How to make your cold brand hot!

As most of you will agree Brand-Management and Branding are important topics related to any holistic and strategically led Corporate Communications agenda of any company. During my time at Pleon, I was lucky and could support several globally leading companies while sharpening their perspective on their brand or entirely reworking it. No matter if FMCG, technology or pharma one of the biggest challenges for all of the companies always has been to keep their brands hot. Hot of course can be seen very different from company to company but of course being hot is connected to being able to sell products. Therefore I will follow this route of being able to sell during my following excursions.

We all know and all deal with generation Y and generation Z consumers (I omit generation alpha in this context as they are too young and we know too little about them at the current point of time) and we all try to sharpen our understanding of how to entice this vast number to buy our products and services, as they control a global youth-market consumer base that accounts for an estimated EUR 200 billion in annual purchasing power.

And while I follow this route describing how to make a cold brand hot again, I focus on the dimension of brand experience related to the overall target of selling products or services in the end. I will therefore not deal with the dimensions of “angel branding”, “universal agenda” or sustainability and so on that can be included in any corporate branding approach, too. When it comes to selling, marketing guys have to accept a simple truth: Brands must accommodate young consumers because they don’t accommodate brands – in other words, in most cases no one cares for you, your products and your brand – likewise not for how you see it or want it to be. Of course there are some exceptions to this general rule but there is only 1-2 companies out of a thousand that manage(d) to turn the tables.

In the context of my consulting I came across using the CRUSH method. I really like it and can strongly recommend it as a basic frame for your work. If you already know it, you can leave now, but if CRUSH is new to you, you should continue reading. CRUSH is an acronym that stands for the five attributes your product must embody to be popular with (most of all) gen Y consumers and consequential to this these five primary characteristics also define brands that are being loved by generation Y consumers (a little less by generation Z ones). So remember: C is for coolness, R is for realness, U is for uniqueness, S is for Self-Identification with the Brand and H for happiness.

C = Coolness

Being cool, wicked, hip is essential. Announcing that your brand is cool does you no good. Your offering must be genuinely, authentically cool to succeed with younger consumers. To check whether something is cool, Yers refer to several sources, first of all their own friends (61%), followed by television broadcasts (32%), magazines (29%) and on the last position general advertising (26%)[1].

Cool brands all reflect 14 archetypical characteristics: trendy, high status, clean reputation, successful, creative, fun, cheerful, own style, changes a lot and luxurious[2]. These brands are also contemporary, honest and can even be retro. A cool brand represents a specific claim or positioning. Cheap is never cool. Quality and uniqueness is cool.

The second you try to convince a millennial of that you are cool, you can be very sure that you are definitely not.

To make your advertising cool, focus on your customers’ daily lives and emphasize your brand’s DNA – very much hope that you know your DNA. Millennials respond emotionally to advertising, so use the most basic emotions of your toolbox: humor and happiness. I also strongly recommend to apply the SU-SU-SU-dio rule. Create SUspense and have a SUdden SUrprise moment in the end. Use up-tempo music, brief shots, rapid cutting and multiple camera angles. Well, when thinking about not very difficult if you just take yourself an example on modern Hollywood movies or any influencer YouTube story. To generally promote your brand familiarity there are some strict branding principles to address Yers and Zers:

1. Celebrate the audience, not yourself: Focus on customers, not products. Acknowledge that Yers and other young consumers are smart and sophisticated.
2. Own, don’t rent: Don’t pay to maintain your reputation. Build a real and long-standing customer loyalty that you own (e.g. via a true dialogue with your audience), instead of paying influencers and celebrities to boost your brand while lending their positive image. When they are gone again the interest in you will be gone, too.
3. Be useful: Devote a portion of your marketing budget to activities that help young consumers achieve their individual dreams or support their way they view the world.
4. Bring different cultures together: Imagine a program that features thousands of photos of customers using your product. These people could be from all layers of society all around the world. Imagine to show those pictures at an art gallery in New York and on Facebook and Instagram – wouldn’t this be more real and sophisticated than just another campaign?

R = Realness

Yers feel trapped in an artificial world of imitations and staged experiences. They immediately dismiss brands they view as counterfeit. Yers value brand authenticity and rely on it to make their buying choices. Traditional authenticity attributes – origin, history and heritage – aren’t effective in reaching millennials. They respond to perceived authenticity, which involves a more subtle pitch than a conventional claim of authenticity. Yers must experience this authenticity.

Fifty years after the Mad Men era, marketers are still fond of using the nostalgic values of their brands and products to appeal to gen Y’s desire for authenticity.

Yers expect companies and brands to be honest and transparent and to respect their customers. To develop positive word-of-mouth among Yers, listen to what they want from your brand. This is why market research is essential before conducting any large-scale brand or campaign activity. Marketing is no longer about gut feeling it is about solid insights and data. I am again and again totally amazed on how little data and market insight companies are willing to deliberately throw away millions and millions of Euros. If you can’t afford the market research you better stop your marketing right away, too.

U = Uniqueness

You all know the moonwalk. Most people assume Michael Jackson originated the moonwalk. He didn’t. He imitated dance moves David Bowie performed during his Diamond Dogs Tour and Bowie himself had picked up the moves from étienne Decroux, a mime who taught Marcel Marceau. From the 1940s through the 1980s, Marceau frequently performed his “walking against the wind routine”, which the moonwalk closely resembled[3].

Apple customers assume the iPod design is unique, along with Apple’s special black, white, red, olive green and pearlescent blue colors. The iPod closely resembles a transistor radio invented in 1954[4]. Classic 1950s and 1960s designs influenced Apple designer Jonathan Ive. Great design is timeless. Apple customers believe Apple products are unique. Yers feel Apple offers them something special. Apple and other brands popular with Yers answer questions that matter to young consumers: “Who are you?” “What is your unique brand DNA; your identity that makes you stand out from competition?” “What ‘brand meaning’ do you offer?” “What’s your brand’s vision?” Be sure your company knows itself and demonstrates what makes it special. So what we learn from this is that you can copy as a company but you have to internalize the things and make them your innermost own.

S = Self-Identification with the Brand

Successful marketing to generation Y buyers means encouraging them to identify emotionally with your brand. Make sure that your brand mirrors their values, interests and opinions. You can’t just claim that your brand lines up with gen Y; it must do so. Demonstrate your product’s reliability and consistent quality, gen Y’s absolute number one concern. Other brand personality features that matter to gen Y – in order of preference – include being genuine, honest, simple, up-to-date, fun and socially aware. A gen Y buyer wants a product that gives a safe feeling, and has its own style.

People in a given generation are not all alike. What appeals to one group may not work with another group. You may need to adjust your marketing or offer specific, different brands to target specific groups within each generational demographic. Yers embrace certain themes as vital to how they see themselves. The themes include extolling the virtues of youth: Young people celebrate that they don’t have to deal with the extended realities of adulthood. They eschew the status quo and routines. They believe it’s great to be passionate and bad to be boring, and that their lives should have some elevated purpose. Include one or more of these themes in your marketing.

H = Happiness

Millennials are emotional, so make them feel good. As I said above it is easy to leverage their most positive emotions, starting with happiness. When it comes to brand leverage, that’s the emotion that counts the most with Yers. Other emotions they find significant include surprise, excitement and peacefulness. Evoke humor by having a surprise event happen in your ads. Leverage emotions to appeal to gen Y by stimulating the five senses:

1. Sight: Urban Outfitters renovates its stores every couple of months. Since red is a color that stimulates, many generation Y–friendly brands incorporate red in their logos, including Coca-Cola, Levi’s, Vodafone, H&M, Mars and Diesel. So think where to move and adapt the way its needed.
2. Sound: Starbucks uses Spotify to provide background music. Customers who use Starbucks Spotify playlists will help determine what music plays. That is pure engagement, while simultaneously learning about your customers taste.
3. Touch: The Apple Watch incorporates touch and haptic feedback as a feature. When the watch receives an alert, it vibrates against the user’s wrist. Incorporate a touch of your products where possible.
4. Taste: To promote the addition of coffee to its menu, KFC offers edible Scoff-ee Cups as coffee containers. KFC makes the cups from a combination of sugar, paper, cookies and heat-resistant white chocolate. When customers finish their coffee, they can eat their cups for dessert.
5. Smell: Sony Style stores rely on a custom-designed vanilla and mandarin orange scent to relax shoppers. Other well-known CRUSH brands include Vans, Converse, Red Bull, Levi’s, Chipotle, Apple, Pernod Ricard and Trader Joe’s. Each features its own distinctive style. These brands provide a happy customer experience and stay current to stay cool. They build enjoy strong reputations and engender a sense of realness and self-identification. 

As always, looking forward to your kind feedback as well an “thumbs up” if you like my ideas. Thank you for reading and your time…

[1] Researchgate (2019) - Sources of trust and recommendation for generation Y

[2] Researchgate (2020) - Characteristics of cool brands

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiqMpgfTxTs

[4] https://www.flickr.com/photos/transistor_radios/3843805219