Brand Love Hate

When Your Favorite Brands Re-brand

I was in the dairy aisle when I knew something was wrong. Looking farther down the aisle, where I normally would see my favorite Tropicana orange juice (lots of pulp plus calcium), I instead saw a wall of unfamiliar OJ. Tropicana had re-branded, and I was lost.

That was dramatic yet real - after years and years of the same familiar packaging, Tropicana changed its product design, a change that made differentiating its varieties and flavors almost impossible. I originally thought the criticism was silly, but Tropicana then added visual keys to the shelves in supermarkets to help customers find their favorite OJ (and to not accidentally buy tangerine-orange, which I almost did many times).

The good news in this case is that Tropicana listened to customers and decided to revert to the old packaging! I think all the analysis in the blogosphere was both impressive and cut to the heart of the real problem - it's not that we love the old packaging, the new designs were just too similar and confusing. I'll be happy to have back the same old color-coded cartons.

Another recent case of a favorite brand re-branding is Pepsi, which moved from its lively blue and silver design to a dark blue (almost purple) packaging with a now-distorted version of the iconic Pepsi brand mark. While the similarity of color at least allows me to still find the product, this change is boring and really subdues the packaging. I would have much rather seen a retro look with the classic Pepsi mark untouched, rather than it being degraded this way based on popular trends.

(Ahem, Tropicana is a Pepsi brand and both projects were done by Arnell, NYC.)

Nokia Employees Stick with Mobiles

From the "eat your own cooking" department, this week I had a call with a client contact at Nokia. After scouring our CRM and her e-mails for her "office" phone number, I realized I only had her mobile number. With a small sense of panic I made the call, only to quickly conclude, "it's Nokia, dummy!" The client confirmed that employees there (US corporate office in White Plains, NY) do not have desk phones, and thus exclusively use their mobiles for work. The client said she never misses a call and prefers to have just the one phone number. I think this is great internal brand support - I wonder if other cell phone makers, and even the wireless service providers, do the same thing?

A Reason Not to Use AOL Mail to Send Out Your Resume

Today I received a resume via e-mail for one of the openings at my company. At the bottom of the well-written e-mail cover letter was the following footer message tagged on by AOL (which owns TMZ):

The Famous, the Infamous, the Lame - in your browser.

Get the TMZ Toolbar Now!

A word of advice to job seekers - use Gmail or spend $50 for the year to get e-mail at your own domain. It's worth the time and/or investment to make a good first impression.

Netflix Hears You - and Actually Replies!

I don't even use Netflix profiles, but today's e-mail to customers is the right way to handle user feedback:

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Jason,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Always better to ask users before a change like this, but Netflix handled it well.

Coke Zero by Request

You know a beverage has gone mainstream when it starts getting requested on airplanes. I recently heard passengers requesting Coke Zero while on a JetBlue flight to San Diego. The answer was no - only Diet Coke was available - but it told me that Coke Zero popularity is on the rise. And the stats look to back that up - Beverage Digest reported (PDF) in March that Coke Zero volume was up 37.5 percent in 2007, when almost all of the brands in the top 10 were declining. Maybe the airlines should take note (looks like some restaurants have).

Who is this Gen Y?

Yes, someone finally has defended Generation Y! In a recent post on his blog, Thom Singer says something long overdue - the portrayals of Gen Y are "phooey!"

I've been collecting articles and white papers written about Gen Y for months to try to get some consistent sense of the group's motivations and expectations when it comes to work. However, I became frustrated with what I found because the content was so contrary to my own experiences working with Gen Y employees. One that I have kept starred for this post is an article from Fortune about how UPS is "training the untrainable Gen Yers." Along with that quote, I marked these as bogus (emphasis added):

"Much derided as a group of upstart technophiles of little work ethic and even less loyalty, Gen Yers aren't exactly a perfect fit for Big Brown. In fact, it's hard to imagine a worse match."

"But if there's one group that isn't down to be engineered, it's Generation Y, people who can't even be bothered to use punctuation, let alone memorize anything."

Wow, I really couldn't believe these and other such condescending lines in the story. I really expected some 24-year-old superstar at Deloitte or JPMorgan or even UPS to write in the following week with a message like Singer's - phooey! But no such note came (or was published), so I was left thinking:

• All I've been reading is true - Gen Yers read this article and just agreed.
• Why am I expecting a group as clearly lazy as Gen Y to write a letter?

Neither of those thoughts are true, and you know how I figured it out? By working and communicating with Gen Y employees rather than reading absurd articles and generalizations.  Two examples:

I currently employ an intern who is finishing her final year of college, and is eyeing graduate school, while working close to 24 hours per week for my company. She has a great work ethic, is incredibly professional for 21, and genuinely wants to help the company however she can - marketing, client services, sales, whatever. She jumps at opportunities to learn new things, take on new projects and work extra hours. I guess she forgot to read the white paper about how she's supposed to ask for more money and demand that her role be perfectly defined?

Another Gen Yer, this one a friend of the family, graduated from college in 2006 and is trying hard to make it on her own in New York City. She still is figuring out exactly what she wants to do (uh oh, sounding like Y?), but is working hard at a job she cares about. With two affluent parents, I suppose she missed the article about how she's supposed to run home to Mom and Dad rather than "pay her dues" in the big city?

I'm not saying that all of the supposed attributes of Gen Y are false - there absolutely are generational differences that affect how people work and how companies can recruit and retain them. But the generalizations are garbage and, as Thom says, Gen Yers need to stand up for themselves. I think they are - by how they work and act and communicate.

But what do I know? I'm just a cynical Gen Xer.

Rewarding Brand Fanatics

On a trip to San Francisco last week, I was sitting in SFO waiting for my JetBlue flight when I heard the boarding announcement for a nearby Virgin America flight. Everything seemed normal until the gate agent said that passengers wearing red - Virgin's brand color - could board first. For some new customers, this appeared to be a surprise, but others who clearly had flown the airline before were ready to be rewarded for their fandom. Previously during the week, I happily had lunch at In-N-Out Burger and witnessed something similar - fans of the burger joint ordering from a secret menu to secure eats like "Animal Style" fries and "Flying Dutchman" burgers. In both cases, those brand loyalists were rewarded by the companies they admire with special treatment, bonuses that are insignificant in terms of cost for the corporations, yet huge for the relationships with those dedicated customers.

Business 2.0 Uh-Oh

Almost the same day that I read about the shuttering of Business 2.0, I received my renewal note in the mail, which was depressing. I've been a huge fan of the magazine for many years, and although Fortune is also very good, I'll miss Business 2.0. The rumor that competitor Mansueto (publisher of the also-excellent Fast Company and Inc. magazines) was going to buy B2.0 made me think it might stick around, but the deal didn't happen. So I sadly shredded my B2.0 renewal card and re-upped the Mansueto books instead.

Employer Brand vs. Employment Brand vs. Recruitment Brand vs. Talent Brand

At my last job, I worked on a number of employer branding projects and sales pitches, and at my current gig, our recruitment advertising solutions support and strengthen our clients' employer brands. A question that has spanned both jobs is why there is such a lack of consistency in what companies call "employer branding," with a number of variations causing my confusion.

Here are some of the most common variations that I have seen:

Employer brand, employment brand, recruitment brand, talent brand

To me, only employer brand (and thus employer branding) makes total sense. The employer brand is a relationship between employees and the company, as well as a promise for what the employment experience should be like for both those employees and for job seekers. While the employer brand certainly reflects what it's like to work at a company, it represents the company itself, not the "employment."

The phrase "recruitment brand" refers to recruitment marketing, in which the employer brand is critical, and recruitment marketing campaigns certainly have themes and taglines that could be confused as a brand. But the core of those efforts - on which all else is built - is the employer brand, which sets the expectation for what working at the company will be like. It's a promise to job seekers of what they will experience as employees. If a branding effort is focused on recruitment marketing only, the actual employment experience for new hires likely will not live up to the expectations set in the recruitment process.

"Talent brand" is a newer variation that recently hit my IN box. It seems to suggest that the company's people are the central focus, rather than the employment experience. While people certainly are important to any employer brand and deliver on it every day, the brand represents much more - the company's promises to and relationships with employees, not (just) the employees themselves. And while people likely have more impact on the delivery of a company's employer brand than any other factor, they are still just one factor among many (consider benefits, meaningful work, learning and growth opportunities, work-life balance and the like).

When considering any of these variations as they come up, I always ask what the brand represents and contemplate the object of job seekers' and employees' perceptions. In almost all cases, it's the company, and thus "employer brand" makes the most sense.

Car 3.0

My inner Volkswagen fanboy has come out via this blog numerous times - on background, both my first (1996 Jetta) and second (2002 Golf) cars have been VWs. Lately I've been thinking about what's next for me vehicle-wise. So I put together a list of cars that I find interesting based on brand, look, reputation and perceived performance - some of them I've experienced in person and others I have not.

• VW Rabbit (of course!)
• Mini Cooper
• Honda Fit
• Toyota Prius
• Toyota Yaris
• Toyota Matrix
• Scion xA
• Smart Fourtwo

Any experiences, thoughts or comments to share?