"A provocative and compelling message, and a vision for the
future."
Matt Jacobson, Head of Market Development, Facebook
Brands must build a new relationship with their customers and
the culture they participate in. The old rule was: Create safe,
ordinary products and combine them with mass marketing. The new
rule is: Create truly innovative products and build the marketing
right into them. Today, the product is at the center of the
conversation. It's within the product itself that a brand has the
most leverage with consumers.
So where should companies start? They must take their brands
back to their foundations, and realize that the message is not the
product, but that the product is the message. Baked In gives
companies a step-by-step guide on how to adapt and succeed in this
brave new world. Authors Alex Bogusky and John Winsor, of famed ad
firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky, have worked with some of the most
important brands in today's marketplace, including American
Express, Best Buy, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Google, Nike, Microsoft,
Patagonia, and Toyota, utilizing the tools they discuss in this
book.
Too many companies have overlooked the fact that their products
are often the most powerful brand-building tools at their disposal.
Advertising agencies and branding experts have seduced them into
thinking that marketing was their only real means to connect with
consumers. At the same time, many companies have underestimated
consumers' ability to recognize innovation. Today, the ability to
innovate is not only companies' best marketing tool, but also their
best way to grow revenues and profits. Why? Because innovative
product design has the ability to create whole new markets. But
innovating means taking risks.
Most products are still marketed to reach an old market.
Companies that are built using mass-marketing develop their
products according to the same principles. They round the edges,
smooth out the differentiating features, and try to make products
that work for the masses. They use focus groups to make sure
products are "acceptable" but acceptable is always the most risky
strategy, because "acceptable" products almost always fail in
today's marketing environment. At the same time, many of the
marketing tools that companies have traditionally relied on, like
traditional advertising, are losing their power.
The reason? Customers have changed: They want products that are
perfectly tailored to satisfy their needs, and they want to have a
say in their creation. Whether companies like it or not, with
technology platforms like YouTube, customers will communicate
precisely how they love or hate your product, your brand, and your
company. If you don't have what they want, they'll either obtain it
from a competitor somewhere else in the world or build it
themselves.
This means that your customers demand to be involved with your
brand. They want to participate in the building of a brand they
will be loyal to, in generating a conversation around brands, and
in manufacturing products that will speak to their needs. They hack
and appropriate brands they love. They research a company's
products, brands, and corporate culture; share their buying
experiences, rate them, and create positive or negative haloes
around brands; and they manipulate broader public perceptions of
brands. More than ever, the customer is in control.
For many companies, it's high time to realize that collaboration
is at the heart of this new paradigm. While collaboration with
customers is key, the ability to collaborate internally is even
more important. This collaboration is crucial to establishing
brands through creating great, innovative products.
Let's look back. Many of the important brands in American
history Gillette and Disney, to name two examples became successful
not because of clever marketing, but because they offered something
you couldn't get anywhere else. This remains true today: Apple owes
much of its brand power to the constant upgrade of such iconic
products as the Macintosh and the iPod.
Sometimes great brands emerge without much marketing or
advertising support at all. Starbucks is a great example. For a
long time its coffee and shops were their sole marketing tools.
Other examples include Patagonia, Jones Soda, and Pangea Organics.
Similarly, the global clothing retailer Zara has never run an
advertising campaign but it does launch 10,000 new designs each
year in its more than 1,000 shops worldwide. The company innovated
by dramatically reducing the time from inspiration to in-store
product, allowing it to stay months ahead of its competitors.
Look at Google: Is Google a media company based on advertising,
or a search tool for its users? Google makes 99 percent of its
revenue from advertising, without spending anything on billboards,
Super Bowl commercials, or TV commercials. The company's tremendous
organic growth was due entirely to the fame of its remarkable
products spreading across the nation by word of mouth.
Craigslist follows the same credo. In the words of its founder
and CEO Jim Buckmaster, "We pay zero attention to brand. We never
use the word internally. We do zero advertising. We don't have a
logo. We've never done a focus group. We don't care about any of
that. And now we're told we have the strongest brand ever for a
company our size. That's pretty ironic."
Baked In shows how marketing can and must re-invent itself in
the 21st century, using the tools at hand both from digital
technology and networked media and from the fast-evolving activist
marketplace. As such, it's an essential guide for all businesses
looking to succeed."
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