Healing Brands: Healthier brands are wealthier brands
No less than His Holiness Pope Francis I, during his recent visit to America, told the members of the US Joint Congress “Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world.”
If business is a “noble vocation”, so too is marketing, for in the words of Peter Drucker, the Father of Modern Management, “The purpose of any business is not to make a profit, but to create a customer.” And the task of “creating a customer” for a business entity lies principally with the Marketing department.
From a marketing perspective, how do we “produce wealth and improve the world”? By building brands. People don’t buy products or services. They buy brands. So we must strive to build strong, healthy brands.
Brands are healthy if they show robust growth in consumer acceptance and preference, usage and loyalty. These are reflected in market research indicators, and translated into consumer offtake and market share, sales volume and revenue, profitability and return on equity, and ultimately in the creation of wealth. The creation of wealth and enhancement of shareholder value is a direct outcome of the health of brands.
How do we make brands healthier and therefore wealthier? I believe there is so much we, practitioners of marketing can learn from the medical profession, as I have personally experienced from growing up in a family of nine (9) medical and health professionals. Allow me to share twelve (12) of them below:
1. First, do no harm. — The first and foremost rule in the Hippocratic Oath of health care professionals. This implies a thorough and exhaustive, extensive and intensive diagnosis of any marketing problem.
We must be prudent not to do anything that may damage the image or destroy the value of our brands. This includes respecting the past contributions of previous brand managers, and not falling into the trap of the “Not Invented Here” (NIH) syndrome for the sake of personal ego. This also means not milking one’s brands excessively that runs the risk of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Take heed of a truism in business and politics: “The worst mistakes are made in the best of times.”
2. Know the history. — Before a good doctor prescribes any medicine or surgical procedure, he will spend a reasonable amount of time asking a battery of questions to help him obtain a better understanding and deeper appreciation of a patient’s history that has relevance and bearing on a patient’s illness.
For marketing practitioners, there is simply no excuse from not doing our homework professionally – a comprehensive business review involving time series data and cross-sectional comparison on a company’s historical performance in offtake and market share, sales volumes and revenues – by-brand, by-area, by-segment, by-channel, by-package, by-flavour, by-SKU, etc. There is a need to benchmark against competition on key marketing mix variables such as product and package, price and size, sales structure and distribution reach, advertising and promotions. The business review constitutes the foundation of a strong business plan – akin to the foundation of a skyscraper that must be rock-solid in order to bear the weight of the superstructure or withstand hurricanes and tremors.
It is not enough to simply report on facts and figures. We must analyze, synthesize, process and arrive at logical conclusions towards the formulation of strong business strategies and marketing initiatives.
Over time, some doctors develop the “clinical eye”, the uncanny ability to quickly diagnose a patient due to their length of experience, level of expertise and wisdom. So too in the practice of marketing.
3. Do the tests. – Take note of the vital signs that nurses take when you enter the emergency room like weight and height, temperature and blood pressure, pulse rate and lungs; and the battery of tests doctors prescribe like the blood count, urinalysis, fecalysis, X-rays and Ultrasounds, MRIs and Citiscans in a purposive process of elimination to arrive at a correct diagnosis, proper therapy and management.
This is why marketing practitioners must obtain an in-depth understanding of their consumers and customers, as well as evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis competitors. There are various “tests” like the retail audit, qualitative FGDs or 1on1s, quantitative Usage, Attitude and Image studies, Full-Scale Concept-Product tests, Conjoint Tests and Cohort Surveys over an extended period of time, Ethnographic research or Neuromarketing studies for new product development, brand rejuvenation or sustaining their brands to be hale and hearty, and keeping them in the pink of health.
Armed with the brand’s historical performance, comprehensive market research tests and surveys, and SWOT analysis, marketing practitioners can then form the right conclusions and indicated actions.
4. Get your annual check-up. A famous adage says, “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”, so let us never neglect an annual check-up on our brands, either due to hubris and complacency or “penny-wise but pound-foolish” cost-cutting. If education is costly, imagine the cost of ignorance.
Marketing is so critical to the success or failure of any business. It is the “hub of the wheel”, the heart and soul, the nerve center of a business. We are responsible for the rise and fall of brands and even companies, the wealth of shareholders and livelihood of employees, which means the welfare of families and the future of children. Why should we not have our brands undergo an annual check-up?
There are standard market research techniques and cost-effective studies that are widely available from various market research agencies and suppliers, but beware of GIGO (garbage in-garbage out).
5. Do not delay. How many times could lives have been saved had we not delayed that doctor’s appointment or ignored doctors’ advice. Likewise, neither should we delay the treatment of brands that are exhibiting telltale signs of weakness, such as drops in preference and offtake, sales and share. If nobody likes to be in an ambulance, then neither should we delay until it is too late to save a brand.
6. Do not treat the symptom. Cure the disease. – In the course of my over 30-year career in marketing, I have seen occasions when colleagues in companies or clients in consultancy will jump on quick-fix prescriptions that are superficial or short-term in effect, leaving the company in the same situation after the palliative wears out, if not even worse off, e.g., price-offs and sales discounts, irrelevant promotions that may have a short-term sales bump but no brand-building value, and the most insidious of all is the “trade deal” which is no less than a “bribe” or a dangerous drug subject to abuse. My experience across companies and countries has shown that once a discount or trade deal is offered, the consumer or trade customer will not purchase again until the next discount or trade deal.
The key role of marketing is to generate strong consumer-driven demand pull, not to push and sell.
7. Bedside manners matter. – Doctors who care for their patients’ well-being know that healing is holistic involving not just the body but also the mind, the heart, the soul; taking care how he or she explains a patient’s medical condition; applies therapy and even humor. Laughter is called the best medicine because it has been proven to relax the body and protect the heart, boost the immune system and release endorphins that make us feel good. It is best to tell the truth, even to give the bitter pill for a cure, but even in administering painful treatment, it helps to remember the lyrics of a song: “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” because at the end of the day it is love that heals.
In marketing, we also heal our brands and save our companies out of love for fellow shareholders.
8. Let your food be your medicine. – Hippocratic words for people we can also apply for brands. What marketing initiatives do we “feed” our brands that they may grow healthy and strong to become more productive? How do we nourish our brands and nurture growth to become healthier and wealthier?
Before a human being can become a productive member of society, he or she must be nourished and nurtured with good nutrition and health care, a good education and living conditions, and most of all, by love in the family. Similarly, brands must be well-fed and well-cared for in a company. This is where marketing innovations (new-better-unique initiatives) and strong communication campaigns that enhance favorable consumer attitude and influence positive consumer behavior come into focus. Healthier brands are wealthier brands because they will keep customers loyal and attract new ones.
9. Balanced Diet and Regular Exercise – As we ourselves seek to live a healthy, active lifestyle, with the timeless advice of eating a balanced diet of carbohydrates and proteins, fats and fibers, vitamins and minerals, so too should we always strive to maintain “top-of-mind” brand awareness and enhance preference as “my favorite brand” through a comprehensive program of the classic marketing mix.
If there is a “Scientific Method”, there is a “Marketing Method” – a “Surgical Procedure” and a “Brand Procedure”. This starts with formulating the best brand positioning statement that must be relevant to consumers, specific and not just motherhood, and unique in the marketplace that will convince current and prospective users to prefer our brand vs. competition by answering the very simple yet very difficult question, “What’s in it for me? Why should I switch from my current or usual brand?”
Next comes translating the brand positioning into the entire marketing mix of 4 P’s (Product-Price-Place-Promotions), which has now evolved to 8 or even more P’s, that will bring to life the brand positioning statement. This marketing mix must be a winning bundle. Last but not least comes the 360° Integrated Marketing Communications that represents the best execution of the marketing strategy from product and packaging to the point-of-sale, from advertising to availability, involving various agencies (design-creative-media-digital-events-sponsorships), sales and distribution partners.
10. Do your rounds. – If doctors see their patients regularly, then so too should marketing folk visit the trade and talk to consumers frequently to keep their “finger on the pulse” of their brand in the market.
Throughout my entire career of over 30 years across Asia-Pacific, I cannot recall a market visit or trade check, customer survey or consumer interview that I did not find enlightening, whether in plush offices or FGD rooms, on the banks of the Cagayan river for a laundry detergent or the kampungs of Indonesia for insecticides, the restaurants in China for soft drink brands or the bars in Hong Kong for a beer brand, the coffee shops in Malaysia and the tea houses in Vietnam, the modern trade or general trade, supermarkets or wet markets, convenience store chains or sari-sari stores, in schools or farms.
To be a good doctor of companies and healer of brands, one must stay close to his or her consumers.
11. Keep learning. Medical doctors are lifetime students, even after 10 years of medical education. They continue learning from medical journals and surgical bulletins, international conferences and local symposia because the practice of medicine keeps evolving with the advent of new diseases and medicine, new equipment and procedures. So too must we in marketing stay as lifetime learners.
12. Do post-mortems. I have observed that doctors get better over time because they constantly undergo peer reviews or “hospital conferences” when younger doctors present to more senior doctors the clinical outcome of their patients – whether positive but specially the negative. Rarely is this done in the business discipline perhaps due to the fear of damaging one’s career. But how can we improve individually and collectively if we do not share best practices we can emulate and even the worst mistakes we must avoid. By doing so, I believe marketing practitioners will become better, and all brands and companies will prosper instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
A dose of humility is good for marketing people. Swallow our pride because it’s non-fattening anyway.
13. Use modern technology. In recent years, there have been great strides in the field of medicine at the disposal of doctors to cure their patients. In like manner, let marketing and brand managers employ new technology to reach and communicate with their consumers better, faster and more efficiently. This involves innovations in market research and advertising communications, sales strategies and distribution which can become an important source of competitive advantage in a global marketplace.
14. Exercise leadership. Good doctors are good leaders, supported by a team of internists, anesthesiologists, surgeons, nurses, medical technicians, rehab and physical therapists, dieticians and pharmacists, administration and staff all working for the same goal to save lives and cure diseases.
It is the same with any company large or small with employees in different departments all working to satisfy the consumer better than competition with the use of their branded products and services. After my corporate career and upon starting my consultancy, I concluded there are only 2 concepts needed in any organization – Marketing and Leadership. Having introduced the concept of “Marketing Leadership”, I believe Marketing is what anyone must do, while Leadership is what anyone must have.
In my corporate career and consultancy practice, I have concluded that virtually all business problems are people problems, but thankfully, the converse is true — all business solutions are people solutions.
15. Do not overprotect. Children who grow up overprotected by their parents tend to be weaker than those who grow up exposed to the elements. This is because exposure even to harmful microorganisms boosts the body’s resistance and strengthens immunity from disease. This is the process of evolution and natural selection in action. Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.
In the same way, brands that grow up in a monopolistic environment and have never been confronted with serious competitive threats tend to become complacent, because there is simply no need for any marketing. This invariably leads to dissatisfied customers and uncompetitive brands that suffer serious challenges to their false sense of security as faux market leaders once the industry is liberalized, which is exactly what happened in the local industries of airlines and telecommunications.
16. Do not abuse the body. In the same way our family doctors would advise us not to overwork ourselves, neither should marketing professionals overwork their brands by “leveraging” them into multiple categories or line extensions. This may seem like a cost-efficient way to launch new brands, but in the long-term you will run the risk of overextending the brand and diluting the core equity of the brand. The best example is a brand we have come to love as the “finest name in ice cream” yet extended itself into a totally unrelated category like poultry. It may have enjoyed some sales when there was no competition, but it eventually lost out in both markets to specialists in each category. If men are mere mortals and not superheroes; in the same way, brands are not to be overextended. MEGAbranding can turn into “NEGA”branding. As Jack Trout and Al Riese, fathers of brand positioning admonished, “when you have a heart ailment, do you go to a generalist or do you go to a specialist?”
17. Heal all. My late father, Dr. Crisostomo A. Arcilla, Sr. was not just a respected and accomplished surgeon, but a physician with “mercy and compassion” because majority of his patients (up to two-thirds) were charity cases. He used to admonish his medical students never to overcharge for their medical services, especially the poor, warning them, “May God have mercy on you if your indigent patient, say a farmer, must sell his last carabao and sole source of livelihood, only to pay your fees.”
18. Follow your conscience. Do not prescribe marketing solutions to your brands that you know, consciously, are inappropriate or excessive, wasteful or costly. My mother used to relate an incident in the past when my father left for a scheduled surgical operation. In less than an hour, he returned home to my mother’s surprise. When she asked why he came back so soon, he replied, “The patient did not need surgery.” Seeing my mother was a bit saddened because of the opportunity income lost, my father then asked, “Do you want me to operate on a patient even if she does not need one?”
19. Incurable 3. My father rued the 3 types of patients who are most difficult to cure: a) those who have given up the fight to live; b) those who deny they are sick; and c) those who know more than their doctor. Marketing folks should beware not to fall into these traps of despair, denial and “doctoring”.
20. Be grateful. For grateful patients whose lives were saved or cured of disease, my father would say, “God first. Doctors second.” To my clients I say, “God first. My family second. The Brand Healer third.”
Marketing is a vocation to make brands healthier & wealthier for we are in business to improve the world.
(Wilfrido V. E. Arcilla is an independent marketing consultant. He is a recipient of the Agora Award for Marketing Excellence in Asia-Pacific from the Philippine Marketing Association and a Special Citation from the Catholic Mass Media Awards for Best Business Column. He holds a B.S. Business Administration from U.P. Diliman and an M.S. Industrial Economics from the Center for Research and Communication, the economic think-tank of the University of Asia and the Pacific.)
