: Yahoo's challenge was winning people over. In the 90s, the majority of people did not understand why they needed the Internet, let alone a search engine.
Brand promise: The easiest way to find what you need from the Internet.
Approach: Yahoo piggybacked on promise and created brand awareness with the yodel, and the "Do you Yahoo?" campaign that showed Yahoo as the friendly face of the Internet, where anyone could find something useful for them.
Tone of voice: Casual, friendly.
Resources
https://www.fastcompany.com/40544277/the-glory-that-was-yahoo
https://www.campaignlive.com/article/history-yahoo-7-ads/1403451
Apple
Challenge: Many. In the 70s-80s was creating the market of the personal computer, the 90s and 00s was a fight against the PC (among other challenges) and now the challenge is keeping up with the market expectation of ubiquitous excellence.
Brand promise: Apple’s creates products for the creator in us. They’re beautifully designed, easy to use, with superior attention to detail and unmatched quality.
Approach: Apple's marketing strategy has always centred around 3 things:
Simplicity: In the words they use, in how they describe the product, and how they sell the value. Building better products that make complicated things simple.
User focused: From the 80s to today, people - their lives, problems - are central to the way Apple communicates. This is specially true when launching new products and features (e.g. Apple Watch Series 7 | 911 commercial)
All encompassing: Apple markets their product across channels, to everyone in the marketplace. Being first to market is less important that being the first that communicates effectively. Apple was not the first company to sell a MP3 player, or the first smartphone, or the first smartwatch.
Resources
openviewpartners.com/blog/apples-marketing-strategy-history-repeats-itself
neatdesigns.net/how-apples-marketing-revolution-began-80-vintage-ads/
Lemonade
Challenge: Build consumer trust in a category (insurance) that is viewed by consumers as old-fashioned, opaque, and greedy.
Brand promise: Lemonade's brand promise is that they are different from other insurances. Easy to use, fair, instant.
Approach: Their tagline reflects that "Forget Everything You Know About Insurance.". The juxtaposition to the "old way" of insurance is clear across their website, and other marketing channels:
Website:
“Contents and Liability Insurance Built For the 21st Century”
“Lemonade reverses the traditional insurance model.”
They go the extra mile in pushing the "we're fair" message with the Giveback page, that emphasises how they give any money unclaimed to charities at the end of the year.
Tone of voice: Playful, casual, conversational.
Resources
Public
Challenge: Creating a new market. 90% of their users are first-time investors.
Brand promise: Publics marketing strategy is driven by two promises:
Because you can follow people who are great at investing, you (the user) can have better returns than elsewhere, and enjoy some of the benefits of the ultra-wealthy (social investing being quasi-personalised recommendations).
It is truly fore everyone - you can invest with any amount of money.
Approach: Public, being a social trading platform, brings people front and centre to their communication and brand strategy. This is clear on:
The website, where the hero section features their "investors".
On the features they highlight on the Features page
"See what people invest in."
"Discover new companies, ideas, and people."
Tone of voice: Casual, conversational, pragmatic
Resources
Wealthfront
Challenge: Creating a new market (robo advisors) while fighting large incumbents (namely Schwab).
Brand promise: Giving everyday people the financial instruments previously only available to high-net-worth individuals (HNWI).
Approach: Build their brand around their target persona (millennials, people starting their investing career) and what they value:
Ownership: “Invest for the long term on your terms.”, “Curated portfolios that put you in control.”
Being on top of the current trends: “Make it custom with…Tech, Social Responsibility, Cannabis, Cryptocurrencies”.
Time: Wealthfront communicates multiple times that their investing products update automatically and do the work on behalf of users “Allow our automation to make you look like an investing genius.”, “It’s automatic, and I’m lazy.”
As they are targeting new investors, they invest significantly in financial literacy content, namely in the blog and YouTube. The focus on their target persona is also clear here - “Recent College Grads” YouTube playlist, “4 Ways to Build Wealth in Your 30s”
Finally, in juxtaposition to products such as Robinhood and the narrative that the new investing products mislead young investors to high-risk investments, Wealthfront positions itself as safe, diversified, responsible (see their ads).
Tone of voice: Casual, Informative, Trustworthy.
Resources
Lyft
Challenge: Compete with a market leader (Uber) in a fast-growing market (ride sharing).
Brand promise: Be the friendly/fairer/more “human” player in the ride sharing space, compared with the more “aggressive” approach of Uber.
Approach: Lyft employed (and still does) a friendly brand voice across all channels, and campaigns. This is a clear contrast with Uber. Examples:
Twitter
Lyft: “Your friends got you out of the house. We’ll get you back.”
Uber: “Go with ease. Go with friends. Go with confidence. Go anywhere. Hop in”
Website
Lyft: “Hop in. Crack a window. Let’s get back out there.”
Uber: “Get in the driver’s seat and get paid.”
Campaigns
Uber: Using celebrities for traditional brand advertising - “Go get it” campaign.
Tone of voice: Playful, casual, conversational.
Resources
bostondigital.com/insights/uber-vs-lyft-battle-marketing-minds
marketingdive.com/news/lyft-depicts-reopening-learning-curve-in-how-to-human-ads/600295
Impossible Foods
Challenge: Create a new market (plant-based meat). Win people over the skepticism of reducing meat consumption.
Brand promise: All of the flavour of meat, without any of the guilt.
Approach:
Communicate strongly around the 2 value propositions, each with its own strategy
“Flavour of meat”: Very visual, showing how Impossible is just like meat. Tell stories of chefs, organize tastings, give people confidence that it tastes just like the real thing.
“Without any of the guilt”: Educate people about climate change, the part that the agriculture industry plays, and why Impossible is the right thing to do (buy).
Use words/expressions that tie eating Impossible foods products with having a positive impact in the world. From their website:
“Victory is a nugget called impossible”
“Food for thought”
“With Impossible Burger, it’s never been more delicious to save the planet.“
They complement that with content about climate change, the meat industry, and other anecdotes that feed into Impossible’s brand promise. I was surprised that their content targets a young audience which I assume is because that generation is less emotionally attached to meat (as a food) and supposedly cares more about the environment.
“We know that you know that talking to your parents about certain topics (like climate change) can be a little trick”
They have also transitioned from communicating primarily about it being/tasting like meat, to focus on the environmental benefits of the “meat”.
Tone of voice: Playful, casual, conversational.
Resources
That’s it. It is not comprehensive, and I’m sure I missed a lot of things about each brand. Still, it helped me think through our brand strategy at Rows, maybe it can do the same for you.