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23 September 2009 /
by Ben Knapp at 1:30 am 23 September 2009
Filed under: Branding, Identity, Nation Branding
Wally Olins and Jacob Benbunan announced the launch of Saffron’s Viennese location today. In cooperation with St. Stephen’s advertising agency, Saffron will be exploring central and eastern Europe from Vienna. Says Jacob Benbunan “having worked for Raiffeisen International all across CEE, for Rompetrol in Romania and Vestel in Turkey, it quickly became clear to us that we needed a local presence.”
“The team in Vienna will be building on our various existing client relationships and partnerships to build a real presence throughout CEE over the next months” adds Wally Olins. Saffron will also be actively trying to form new friendships and partnerships with “agencies and consultancies throughout the region that talk and behave like we do” Wally continues.
Building on jobs such as Litro, Turkcell and Rompetrol the Saffron Vienna team are already in conversation with various concerns and places in the CEE region. Wally and Jacob will both be closely involved with work handled by the Vienna location.
If you’d like more information, please get in touch under servus@saffron-consultants.com
4 September 2009 /
by Juan Ramírez at 4:30 pm 4 September 2009
Filed under: Branding
The Alpargatas Group first designed inexpensive cloth shoes for Brazilian coffee farmers in 1907, a design recognizable to the modern public as an espadrille. Continuing the global footwear tradition, the Havaianas brand, owned by Alpargatas S.A, moved to launch its products worldwide, with the Pacific United States and Australia – both areas with a strong beach culture where consumers already wear sandals – becoming the first high volume international markets in 1998. Since that time, Havaianas has become an iconic brand with global reach.
Today more than 13 percent of the company’s sales come from overseas markets. With the set up of offices in New York and Madrid, the company is taking big steps towards dipping its toes into the US and European markets, but while their brand awareness in Brazil is 100% and about 45% in Australia, in the US and Europe it is still a mere 20 to 25%,
For our recently published study 7 Lessons from Brand Challengers, Carla Schmitzberger, International Director of the Havaianas brand shared some of the fundamental lessons that she learned while turning a local brand of rubber sandals into the exciting brand of a Brand Challenger.
Turning a commodity into an object of desire
In 1988 Havaianas was at a crossroads. The brand had only one style and one colour. It was “A commodity that had no emotional appeal” as Carla puts it. New manufacturers came into the market, eroding Havaianas’ market share, and sales started to decline.
Then in 1993, the company started to reposition the brand. “The story of Havaianas is a bit of a Cinderella story” says Carla. New products were introduced – which have produced over 300 shoes of varying colour and style – and a new emotional personality was created for the brand. What the public sees now is the result of a carefully orchestrated brand reinvention strategy that took over 15 years to come to fruition.
The results
Since Havaianas emerged from its reinvention strategy in 1994, sales have been growing by a steady 8 percent each year. In 2008 the company sold 184 million pairs of its now famous rubber sandal, 25 million of which were sold outside Brazil. Inside Brazil, the company has achieved the amazing brand penetration rate of 850 pairs sold per 1000 inhabitants.
These are 9 great branding thoughts that emerged from my conversation with Carla:
Our brand is fundamental for our expansion strategy…
Havaianas have a good product but it is their brand proposition what forms its DNA. “Our brand and the emotional and intangible aspects of it are fundamental in exploring new markets. This is what makes our product so seductive not only in Brazil but also abroad”.
…and successful outside means more successful inside
The interesting thing about Havaianas’ success is that the success of their brand abroad has a positive impact in the local market. In Carla’s words: ”The more successful the product was outside the more proud the Brazilians were of the product in Brazil”.
Own a big idea
Life is full of contradictions and good brands could provide a platform to resolve them. The beauty of Havaianas is that by expressing universal themes – some of them associated to Brazil and its people: optimism, freedom, joy and energy – it resolves some of the country’s innumerable contradictions. Havaianas are simple and sophisticated, for the poor and the rich, traditional and modern, fashionable and casual. In the words of Carla: “a brand of improbable combinations”.
Our brand is our personality
The organisations has a clear understanding of what a brand is and what isn’t. For Havaianas the brand transcends the visual realm, is more than the logo. “For us our brand is the personality and character of the product” Carla tells me.
Understand the brand internally
In Brazil the company has a 120 people working and 60 people on the sales force, 30 people in the USA and 30 in Madrid. They all understand what the brand is about and live it. Carla is very much involved with all the decisions that pertain to the brand.
Establish bold and creative collaborations
The challenge for Havaianas is to grow without losing its edge. Carla believes that new ideas come from establishing a network of inspiring collaborations with people and companies. For example, the creative director of BBDO Brasil – Marcello Serpa, one of the most prestigious advertising men in Brazil – was crucial in repositioning the brand. He has helped to evolve the brand’s communications by adding edge and originality to its advertising. He acts like, and virtually is, the creative director of the brand. As for companies, in 2008 Havaianas approached IDEO for help in creating a new range of accessories that could expand the reach of Havaianas in meaningful ways. The first product to be launched in 2009 is the Havaianas “wearable containers or bags” line.
Feed on the reputation of global brands
As a way to raise its profile globally, the brand has joint distribution and product development efforts with brands like Celine, HStern, The Gap and Swarovski.
Measure efficiency
For Havaianas, measuring all the different variables of the brand’s health is part of their success. More specifically they measure: brand perception, brand tracking studies in all the countries, awareness, trial, personality traits, advertising effectiveness, etc.
The brand in the future
Their ambition is to be bigger both inside and outside Brazil. The potential outside Brazil is enormous given the very high penetration in Brazil: 150 million sandals are sold in a country of 190 million inhabitants.
Finally, this is what Carla recommends to grow and nurture a healthy brand:
- pay close attention to customers: understand and observe how they use the product
- Be true to the brand essence and to what you stand for
- Avoid making quick profits based on decisions that could erode your brand equity. Think in the longer term.
- Every touch point reflects the brand essence; make sure you answer the phone in a way that reflects your brand.
- Reinforce the brand message internally, We talk about the brand internally, reinforcing the message.
3 August 2009 /
by Tina Mehta at 6:00 am 3 August 2009
Filed under: Branding
Brands used to be a guarantee of good quality. A product that did what it said on the tin laid a foundation of trust between consumers and a product. The likes of Disney, Coke and Sony built their reputation on consistently delivering quality products. ‘Sophisticated’ marketing, advertising and tag lines followed much later.
Things have changed. Some companies abuse the trust people put in their brands. Often, they spend more time and money on promotion than they do on developing a better product/service. Their marketing department over-promises and their products/services under-deliver. The trust between consumers and brands has suffered as a result. AIG, not so long after near financial collapse, claims ‘the strength to be there’. All too often, brands have been reduced to shiny sales mechanisms. Seduction has replaced substance.
It’s time to revisit the basics of brand building. Forget the sales brochure, toss out the 60-second spot. Remember that customer relationships are built on producing better products/services than the competition. This means faster innovation, better service, nicer ingredients, stronger materials, superior craftsmanship. Spending another million on an even better animation film will do much more for the Disney brand than a new ad. This is textbook stuff – yet it sounds surprising in a world of consumers that have grown wary of ‘new-and-improved’.
Ask your marketing team to start telling the truth and work harder on making that truth worth telling. Consumers don’t expect your brand to be single handedly the most innovative, have the highest quality and provide the best service. Apple products are infamous for caving in. But Apple doesn’t sell durability. Apple concentrates on simplicity.
Do the same: choose one thing to get right and put everyhing behind living up to that promise. Customers will buy into your brand for delivering that one thing. And they’ll start talking/blogging/recommending. After a while, they’ll start trusting you. That’s what we mean when we talk about brand building.
29 July 2009 /
by Wally Olins at 6:00 am 29 July 2009
Filed under: Architecture, Branding, Identity
Petrol station forecourts are a throwback to the 1960s – or earlier. They are dirty, the lavatories are frequently filthy, the pump technology is forty or more years old; all that dribbling and no electronics. Now, as large parts of Europe are en route to summer holiday destinations, they’re especially nasty.
What a missed opportunity.
Even though some of the major fuel retailers have undergone re-branding exercises over the past decade, they seem to have forgotten that they have customers who take notice of these things. Think of what grocery shopping was like forty years ago and compare it to today. Why haven’t petrol stations moved on? Why can’t they be as pleasing as a drive-in bank or cinema? Surely cleanliness, well thought through amenities and convenience should by now be taken for granted. But they’re not.
What a huge opportunity!
What if Starbucks designed a petrol station? Or The Four Seasons? What would they bring to the table that the likes of Shell and ExxonMobile can’t seem to grasp? It’s time for a major change. We won’t, perhaps, see Isadore Sharp get involved with forecourts. But we will see brands emerge which realise that the forecourt is the place for differentiation. Our friends at Rompetrol have made a good first step with Litro. Who’s next?
24 July 2009 /
by Ben Knapp at 10:34 am 24 July 2009
Filed under: Branding, Identity
Chip and Dan Heath once wrote that “airlines only have a passing acquaintance with profitability”. This has never been truer than today, with the unlikely exception of some low cost carriers. Ryanair, the infamous Irish carrier, is widely reputed to be the world’s most profitable airline.
But much time has passed since Ryanair and Southwest Airlines pioneered the low cost airline idea. Today, being cheap is no longer enough to stand out amongst the large crowd of budget carriers. Whilst Ryanair becomes ever nastier to its customers in the name of cost reduction (and thereby paradoxically strengthens its brand), other more sophisticated carriers have chosen to take the ‘high road’.
When Saffron created the Vueling brand, low price was a part of the offering. But what made Vueling truly different, and perhaps contributed so much to their success, was ‘espiritu Vueling’ – doing things the Vueling way. That means low cost, high style. Bringing your own sandwich and saving €100. Having young planes and pilots with grey hair. And making everything as easy as 1-2-3. The result was that when it was acquired by Iberia, the Vueling brand replaced Iberia’s own low cost offering.
David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue, says “We don’t compete in the airline industry. We compete in the hospitality industry.” Like Vueling, JetBlue holds itself to higher standards and has an idea of itself that’s manifested throughout all of its touch points; from their website to cabin interiors to flight crews.
Airlines don’t just sell the wonder of sitting in a chair in the sky, they sell an experience. The carriers that understand this best will be the ones that come out on top. As for Ryanair, they’ll soon be inviting you to stand on your flight to Barcelona and thereby staying true to their low cost brand. But they’re the only ones that can actually differentiate on price – because they got there first. All others will need to think long and hard on how to stand out.
