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Video (2/2) - Closing scene of the movie 21.

Video (1/2)  - Opening scene of the movie 21

Summary: "MIT senior math major Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is accepted into Harvard Medical School but cannot afford the $300,000 fee. Despite a 44 MCAT score and top grades, Ben faces a fierce competition for the prestigious Robinson Scholarship that would pay entirely for the medical school. The director tells him that the scholarship would go to the student who would "dazzle" him."

Very interesting blog post about personal leadership branding through a food recipe example. The author provides a very practical definition of points-of-parity and points-of-differentiation.

My understanding about these two concepts is:

Points-of-parity: are the elements that are considered mandatory for a brand. The basic things that you need to be a player in a category.

Points-of-differentiation: are the attributes that make a brand unique, it is your competitive advantage.

You probably already have a personal leadership brand. But do you have the right one? The question is not trivial. A leadership brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. It commu...

Personal leadership branding is something unique for each leader. It is the way through which leaders convey their identity and communicate their values. In order to have an effective leadership branding, it is important to have a clear understanding of the main points-of-difference and the attributes that make a leader unique. Furthermore, leadership branding establishes how leaders want to be seen and what they want to be known for based on own personal goals and targets.

In my opinion, it is important to understand that leadership branding is something dynamic. It evolves as so do leaders. They grow personally and professionally, become more experienced and develop more hard and soft skills. The more goals you achieve and the greatest impact that you have, the more powerful your message should be and the better image of you, you want others to have.

I found this Harvard Business Review article very interesting as it shows 5 reasonable steps to define your leadership brand:

1)      Define what are the major results you want to achieve in the next year

2)      Define what do you want to be known for

3)      Define your identity

4)      Construct your leadership brand statement and then test it

5)      Make your brand identity real

Do you have the right personal leadership brand?

Behance - A company driven by purpose

Behance is a designer community that was established in 2006. The mission of the company is "To empower the creative world to make ideas happen." Everything about the company, every time its CEO speaks, and every information available highlights this idea. There is a huge consistency between the purpose of the company and the way they do things.

They are the leading online platform that helps creative professionals to show their work and lets people and organizations discover this creative work. The great thing about this company is that they are removing the barriers that exist between talent and opportunity and companies can explore the work and have access to talent on a global scale.

For more information:

We are living now in a Relationship Era where relationships are far more important than just selling a product. In the Consumer Era, the focus was on the product and mass advertising worked well. The process was not very complex and it included identifying a need, developing a product to satisfy that need, doing a marketing campaign for a specific target market and using the right channels for that audience. In today’s world people love or hate brands and they become their best advocates for their success or failure. Now it is more than just doing advertising for the simple purpose of buying. Today is about aspirations, experiences and feelings that go beyond the product.

Social media has become a premier form of communication where people can talk about their experience with brands and with companies. It has a big impact on how a company is evaluated 24/7 and can have big network effects. With all of this connectivity and the easiness to communicate with others, brands are more exposed than ever. Now, it is not only about the functionality of a product, people care deeply about the brand’s essential self.

It is remarkable how mass media and mass marketing are collapsing. Instead, there are now opportunities to do more tailored advertising through the social media outlets. Companies have the chance to be more closely to their target markets and they have the risk of messing up and creating an exponential negative publicity with a limitless reach.

Management should understand that Branding is not only a responsibility of the marketing department. It should encompass the entire organization and it should be consistent with the purpose and the values of the company. In this Relationship Era, branding is about getting into the heads and hearts of consumers. Brands should fuel aspirations and experiences for the consumers and they need to convey the values of the organization.

Human nature plays a vital role in today’s world and companies should strive to have a REAL purpose. That purpose needs to be consistent throughout all the activities of the organization: recruiting, hiring, compliance, management, etc. It has been proved that companies with purpose perform better than other companies, even in times of economic downturns. With the digital revolution and the unlimited access of information, companies need to build TRUST on their consumers not only with the company itself but with its products and services.

When people adore brands they take ownership and defend them against everything. They become their best advocates and thus one of the greatest assets that a company can have. Sustainability relies on trust and on these mutually beneficial relationships. So the big question is, how do you get loyal customers that will talk about your product and generate network effects in this interconnected world?

Managers need to understand that companies need to be respected for how they conduct themselves and for what they sell. And most importantly they need to realize that core values cannot be faked. It is not something that you just write down on paper. For this to be real, everyone in the company needs to live by the values across all aspects of the company and management needs to be the best example of this and make sure everyone is on board. A key takeaway is that value-based relationships command loyalty and trust.

Interesting article:

Intel Tablets - Brand Extension

With a declining PC market, Intel decided to extend its "Intel Inside" to other product categories such as Tablets. Before extending the brand, one of the major concerns of the company's executives was the potential brand dilution.

Intel is one of the most valuable brands in the world and it took a lot of time and effort to get to this point. Thus diluting the brand in some way posed a great risk and it could have high costs for the company. In addition to this, the company experienced other threats and challenges including microprocessor clones that were not exposed to the high risks and high R&D costs that Intel had and the increased segmentation among computer buyers.

“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” - Andrew Grove, Co-Founder, Intel

Image Source: http://www.jeffbots.com/bunnypeople.html

Intel is a great example of the power of brand advertising. In an industry where product cycles get shorter every time and where performance curves get steeper, Intel found a way to position itself and to create an enormous brand equity through advertising, becoming one of the most valuable brands in the world (8th in 2013)[1]. With the campaign “Intel Inside” they were able to create a unique brand awareness and to have a deeper connection based on feelings and experiences with its users. They also soon realized that with this changing environment it would be hard to brand each generation of product individually so creating an umbrella brand that could support future generations of products was the way to go.

The company identified early the importance of having high adoption rates. Because of this, they sought ways to work alongside Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) through a very interesting cooperative advertising program (co-op advertising). With this strategy, Intel paid part of the advertising expenses and its logo and tagline were included in the OEMs campaigns.  In addition, they also started producing motherboards and chipsets that were necessary to further develop the ecosystem and to increase the innovation rates within PC manufacturers, encouraging more rapid adoptions.

Despite the skepticism of many industry experts, the media, and even of people inside the company, the advertising initiatives proved to be very effective. They created an incredible brand awareness and this helped end users to learn about the new products differences and benefits. In my opinion Intel executed its strategy in a remarkable way. Intel's products not only had the technological advantages that they claimed but also the company had a very fact-based approach.

Intel did a lot of market research and listening to their customers paid off and was very beneficial. They understood the end user concerns, needs and they were able to tailor products and their communication strategy based on these inputs. In a system dynamics view, with these initiatives, they created positive reinforcing loops that increased the company’s brand equity.

It is really impressive that since the beginning, Intel’s advertising was designed to highlight two main attributes: safety (reliability) and leading technology. I think one of the best things Intel did was to align its business strategy with its brand strategy. Consistency was all over the place, from a technological and engineering standpoint to its communication and advertising campaigns.

As part of this consistency with the core values of the brand, internal communication/collaboration between marketing and technology teams improved significantly. With time, the role of marketing at Intel changed for good and there was a better alignment between the product roadmap and the marketing roadmap.

It is outstanding how Intel found a way to narrow the gap between the technical details and the emotional experience of using cutting-edge technology.    A big takeaway from this case is to talk and listen to consumers, provide solutions to their needs and communicate effectively the benefits of the different products.

Inconsistent brand image? 

H&M launched a collection in 2011 in collaboration with the luxury brand Versace. H&M had previously done co-branding strategies with other luxury brands such as Karl Lagerfeld and Viktor & Rolf.

H&M is part of the “Fast Fashion” category that offers the latest designs and trends at a significant lower price. Why would a brand like Versace pursue a strategy like this?

In my opinion the main reason is simply more sales! By using a vehicle such as this one, luxury brands appeal to mass markets (volume) and it also helps as a point of entry to attract new customers into the luxury market. However, it is important to consider the risks and the implications that such a bold move could have. For example, brand image could be damaged, you could alienate your core customers and you could reduce your brand equity. Also, it is important to assess what type of customers you really want to attract for your overall company strategy. Brand Consistency plays a major role in the success of luxury fashion brands.

Below is a link to an interesting article about luxury brands and co-branding that talks about this particular case (Versace for H&M).

Source: http://nakedtile.blogspot.com/2010/09/penelope-tree.html

How do you reinvent one of the most iconic brands, capturing new markets while reinforcing its core values? This is certainly a very tough question to answer but Burberry is a great example of how to do so. Burberry was founded in 1856, they invented the gabardine and their unique trademark: the Burberry check pattern. The brand became a symbol of luxury and functionality. However, success became a threat and the company had a worldwide growth primarily through licensing and distribution agreements. The major risk of this became the inconsistent brand image with its quality proposition. Furthermore, the brand became very conservative and skewed to an older customer base.

An agonizing company with no clear value proposition, Burberry began its transformation in 1997 with the arrival of its new CE0, Rose Marie Bravo and the leadership team that she brought aboard including the experienced creative director Christopher Bailey. Bravo succeeded in turning around Burberry’s brand and transforming it into a lifestyle brand that was aspirations, luxurious and innovative conserving its classic style while at the same time portraying a contemporary style for a younger market. Among the great things that Bravo did were:

- Reposition the brand by reinforcing its value proposition as aspirational and at the same time functional.

- Update the product line by focusing in three main collections: womenswear, menswear and accessories. And create a consistent brand image.

- Expand the brand portfolio: lower-priced labels (Thomas Burberry, Burberry Blue and Black labels) and ultra-luxury label (Prorsum).

- Advertising campaign and promotion consistent with the strategy of the company to reinvigorate the brand with a more trend-conscious, modern look while conveying the brand values of classic and stylish.

Once focused on acqui-hires and absorption, Facebook is keeping its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions as separate brands.

I found this article very interesting and it certainly gave me a perspective that I had not considered. In my opinion brand architecture is probably the most important element for a brand's success. The reason for this is that it sets the foundation of the brand and of its strategy. The "House of Brands" concept is part of the brand architecture framework called "brand relationship spectrum." 

The House of Brands strategy involves an independent set of stand-alone brands, each maximizing the impact on a market. Thinking about some of the major acquisitions and mergers that Facebook has done, there are a couple whose brands are very well positioned, have a strong brand equity and could be left as stand-alone brands. I am particularly referring to Instagram and WhatsApp.

In a dynamic and global world where brands seem to shift constantly and where achieving sustainable customer loyalty is not an easy task, the answer is NO. Perceptions of brands change over time, many successful companies and products from the past do not exist today. As it can be seen in the graph below from a research done by Samuel Arbesman (http://www.wired.com/2012/06/fortune-500-turnover-and-its-meaning/), there is an imminent rate of decrease in the companies that form part of the Fortune 500 list as time passes by.

In another article from Prof. Mark J. Perry’s blog (http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/11/fortune-500-firms-in-1955-vs-2011-87.html), it can be observed that “comparing the Fortune 500 companies in 1955 and 2011, there are only 67 companies that appear in both lists…56 years later almost 87% of the companies have either gone bankrupt, merged, gone private, or still exist but have fallen from the top Fortune 500 companies (ranked by gross revenue).” This is something alarming and is worth considering.

Branding is a critical issue for marketing and sales but brands are certainly not just instruments of management. Not only brand managers but also executives need to understand that brands have a critical role and should be a means to an end. Branding should be seen as a strategic initiative and should be done collectively and with the collaboration of the executive team. A long time ago, brands stopped being just a marketing issue and the playing field has changed. Now, many different stakeholders are involved including employees, customers, producers, distributors, etc. and their opinions and feedback matter.

I used to think corporate culture didn’t matter. Discussion of vision, mission and values was for people who couldn’t build product or sell it! We had..

Definitely a huge mistake that Singapore Airlines (SIA) made was the delay of their mileage program. While most airlines began mileage programs in 1981, SIA waited until 1993 to have its own. Not only they were late in this game but also initially they limited its program only to business and first class passengers. Why did they wait so long when at that time they had one of the highest load factors (close to 80% year-round) in the industry?

Source Image 1: http://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/ppsclub-krisflyer/

Source: http://www.dynamicbusiness.com.au/small-business-resources/growing/how-to-create-a-customer-centric-culture-29022012.html

Customer service should be a focus for many (if not all) companies. However, not all of them are good at this and just a few are able to use customer service as a real competitive advantage. Singapore Airlines (SIA) is a great case of leveraging and delivering an extraordinary customer service. In an industry where there is extreme competition and where most carriers compete on price, SIA was able to transform the industry through a customer-centric approach. They became the first airline to have customer service as a priority and to become a real service provider in this challenging industry. 

Since its inception in 1972, SIA’s strategy was to provide superior customer service. They focused on customer needs by providing an exceptional in-flight service. Every action the company took was oriented towards this goal and by 2001 they operated under three main pillars:

1)      Maintain the youngest and most modern fleet to take advantage of new technologies, to have more fuel efficient planes and lower maintenance costs, and to be more appealing for SIA’s customers.

2)      Provide superior in-flight service.

3)      Transform customer service through internal activities for the entire organization. Avoid becoming complacent.

The company created a unique culture where customer service was the priority. To reinforce this they invested heavily in training programs, in recruiting people not only with the functional skills but also with the soft skills necessary to provide a world-class service and they created a corporate culture where pro-activeness and having initiative was expected at all levels; during on-ground and in-flight services.

Employees were empowered to have the drive to improve constantly the service provided. Managers at the local level practiced a “two-level-up” decision-making approach to settle customer unhappiness. This meant that they were empowered to make decisions based on what their boss and their boss’s boss could do without having to ask for authorization. Employees were expected to initiate things, seek service opportunities and to solve issues avoiding the bureaucracy and were rewarded based on customer feedback as a very important component. In other words, employees were expected to take ownership and responsibility.

In addition, SIA had a solid and successful financial performance that allowed it to invest in fleet and in many different in-flight comforts. The company was able to create a strong brand known the cutting-edge quality of its service. They became in some way the flagship of excellence in the airline industry. This reputation at the same created additional challenges as people expected even more from the company. There was no room for error and the bar kept going up. SIA was very innovative in getting information from their customers and learning constantly about their needs, their feedback on the company’s performance and on the opportunity areas customers thought existed.

Although the focus was on capturing the loyalty of passengers in the highly profitable premium class segment. SIA also understood the potential of having a superior service through all class segments. They became the first airline to offer economy class passengers amenities free of charge such as headsets, drinks and meals.

SIA’s training programs, their communications, their advertising campaigns and all their business decisions supported their corporate culture and identity. They were not just a transportation company, they provided a unique travel experience and passengers became the best judges and witnesses of this. The consistency within their business model, their culture and their people let SIA became one of the most important and profitable airlines.

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Having the example and results of SIA, could healthcare providers, insurance and telecommunication companies differentiate themselves by getting to know each of their customers and by exploiting big data and online profiles? What is the value of identifying top-tier customers and offering them tailored services and products with some individual pampering? What are the challenges of doing so?

Some people say that wine improves with age and others say that age improves with wine. There are definitely very good arguments on both sides and I believe that it can certainly go in both directions. I am a big lover of wine and for me it is one of the most exquisite pleasures on earth. I am not a big connoisseur of wines but I like to keep experimenting with different brands. Before business school I was part of a wine club and every 2 months I received different bottles, with all the brochures and explanations about the grapes, regions, etc.

The Global Wine Industry had suffered significant transformations in recent years. Wine has become more accessible to people and now the industry is greatly fragmented with a significant number of competitors. Traditionally wine production was geographically concentrated in France, Italy and Spain (referred to as the Old World) and now there are more and more relevant players in places such as Chile, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Africa (referred to as the New World).

There has been also a shift in the structure of the industry. Before, wines used to be classified by their region of origin (Bordeaux, Rhine, Rioja, etc.) and with the “New World” players now they are classified based on the type of grape (Merlot, Cabernet, Shiraz, etc.). As it can be seen in the Concha y Toro’s case, perceptions are extremely important in this industry. People’s assumptions on product quality are based on the country of origin of the wine, on word of mouth and on other expectations. Wine has become a global marketing and consumer-oriented business and the influence of New World producers has had a tremendous impact in this industry.

Many different challenges have aroused for wine producers including a very fragmented market, an intense price competition, very little, almost nonexistent brand loyalty, consolidation in producers and distributors, among others. Moreover, with a product like this it is hard to achieve a product consistency in large-scale production. This is an issue that other traditional distilled beverages like Mezcal (handcrafted, agave based spirit) have and that poses additional complexity in the supply chain and strategy of these products.

Concha y Toro is a successful case of a company that has been able to overcome some of these challenges and become one of Latin America’s largest wine exporters and one of the world’s top ten wineries. With a clear strategy to capture share in global markets they were able to capture part of the mass segment with a low price and good quality product (“value for money”). This is how they built and positioned their brands, sustained their brand equity and attracted many consumers.

Wine is an extraordinary beverage, it is not only good in terms of health but it also brings joy and happiness when you have a good glass of wine with your family and friends. The best thing is that wine is for every occasion, you can never go wrong with it.

Enjoy life and have a good wine!

Cheers,

Two of the most exclusive and expensive wines:

1) Petrus

2) Vega Sicilia

Wine and Food Pairing Chart:

Source: http://winefolly.com/tutorial/basic-wine-and-food-pairing-chart/