We are fans of Trust Matters, the respected blog hosted by Charles Green of Trusted Advisor fame.

A Trust Matters commentary, Great Selling By Truth Telling: A Best Buy Tale, should be required reading for those who think branding is simply “advanced” advertising, a stereotype captured in this quote:

[S]ome people feel this is a sucker’s game. It’s sales right? The point isn’t to tell the truth, it’s to not get caught not telling the truth? To look like you’re telling the truth, not to actually tell it.

Market research reveals some 75 percent of Americans disbelieve and distrust advertising.

As Charles Green frames it:

Telling the truth is not stupid, wussy, or bad business. Far from it. It’s very good business.

We agree. Telling the truth — authenticity — is one requirement of effective branding.

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A demonstration of how to own the conversation® within a business category, by exuding an engaging brand personality in alignment with a well thought out brand strategy:

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Guest blogged by Monica Sabino of Brandgame.

When traveling abroad and sharing with others you are Brazilian, there is immediate association with samba, soccer and the iconic soccer star, Pelé. In the last few years, one more word was added to this list – Havaianas (pronounced ah-vai-YAH-nas).

It is particularly interesting that this brand has been added to the collection of positive words that describe Brazil, because when I was a child, in São Paulo, one of the worst things that could happen to you in terms of popularity was to be seen in Havaianas. Wearing Havaianas was a sign your family was a victim of the recession or the mass layoffs happening in the industry at that time – you were officially typecast as “poor.” Only financially challenged children would use these 5-dollar flip-flops launched in 1962, that yes, were extremely comfortable, but also completely un-cool.

In 1994, however, Havaianas started a journey towards granting every Brazilian consumer permission to wear them — “affordable” could be turned into “democratic and informal.” Havaianas offered a very clean design, a simplicity that was almost sexy. Why not put it on the feet of all Brazilians, those walking on the street but dreaming of the beach? Creating an instant vacation.

What seemed at first aspirational became the Havaianas brand strategy. A brand for all. Comfortable meeting cool. An instant benefit by haloing the wearer as upscale and chic. And, according to the company’s U.S. site, the name Havaianas itself, Portuguese for Hawaiians, was a tribute to America’s glamorous holiday destination.

Product was redesigned. The original two-colored version received a line extension called Havaianas Top, with a single color distributed in new channels, to reach new audiences. Product display was changed; the bowls where the brand had been found in the past in retail locations were substituted by nice displays where each of the different colors could be seen.

In the years that followed the brand moved relentlessly towards the new strategy, at every contact point and with consistent execution. Colors, design, distribution, communication, everything was about fun, relaxation, and simplicity.

Different celebrities were photographed in their Havaianas, caught in relaxed moments. And although, according to the company, advertising spends remained the same, this shift in brand strategy brought the brand to unprecedented levels of success and to substantial imports as the brand carries all colorful qualities of Brazil.

What was unimaginable 13 years ago has become reality; the low-end commodity footwear has become a must-have fashion accessory. Havaianas now offers product for daily wear, and chic designs that are worn for an evening out.

Today wearing Havaianas is actually desirable. What was once a cheap flip-flop product have instead became shoes for those moments when you don’t need and don’t want to worry.

The commodity has been transformed to a brand.

As a Brazilian, it is nice to be associated with beautiful beaches, samba, good soccer… and a brand such as Havaianas!

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From the UK, The Independent today offers a history of select logos that have become ubiquitous in global contemporary culture.

Included are the stories behind the icons that go to work daily for Ferrari, Nike, Lacoste, McDonald’s, Apple and Chanel.

Good weekend read.

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Muji has opened in the United States.

Soho in New York City to be precise.

The Muji brand promise is simple. Literally, simple:

Because there is complexity in purity.
Elegance in plainness.
Intricacy in streamlining.
Richness in reduction.
Depth in minimalism.
Surprise in uniformity.
Innovation in re-use.
Cool in the avoidance of cool.
And there is true sophistication in simplicity.

Our friend in Europe tipped us to this story of Muji’s arrival:

Muji contends that design needn’t announce itself—rather, it can become apparent to you through use, over time… The company’s discretion—almost unheard of in the industry—reflects Muji’s dogged determination to reduce a product to its essence.

Muji offers a powerful demonstration of how the principle of simplicity works in attracting a consumer audience.

Muji’s brand promise is in the tradition of one developed centuries ago by a brand strategy thinker ahead of his time:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

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A fashion brand springs literally out of nowhere on track to register $100 million in sales this year. And, they did it without advertising. Impossible? Not at all, in the latest example of brand building without advertising in a report from the New York Times:

[L]ife is…good for Bert Jacobs…[and] his brother John…

From a single childlike drawing of a character they named Jake and their uplifting three-word slogan [the original is shown to the right], the brothers have developed a fashion brand sold in 4,500 independent retail outlets in the United States and 27 other countries…

Life is good, which rations its use of capital letters, offers one more example of a small company creating a big brand. Though most consumers associate great brands with marketing giants like Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Apple and Nike, the ability to build a powerful brand is no longer reserved for the big spenders. Small companies with great ideas and well-planned strategies — Kryptonite bicycle locks, Stonyfield Farm yogurt, Zipcar — have spawned prominent brands.

“A big brand comes from big insights about culture and consumers and what it is that they need,” said Susan Fournier, a brand expert and associate professor of marketing at the School of Management at Boston University. “To me, that has nothing to do with big budgets.”

Exactly. Building a brand into a successful business does not require the budget of a Fortune 500. If it did, of course, a Fortune 500 brand such as General Motors—with an annual advertising budget that in years past was $2.5 billion—would be assured lasting success.

The Life is good story is another example of how a cost effective brand strategy trumps an expensive advertising strategy, each and every time.

How did Life is good create an own the conversation strategy? By differentiating their brand through emotion:

“Life is good tapped into an emotional ethos that struck a chord with where the culture was at a certain point in time. That is not done by a marketing budget but by their customers who become evangelists and give the brand visibility and credibility.”

From the beginning, Life is good shunned advertising:

The Jacobs brothers considered a consumer advertising campaign several years ago but decided to wait until growth slowed to start it. Growth has never slowed. Instead of advertising, the company spends its money on charitable fund-raising festivals for children’s causes.

Read more about Jake and his dog Rocket in another brand success story at this link, and this one.

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If there were any doubt that brand strategy is business strategy, one need only read the this report discussing the strategic review underway at U.S. based Talbots, to sharpen its brand and ensure that the women’s clothing and specialty retailer remains “relevant, fresh and consistent.”

According to the Talbots CEO:

The goal of the review is to provide a comprehensive plan to improve profitability and improve business performance… [The review will include] operating matters, store growth, productivity, noncore concepts and distribution channels.

For Talbots, more than a logo or slogan at play here.

To assure success, hopefully Talbots selected a pure brand strategy consultancy which comes to the task with brand as the primary focus, rather than as an afterthought.

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The folks over at BNET, one of the CNET networks, do a post mortum of the failed GAP attempt to attract baby boomer women in this commentary.

The GAP failure of its Fourth & Towne concept is not discouraging to Ann Taylor, as they will soon attempt to achieve what F.A.T. could not.

As shared in this from the Globe & Mail, the secret is this simple, and this hard:

Companies show they care about female customers by discovering the single, subconscious emotional truth that is relevant to their brand and fits in the context of her world.

As the BNET piece suggests, to attract baby boomers, “focus on their lives, not their ages.”

Let’s watch to see if Ann gets it right.

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Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, the visionary who with her first husband extended the Winnie The Pooh characters and brand into a merchandising machine, passed away yesterday.

After licensing the merchandise rights to The Walt Disney Company in 1961 in exchange for royalties, Pooh products grew to generate over $1 billion in annual sales.

An interesting life, as captured in this remembrance from the Los Angeles Times:

Her first husband, Stephen Slesinger, was among the first to see Pooh’s financial potential. A literary agent, Slesinger in 1930 secured the rights to sell Pooh merchandise in the United States and Canada from A.A. Milne, author of the Pooh books.

When Slesinger died in 1953, Lasswell was left with the rights and a 1-year-old daughter to support.

“I thought, ‘Now what do I do?’ But it was right there for me,” Lasswell told The Times in 2002. “I decided to promote Pooh.”

…[She] paid homage to the character that’s “really been my whole life,” Lasswell told Fortune magazine in 2003, by driving a Cadillac with a license plate that said “POOH 1.”

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Architectural design conceived as part of an overall brand strategy can effectively demonstrate the promise behind a brand.

An architect with Seattle’s NBBJ remarks:

[B]randing [i]s the chemical reaction in the back of your head that happens when you are exposed to a brand. For instance, when I’m exposed to Volvo, I think of safety. Physical space in a building speaks to you the way branding does. Architecture is a form of branding; it is more than making a place functional. It can affect emotions and decisions, just like great marketing does.

We agree.

For example, Starbucks works to ensure their retail and business office spaces are designed to demonstrate to every employee and customer the essence of their brand.

Great architecture addresses basic human needs, attracting the equivalent of members to a club by projecting inclusion and the opportunity for affiliation. It is branding. By design.

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Architectural design conceived as part of an overall brand strategy can effectively promote and demonstrate a brand, whether it be through a retail experience, or performing as a billboard offering unexpected engagement.

This story from Korea’s Chosun Ilbo discusses how great architectural design powers the story behind brands, with examples including the Ferrari Showroom in Chungdam-dong, Seoul, and the Prada building in Aoyama, Tokyo [pictured].

Brings to mind the quote of German poet and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“I call architecture frozen music.”

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Notwithstanding the recent musings of its chairman, Starbucks these days is thinking of itself less as a coffee chain and more as a global platform with over 13,000 points of distribution. As reported in the New York Times:

When Bette Gottfried, a 48-year-old regular at a Starbucks in Ardsley, N.Y., saw that her favorite coffeehouse was promoting a film, she wasn’t immediately interested. “At first I was leery,” said Ms. Gottfried, dressed in workout clothes, wearing her hair in a ponytail and sitting near the window with her daily decaf mocha (“low-fat milk, no foam, no whipped”). “I thought, ‘Who are they to get involved in the movies?’ ”

Ultimately, however, she decided to take her 9-year-old daughter to see the film, “Akeelah and the Bee,” precisely because of the involvement of Starbucks. “I trusted seeing the movie, because it was promoted here,” she said. After all, she liked the company’s coffee; she had already bought and liked several CD’s it produced and sold, compilations of music by Carole King, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Why wouldn’t she like a Starbucks movie? She did, and now she’s considering picking up its latest cultural sales item: “For One More Day,” a book by Mitch Albom…

[Starbucks] is increasingly positioning itself as a purveyor of premium-blend culture. “We’re very excited, because despite how much we’ve grown, these are the early stages for development,” said Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks. “At our core, we’re a coffee company, but the opportunity we have to extend the brand is beyond coffee; it’s entertainment.”

…Schultz explained, “With the assets [we have] in terms of number of stores, and the trust we have with the brand, and the profile of our customers, we’re in a unique position to partner with creators of unique content to create an entertainment platform and an audience that’s unparalleled.”

…As Mr. Schultz sees it, customers get a new cultural experience and Starbucks gets a “halo” — the associations people have with beloved music, with “quality, good will, trust, intelligence.”
…

“It adds to the emotional connection with the customer,” said Mr. Schultz, and keeps the Starbucks experience from feeling, as he put it, “antiseptic.”

This strategy of rethinking Starbucks as a platform through which to feed a range of music and other entertainment product offerings relies upon the law of borrowed equity — use of the reputation of another brand to add value to your own. Whether for Starbucks, or a casual dining chain such as Applebee’s, such a strategy can work, but only if those entrusted with the brand remain focused on their core product offering.

Difficult to accomplish, extending a tightly focused brand to a “platform” outside of a core product category. But it is possible. Just ask Virgin.

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Seeking a new CEO and recovering from a string of missteps, including a recent announcement to shutter Forth and Towne, Gap Inc. [NYSE:GPS] faces a number of challenges to revitalize the company and its brands.

The first challenge is strengthening it’s flagship GAP brand.

One suggestion of how to tackle the problem comes in this from Adrants:

There’s a simple solution to fixing Gap, the brand. Get rid of the celebrities and start investing in the emotional meaning of the word Gap itself. The brand name has gotten lost in the celebrity shuffle.

The feelings that rub off on the word Gap need to come from a genuine place, not from a never ending parade of celebrities. The core values of the brand need to be defined in a personal and intimate way that plays off the word itself.

One example of how this idea could be brought to life as a story of the brand:

A teenage boy and a girl are sitting on a bench with a “gap” between them. Neither one has the courage to start a conversation, but clearly they are enamored with each other. Suddenly a no name street musician sits down between them and starts belting out a soulful ballad. Then he walks away. The two kids immediately start talking to each other. The Gap logo [appears with a new] Tagline: Get Together.

It’s this feeling that needs to drive the inner core of the brand. Without it, the brand is lost in the emotional retail space. By developing a series of “Gap” stories, there’s a way to reinvigorate the brand from the inside out, rather than the outside in.

If you get the emotional story right, the feelings rub off on the merchandise.”

As a starting point, good advice for an iconic brand that has lost its way.

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On Tuesday Gap Inc. [NYSE:GPS] announced that “following a thorough assessment of its store concept, Forth & Towne, it has decided it will not move forward with a full roll-out. As a result, the company will close its Forth & Towne store concept after an 18-month pilot that began August 2005.”

“We made the tough decision to close the brand and focus our efforts on stabilizing the existing businesses,” said Robert Fisher, Gap’s chairman and interim chief executive.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Gap designed Forth & Towne to offer baby boomers a miniature version of the department stores they grew up with, stocking four different labels under one roof. One section of the store, for example, was aimed at career-oriented women who shop for suits at Talbots Inc., while another resembled the loose, flowing styles at Chico’s. Part of the store held classic Gap T-shirts and jeans, redesigned for a less-skimpy look. The concept required a lot of space — and a lot of work to keep the sections distinct…

Forth & Towne’s stores “never gained much traction; suffered from fit, style and image problems; and became a big distraction.”

Forth & Towne, or F.A.T, also never developed an engaging story to support the concept. And it never settled upon a single point of difference to set it apart from competitors. Forth & Towne tried to be too much for too many audiences.

How did this happen?

In a stunning display of corporate homogeneity, the suits at The Gap failed to articulate a simple guiding promise for the new brand, as demonstrated by how they settled upon a name for the new concept which offered no clue of a reason to care about it. The team at Gap Inc. thought they were playing it safe, when instead their decision had the effect of issuing an execution order for the new concept before it was launched.

Forth & Towne might as well have been a stuffy bank, rather than the Chico’s killer it aspired to become as the name, and the story behind the name, offered no aspiration, no reason to want to affiliate with the brand. The brand had no spear tip by which to gain entry into the minds of female baby boomer crowd it so desperately wanted to influence and attract.

The result of such decision-making is easy to predict.

R.I.P F.A.T.

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A recent column in Advertising Age makes a point worth revisiting:

[During this year’s] Black Friday…many retailers seemed to go to new lengths to offer the deepest discounts…

The Sports Authority had “6-hour doorbusters,” with 25% off its entire stock. Toys “R” Us offered “Lowest prices ever” with 50% off and more. Sears featured “Insanely early Friday Specials.” The first 200 customers in each store got a free $10 reward card…

The day a chain starts down the continuous sale path is the day the chain is headed for trouble…

Strong brands do little sale advertising. I have never seen a Starbucks‘ ad offering two cappuccinos for the price of one. Nor have I seen an Apple ad offering half off on an iPod. Or have I seen a Rolex ad offering two watches for the price of one.

On Thanksgiving Day when all the other retailers were running their sale, sale, sale advertisements, Whole Foods ran an ad in…newspaper[s] with the headline: “Today we give thanks to all our local growers.”

That’s class. And that’s a powerful brand.

When a company’s brand shouts to the market little else than sale or low price or rebate, for the consumer it becomes impossible to determine what the brand stands for. And you can bet no one will stand around to ponder the answer. When that happens, when the consumer has no mental meathook by which to remember the brand doing the advertising, watch out. One need only look to brands such as Wal-Mart, Ford Motor, or United Airlines to survey the results.

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