Are your Harpics showing...?

Back in the 1970s, we all had a good snigger at the Durex joke. Australians knew Durex as a brand of sticky tape but elsewhere in the world it was a condom. This created the premise for hilarious stories about cultural miscommunication. You know the kind of thing: Did you hear about the Australian tourist who went into a chemist shop in London and asked for "a packet of Durex, sticky on both sides"?

And Americans who come here still find it funny that we use Jif to clean the bathroom, because in the US it's a brand of peanut butter... not so good on the porcelain!

Now comes the case of "White & Shine" - perhaps not such a problem for consumers, but a whole lot less amusing for the companies concerned. Macleans - the toothpaste people - and Harpic - the toilet cleaning people - have virtually simultaneously launched product variants with identical names.

While the risk that consumers will be harmed as a result of confusion seems relatively low (although you never know what some people do!), the shared name poses a real business risk for Macleans. No-one who makes toothpaste wants their product to be associated in any way with toilets or even toilet cleaners. Consumers are very sensitive when it comes to oral care products - it's a highly sensory category, as Pond's found when it tried to launch Pond's Toothpaste (as documented in Matt Haig's book "Brand Failures"). It's amazing how many people who hear the name "Pond's Toothpaste" instantly react with a "Yuk!" as they taste and feel greasy Pond's Cold Cream - a powerful association - in their mouths.

Anyway, I say shame on both Macleans and Harpic for choosing such a boringly obvious and descriptive name for a product variant. My prediction for "White & Shine"? Expect the Macleans version to disappear very quickly. Everyone wants white and shiny teeth, but no-one wants to use a dunny brush!

Update: Planet Ark comes clean!

Crikey! approached Planet Ark for comment on my piece (below) on the origins of its washing powder and got what looks to be a straight and detailed answer from Paul Klymenko, the organisation's Research Director, advising that it's made by a family-owned business in Melbourne. That's very encouraging, in keeping with what Planet Ark seems to be on about... and certainly not something to hide! I hope we soon see some reference to this on both the Planet Ark website and the packaging itself.

Forbidden planet: Who makes Planet Ark washing powder?

In consumer marketing, green is the new black. It’s no secret that all manner of business and brands not previously known for their "earth-friendliness" are adding a splash of green here and there, and mostly to good effect.

Planet Ark, a green brand that first came to consumer attention more than a decade ago by promoting recycling initiatives, has come a long way from those humble beginnings. Planet Ark is now an impressive consumer brand with high levels of recognition, approval and trust. From a commercial perspective, this means the organisation is ideally placed to capitalise on the current surge of consumer interest in all things green, water-saving and climate-friendly. While early moves in this direction saw Planet Ark as merely an endorser of products like Safe brand toilet paper and Aware laundry powder, the Planet Ark brand has recently assumed centre stage as a consumer product brand in its own right.

My household recently ditched an established national brand in favour of Planet Ark washing powder, and we are pleased with its performance so far. The rather simple and stark orange and blue box is awash with all kinds of information about the product, its ingredients and its environmental and health credentials. Strangely, though, amidst all the detail about cellulose colloids and plant oil surfactants, there’s no indication of where the product is made, or by whom.

Oh, sure, there’s an address – Planet Ark Environmental Products Pty Ltd, based in the Blue Mountains town of Wentworth Falls – but the Planet Ark website lists only eight staff in the Wentworth Falls office. There’s no mention anywhere of the kind of manufacturing and packaging operations required to produce mass-market quantities of a consumer product, nor whether these operations are undertaken in Australia or elsewhere. Neither is there any reference in the Planet Ark organisational structure to supply chain management – the process of sourcing all these non-petrochemical ingredients – nor a logistics and distribution network large enough to supply national supermarket chains.

The extensive FAQs section of the Planet Ark laundry powder website also sheds no light on the issue of who makes it. The nearest it comes is a question that asks Are the products Australian Made & Owned?, to which the answer is Yes they are. Some of the raw materials are not made in Australia so they must be sourced from overseas.

It’s hard to understand why Planet Ark seems so coy about identifying its commercial partners in what looks to be a good product with commendable credentials, especially as it has proclaimed itself "pro-business" from the outset and been transparent about its other business relationships.

Let’s face it, consumers are sufficiently attuned to the business of brand extension to realise that Planet Ark must be contracting other organisations to manufacture, package and distribute its consumer products. Planet Ark "green" shopping bags, for example, are manufactured in China, and the organisation seems quite open about this. We don’t actually believe – or expect – that Planet Ark founders and front people like Jon Dee, Pat Cash and Rebecca Gilling are out in a back room somewhere with their sleeves rolled up, mixing up batches of detergent in plastic rubbish bins.

And surely no consumer would think the less of Planet Ark for contracting another organisation to make and distribute laundry detergent and other consumer products under its brand name, so long as the ingredients and processes are specified and controlled by Planet Ark and are in keeping with its values and not-for-profit status.

Do consumers really care who makes products, how and where? Traditionally, and for so-called "low involvement" categories, the answer was mainly "no". But recent trends in fast-moving consumer goods marketing have turned that around, especially among some significant customer segments. We are now encouraged – indeed, trained – to look for information and read the fine print: Is it made in Australia? Is it dolphin-friendly? Is it low GI and organic? Does it contain CFCs, artificial sweeteners, colours and flavours? Does it contain gluten or traces of nuts?

Ironically, it’s the very fact that Planet Ark provides so much product detail on its washing powder pack that makes the absence of manufacturing information stand out so starkly for me. But am I just overly suspicious and is the lack of disclosure merely an oversight? Or – behind the hundreds of words on biodegradability, zeolite minerals and being free of phosphates – is there something about the washing powder that Planet Ark would rather we didn’t know?

Letter to Friends of the ABC re brand names

To: Glenys Stradijot
Friends of the ABC, Victoria

Dear Glenys

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my piece in Crikey re ABC and brand names. Believe it or not, I am a "friend" (with a lower case "f") of the ABC, a regular ABC viewer, listener and contributor (both formally and informally as a talkback caller on radio). I would be grateful if you could share my thoughts in reply with your members – I would be interested to hear what they think.

I’m sure you are correct that a sizeable section of the Australian community supports the principle of keeping the ABC free of advertising. But you are also right when you note that, in an era of what I would call "integrated marketing communications", the distinctions between advertising and other forms of promotion are increasingly blurred. And that’s precisely what makes the ABC’s current practice look so ridiculous.

Leaving aside the Grand Prix (which simply wouldn’t exist without commercial motives), in a week where ABC announcers were not allowed to say that Tasmania had won the "Pura Cup", this "citizen" encountered the following on ABC radio, TV and internet channels:

• ABC radio business news items featuring commentary by "stock market analysts" from Goldman Sachs JB Were and "currency strategists" from Macquarie Bank and ANZ Investment Bank;

• Several minutes of TV footage and dozens of web images showing sponsors’ logos (Ford, Emirates, HSBC, Vodafone, QBE, LG, etc.) on sporting jerseys and boundary line signage across multiple sporting codes;

• Numerous interviews with visiting actors, authors and musicians, all with a commercial property of some sort to promote, like singer-guitarist Tony Joe White, whose latest album we were told "is released by Warner Music" which no doubt sponsored his tour and the limo to Southbank for the interview;

• News items – on radio and online – reporting on a poll conducted and publicised by AC Nielsen – a commercial market research company – showing that 59 per cent of Australians are opposed to the "WorkChoices" industrial relations legislation (a name for which three separate Trade Marks have been applied by the Commonwealth);

• A cerebral palsy fundraiser to be held "at Riverside at Crown", which begs the question of whether mention of a commercial property like Crown is OK when it’s for charity?

• etc.

None of these constitutes "advertising" on the ABC. That is, in none of these cases did the commercial entity pay money to the ABC in exchange for airtime, so the national broadcaster’s conscience can remain clear. Neither, to my knowledge, does National Foods Limited attempt to pay the ABC to say "Pura Cup". Yet, in every one of these instances, there is a clear underlying marketing communications objective to the provision of expert commentary, the availability of a guest for interview or the sponsorship of a charity or community event by a commercial entity. It’s a simple question that I’m asking: Why should AC Nielsen – which benefits commercially from every mention of its name in a credible news service like the ABC’s and no doubt calculates a dollar value for every column inch or second of airtime such a poll generates – be entitled to acknowledgment by our national broadcaster when Telstra and Pura are not?

It’s highly likely that many of the concerned citizens that your organisation represents also support the principle of freedom of speech and are opposed to censorship, especially when it’s arbitrary and not transparent. Unless FABC has a better classification system than I do (and I teach marketing communications to postgraduate students) and you can mount a rational argument as to which of these cases deserve to get to air and which don’t, then I reiterate that refusing ABC announcers permission to say "Telstra Dome" or "Vodafone Arena" is not only unworkable but is a form of censorship of our national broadcaster and hence should be regarded as unconscionable.

Regards,
Stephen Downes

Double standards at the ABC (Anti-Brand Corporation)

It's been a standing joke for years on the Coodabeen Champions' shows on ABC Radio: the ABC (so the apparent justification goes) is a Government broadcaster and doesn't carry advertising, so no brand names can be mentioned on-air. Of course, it's almost impossible to discuss modern life without reference to brands, so the Coodabeens have become experts at creating elaborate and humorous euphemisms to get around this restriction. In so doing, they clearly illustrate how ridiculous the policy is.

It seemed rather less ridiculous and a lot more bizarre when I was approached last year by ABC Local Radio to do an interview with Helen Razer about whether too much choice makes consumers unhappy (see this earlier blog entry). I was expressly cautioned by the producer not to mention any brand names! Asking a marketer to discuss consumer behaviour and decision-making without mentioning brands is like asking a football commentator not to mention the teams or the players.

But the inconsistency and hypocrisy of this policy was never more obvious than in today's 9 am news bulletin on ABC Local Radio in Melbourne. Back-to-back items referred to (1) the final of the AFL "pre-season cup" to be held "at Docklands" tonight and (2) the relative performances of the Ferrari and Red Bull teams in practice sessions yesterday for the Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix.

How can it be inappropriate or unacceptable for the ABC to say "NAB Cup" and "Telstra Dome" but perfectly OK to say "Ferrari" and "Red Bull" in the next breath?

It's a no-brainer that participation by a company like Red Bull in motor racing is entirely about brand positioning. It follows, therefore, that every single mention of the Red Bull racing team on the ABC over the course of the Grand Prix "festival" is a piece of marketing communications initiated by the brand owner. Significant and undeniable mass-market brand positioning objectives also underlie the participation of car makers like Honda, Toyota, BMW, Renault and even Ferrari.

And then ABC motor sports commentator Will Hagon - current holder of the world record for irrelevant, self-aggrandising name-dropping - will spend hours of airtime on "our ABC" rabbiting on about Bridgestone and Michelin tyres and Zylon anti-penetration panels (both trade marks, naturally).

Of course, names like AFL and Formula 1 are themselves highly-protected trade marks and commercial properties. So why aren't ABC announcers instructed to refer instead to "the national Australian Rules football competition" or "the elite international motor sport event being held at Albert Park"?

And, yes, I said "hypocrisy". Consider the ABC's own brands and commercial activities (while it may be "not-for-profit", it most certainly has commercial operations). The national broadcaster (see - I'm not using a brand name) has spawned a number of immensely successful brands: The Wiggles, PlaySchool, Triple J, the Hottest 100, Gardening Australia and The ABC Shop are just a few examples of brands from which the ABC earns revenue directly and through licensing agreements. Every mention of those lovable Bananas in Pyjamas on ABC TV, Radio or websites helps drive profits for a variety of commercial entities that pay the ABC to use the images of B1, B2 and Rat In A Hat.

Don't let's forget that the ABC also does tremendously well out of leveraging the equity of many other brands, both in terms of its programming and via sales through ABC stores: think Little Britain, SeaChange, Planet Earth, etc.

It's time we called things what they really are - let's name names. The bottom line (whoops, that's a bit commercial, isn't it?) is that the ABC's "policy" amounts to arbitrary censorship - it's applied inconsistently and unfairly, and it's entirely unworkable, unnecessary and unwelcome.

The new Telstra: Boosting staff morale or "morals"?

When you set about transforming an under-performing services marketer, so the thinking goes, often the most important and hardest thing to change is its culture. Organisations like banks and telecoms perform best when the beliefs and behaviours of customer service personnel are aligned with corporate mission and values, and when everyone in the organisation understands his or her role in creating value for both customers and shareholders.

Employees of Telstra, and especially those in "front-line" functions like call centres, have doubtless had a hard time keeping the faith through recent years of struggle, uncertainty and unpopularity. But it looks like Sol Trujillo and Phil Burgess, experts in organisational change, may have succeeded in turning around the culture and boosting staff confidence.

Never mind the broadband technology, I met one of the "Next G" of Telstra employees over the weekend. She was proud of the company, apparently certain of the corporate mission and vision, and unshakeable in her dedication to ensuring Telstra targets the right customers… it’s just that I clearly wasn’t one of them!

My daughter won a mobile phone on Saturday. It came with a Telstra Pre-Paid "bundle". She already has a hand-me-down phone with a pre-paid account, currently with Optus – Telstra had previously been sopping up her unused credit every few weeks, leaving the phone useless in the occasional “emergency” situations for which it is intended.

So we set about switching her over to the funky new handset. Optus told me I needed to call Telstra to "unlock" the new phone so it could be used on another provider’s network.

"You’ll have to pay an unlocking fee," explained the Telstra customer service officer to whom I eventually got through. "For a new phone, that will probably be around $200."

When I said I thought that was a bit steep, especially for a pre-paid phone won by a 12-year-old, she disagreed. Anyway, she said, “I wouldn’t be giving a phone to a 12-year-old.”

Introducing Telstra’s new positioning in mobile telephony: the responsible, adults-only, service provider that knows better than you do whether your child should have a phone. If Telstra intends to put morals ahead of revenue and no longer sell mobile service to parents on behalf of their kids, shouldn’t we have seen some kind of announcement to the ASX?

Not that I got a chance to ask this newly-aligned and empowered Telstra advocate about the company’s strategy. "I actually work for Telstra and I won’t sit here and listen to you criticising them," she said. And there, by mutual consent, the call ended.

Reply to Karl Treacher on "brand deceit"

I really appreciate Karl Treacher’s reply to my blog on his description of an "audit" that judged Vodafone to be "top of the bad brand behaviour list" because of "brand deceit" (as quoted in B&T magazine, 9 February 2007). However, I’m afraid Karl’s reply simply raises a lot more questions than it answers.

"Deceit" is a very strong word with a very specific meaning. The Macquarie Dictionary defines deceit unambiguously as "the act or practice of deceiving; concealment or perversion of the truth for the purpose of misleading; fraud; cheating".

The B&T story suggested that consumers had rated Vodafone highest on "deceit", but included absolutely no information about the study. In particular, in my original piece, I wondered about the methodology. Well, it was "sound", says Karl: "A 9 month study – man on the street Qual. 7 stores, 10 people / store".

So how were these qual respondents selected? What stores? Was there randomisation? What level of knowledge and experience had the respondents had with each of the categories and brands? In other words, how representative was the sample of the bulk of Australian consumers?

To make a judgment that Vodafone was "top of the list" of badly-behaved brands clearly implies some kind of quantitative assessment and measurement, beyond the findings of qualitative research. Was there any statistical analysis of the positions on the list? For example, how many respondents with a positive view of Vodafone would it have taken to knock them off the top? Two out of the 70? Ten out of 70? Fifty?

And where did deceit come into it? Was this the actual word used by consumers spontaneously (very uncommon in my experience as a qual researcher) to describe a disappointing brand experience, or a term offered to them by the qual interviewers, or was it added in post-fieldwork analysis by the folks at Brand Behaviour? Was the degree of deceit scored and compared by respondents on some kind of scale (in order to arrive at a list of the worst)? Were respondents asked to rank brands (put them in order) in terms of "deceit"? Which brands?

The point is, when you say a brand was "top of the list", then we expect that there’s a list somewhere and an explanation of how they got in that order. Karl’s use of the term "audit" also implies a structured measurement (quantitative methodologies) against some kind of benchmarks, rather than exploration and investigation (qualitative methodologies).

There’s a very big difference between – on the one hand – a brand that lets customers down and fails to deliver on its stated brand promise, and – on the other hand – a marketer that sets out deliberately to conceal or pervert the truth, and to cheat and mislead customers (as per the accepted definition of "deceit"). If consumers really believe that Vodafone has practised deceit, then the ACCC should sue them under sections 52 or 53 of the Trade Practices Act, which deal with misleading or deceptive conduct and false or misleading representations in trade or commerce.

I have no argument whatsoever with Karl over his conclusion that Vodafone hasn’t lived up to the promise of a couple of years ago – it has clearly slipped a long way from the position it held in 2004 - and that consumers may well feel the brand hasn't lived up to its promises. But in service markets like telecommunications, banking and insurance, there’s a 20-year stream of literature on "gaps" in service quality and service delivery that provides many suitable terms – with numerous published benchmarks – to describe under-performance against expectations (e.g. the Berry, Parasuraman and Zeithaml "negative disconfirmation" model). I just don’t think a term like "brand deceit" is necessary, illuminating or appropriate to describe what has happened to Vodafone.

Not that I want to sound like a grammar teacher, but "integrity" is also a pretty strong word.

The cover of B&T is a lot more public a forum than the QBrand QBlog. And clearly the Brand Behaviour report didn’t come into the possession of B&T off the back of a truck. Given that B&T claimed it as an "exclusive", I’m sure that Karl fully expected that it would get a run and generate publicity for Brand Behaviour in the process, with some quotes thrown in for good measure. He should also, therefore, have expected, and been prepared for, reasonable scrutiny.

Instead, Karl is being laughably unreasonable in questioning my integrity, apparently because I didn’t contact him personally to "get insight" before making public comment about the story. Does he seriously expect all 6000 readers of B&T to contact him directly if they have doubts, concerns or questions about his research, its apparent findings and Brand Behaviour’s interpretations?

Brands (or brand consultants) behaving badly?

Like a promo for Desperate Housewives, the front page lead on the 9 February issue of the advertising industry weekly B&T promises to dish the dirt on the "cheats and deceits" in the world of brands.

"Our worst brands" have "deceived" customers, according to the findings of "a new audit exclusively obtained by B&T". Vodafone, NRMA and St George are criticised as the "worst behaved" brands, apparently for having stood for something they then failed to live up to.

Is this the pot calling the kettle black? The story promises a lot but delivers very little. Maybe that’s because, as it turns out, there’s "more to come" in next week’s B&T. Or maybe it’s because there’s not much substance or rigour behind the analysis in the first place.

The "audit" cited in the article was conducted by the Sydney-based consultancy Brand Behaviour. Karl Treacher, CEO of Brand Behaviour, says "brand deceit" is at the top of the list of bad brand behaviour and "so is Vodafone". Strangely, given the emotive connotations of the word, there’s no clear definition of "deceit". Branding Vodafone a "deceiver" seems a bit risky when there’s no information about the methodology: how many consumers were asked, which consumers, and how confusion and deceit were measured.

Many ad agencies and consulting firms have invested massive resources developing proprietary names and definitions for concepts related to branding. Consequently, it’s getting harder to differentiate well-founded, well-researched and well-intentioned concepts that add value and understanding to the discipline from those that owe their origin purely – and often cynically – to commercial motives.

Concepts like brand personality, values, image and identity are well supported by scholarship and empirical research. But according to the agencies, brands may also have brand DNA, brand aesthetics, brand sense, brandstretch and brand manners. A brand may even be a "lovemark". And now a "brand deceiver", too.

In 2004, Professor Mark Ritson – now at the Melbourne Business School – noted this "confusing cornucopia of conceptualization" and warned that "the brand of brand is in crisis".

Interestingly, also back in 2004, Karl Treacher wrote an "exclusive" article for B&T in which he told of having "investigated the relationship between marketing promises and internal fulfillment (sic)" at Vodafone (reproduced here). "Our findings were nothing short of extraordinary," he wrote. The Vodafone brand "grew in a place where no telco has ever been before, in our hearts".

Given his earlier state of rapture, perhaps Treacher’s current perspective on Vodafone should be viewed as that of a jilted lover dissing his "ex"!

Comet McNugget: A lost marketing opportunity?

Given both its aggressive stance towards anyone or anything else using the prefix "Mc", and its knack for spotting an opportunity, it's perhaps surprising that McDonalds let recent astronomical events slip by without acknowledgment or intervention.

Comet McNaught put on an unexpectedly impressive show last week (you can see some pictures here), far more spectacular than the much-anticipated but underwhelming Halley's Comet in 1986.

A number of courses of action might have been open to the folks from the Golden Arches. For example, they could have sought a licensing deal to produce a "McNaught McNuggets" Happy Meal, with astronomical facts on the box and a toy comet (a lump of ice?). They might even have tried to buy the naming rights to the comet from the Australian astronomer who discovered it last August (you can read the story of it here).

But perhaps more true to form would have been legal action to try to restrict use of the "Mc" (leaving it as "Comet Naught"?), as McDonalds has taken against a number of other traders, viz. its current ham(burger)-fisted efforts in Victoria (see today's Herald-Sun), and even beyond food service markets (e.g. "McBrat" in clothing).

Action over the name of the comet would have raised an interesting legal question: just how far into the solar system do McDonalds' IP rights in "Mc" and "Mac" extend?

Robbery under arms? Smells like ambush marketing to me

Unilever's Rexona deodorant brand was the official provider of deodorant to the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. This was proudly proclaimed early in 2006 on special green and gold cans bearing the official logo of the Games. While one might question whether the Comm Games actually needed an official deodorant (did they have an official shampoo, toothpaste or dental floss?), there is arguably a connection between athletic performance and sweaty armpits. From memory, tennis star Ivan Lendl endorsed a deodorant brand in the late 1970s with a line about how it made him "look cool on the court".

Anyway, it must have worked for them because someone at Unilever apparently decided to pursue another promotional tie-in with a major sporting event. Another special promo pack appeared in mid-2006, just as the FIFA World Cup was kicking off in Germany. As you can see from the picture, Rexona "Football" featured a gaudy green-and-gold colour scheme with a central logo of a soccer ball encircled by the words "Special Edition. Australia 2006". (It's a particularly messy and tacky design, by the way - nowhere near as classy as the rather minimalist Comm Games variants. Click on the picture above for a closer look.)

I initially took it to be some kind of officially-endorsed merchandise, and assumed that by buying it I was somehow (directly or indirectly through licensing fees) supporting Australia's World Cup campaign.

But on closer inspection, there's nothing official about it: no FIFA logo or reference, in fact no actual reference to the World Cup at all. Nor, despite the words "Australia 2006", is there any reference to the Football Federation of Australia or the Socceroos or their World Cup finals appearance.

Was Rexona deliberately hijacking increased consumer awareness of soccer (football) and heightened passion and patriotism surrounding Australia's first World Cup appearance in more than 30 years? In my view, all the signs point in that direction: why would the pack say "special edition" and "Australia 2006" if it was either a permanent "sports-strength" formulation or some kind of seasonal variant?

If deliberate, then it's a case of ambush marketing and it smells - someone at Unilever deserves a spray.

PS. Unilever's Australian website states that achieving their corporate purpose "requires the highest standards of corporate behaviour towards our employees, consumers and the societies and world in which we live". Nothing about free riding there!

Whose brains fell in the blender at Boost Juice?

Boost Juice is undoubtedly one of the great success stories of the past few years in Australian retailing, brand management and franchising. Only an immensely powerful brand could have adolescents lining up and waiting several minutes to pay $5.00 or more for "healthy" FRUIT JUICE or induce them to drink WHEAT GRASS. (And to think parents of teens used to worry about their kids smoking grass!)

But Boost has been conspicuously unsuccessful thus far in its attempts to leverage its massive brand equity from the fresh juice service sector by way of brand extensions into the very different world of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Two different attempts so far at bottled juice haven't exactly set the world on fire (see picture). Now you can find a thing called a Boost Smoothie on a Stick in the ice-cream freezer at the supermarket (it's actually fruit ice around frozen yoghurt, but let's call it ice-cream for the sake of simplicity).

I bought a pack of Smoothie On A Stick as soon as I saw it last week, because frankly I don't think it'll be around for long - at least not based on the present marketing program. In my view, Boost is making a number of critical mistakes, and these can be illustrated quite simply.

First, consider the Boost Juice brand. It instantly conjures up associations of custom-made and personalised (they even call out your name), premium fresh juice products at premium (some might say "exorbitant") prices, for which consumers are willing to sacrifice several minutes of their time waiting (perhaps partially compensated by the "scene" in the average Boost bar). Prices typically start at $4.00 and head upwards of $6.00 once you add some fancy supplements (often of dubious nutritional value, but that's a topic for another blog entry). Boost re-invented fruit juice and gave it enormous street cred. Ask most Australians aged 12 to 25 to describe juice and Boost or a Boost-style offer will likely be what they call to mind.

Now compare the Boost Smoothie On A Stick brand extension. The actual end product is a small ice confection, of stock-standard shape (looks like they use the same mould as any regular icy pole) on a stock-standard "icy-pole" stick - hardly re-inventing the category. Of course, they aren't sold singly - they come in a pack of 8, and they sit in the supermarket right alongside other boxed multi-pack ice-creams like the Streets Pine-Lime Splice (also 8 to a pack). In fact, functionally, the Pine-Lime Splice would seem to be Boost's closest rival in this category. Bulla (whose Regal Cream affiliate is actually listed as the manufacturer of the Boost products under licence) also does strawberry and mango Smoothie Splits.

A multi-pack of 8 doesn't exactly say "premium" either, does it? Typically, when a super-premium ice-cream brand (e.g. Magnum or Heaven) does a multi-pack, they put only 4 in a pack or, as special "mini" versions, 6 to a pack.

So if the product doesn't communicate a top of the market positioning, then price must be how Boost signals "premium", right?

Wrong! My 8-pack of Boost Smoothie On A Stick (600 mL) cost $3.99 at Coles (regular price, not apparently on special). An 8-pack of Streets Pine-Lime Splice (584 mL), bought in the same supermarket at the same time, cost $4.99.

And the ice confection itself? Pleasant enough, but nothing special in terms of flavour or texture, I'm afraid.

So what the heck is Boost Juice doing taking an immensely valuable brand that commands a massive brand premium down-market by entering a commodity category with a "common as muck" product and at a price well below that of an FMCG powerhouse like Unliver/Streets?

Destroying brand equity, that's what! Boost franchisees should take note... and start asking some serious questions.

Stop the propaganda: "Free TV" is worth every cent we pay

"Do you want your children to have to pay... or just miss out?" warns Network Ten sports presenter Ryan Phelan, doing his best to put on a "Grim Reaper" voice, his suit buttoned up, and shot from below to make him look more even more serious and worrying.

It's the new campaign by Free TV (what the cabal of free-to-air broadcasters calls itself these days), and it even has its own web presence under the title Save My Sport. It's a cynical attempt to fend off new "Use it or lose it" legislation that would force free-to-air broadcasters to actually screen the sports (and other events) to which they buy rights... or else lose them.

"Save My Sport"? I say "Save Your Breath"!

"Last year," the campaign media release tells us, "Australian sports fans watched over 1648 hours of sport on free TV." What the release and the TVC conveniently ignore is the thousands upon thousands of hours of programming - including major sports and superbly-crafted, Emmy-winning fare treasured elsewhere in the world - that "Free TV" has rationed, buried, dumped, butchered and otherwise treated with utter contempt... and we, the viewers, with it.

Have you (like me) found yourself staying up till the early hours of Monday morning to watch first-run episodes of The Office (US version), winner of this year's Emmy for Best Comedy, wedged embarrassingly by Network Ten between ads for ringtones and mobile phone p*rn?

The litany of insults to the audience (and program makers) could run for pages (and often does in the Letters section of the Green Guide). Quality programming dumped after two weeks or banished to late night. Ground-breaking shows screened (first-run) at 4 am. Episodes of series with long story arcs screened out of order. Promos that contain "spoilers" (i.e. giving away key plot twists). Cutting PG-rated episodes of "The Simpsons" so they qualify for G classification, just so they could be promoted (not screened) in kids' viewing times.

And then there's the dissembling. "That was the last program in the current series of The West Wing (or The Sopranos, etc. etc.)," says veteran GTV9 voice-over man Pete Smith. "No it's not," we yell back at the TV - we've looked up the episode guide online or seen the DVD boxed set that's already available at JB Hi-Fi. Poor old Pete must feel like former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf: we know it's a lie, they know it's a lie, but the networks just don't care.

So WHY don't they care, especially when these sort of practices have been exposed and criticised for years? It all comes down to one thing: as viewers of free-to-air television, we are NOT CUSTOMERS. In fact, to the folks at "Free TV", we aren't even complete human beings.

We are merely fingers on remote controls, bums on seats, eyeballs, or TARPS (target audience ratings points), to be harvested and offered up to the people they regard as their REAL customers - the advertisers. In terms of an industry value-chain model, we don't even qualify as "suppliers" to Free TV - we're actually more like raw material, to be extracted, processed, sorted, bundled up and handed over to the media buyers. So what if there's a bit of wastage along the way? That's just the cost of doing business!

The only time Free TV broadcasters acknowledge that there is value in an actual human response to what's on air is when they can see an opportunity to capture that value using a revenue-positive telephone voting scheme (Idol, Dancing With The Stars, etc).

When I pay for a service, I have a contractual relationship with the provider. Usually, it matters to service providers that I perceive value in the relationship and they care about my satisfaction. And if the provider misleads me, lies to me or fails to deliver what I have been promised, I can complain and get my money back, plus I have protection under a variety of laws.

But I have no contract with Channels Seven, Nine, or Ten. I have no customer number, no viewer profile, no CRM file, because I have no relationship. Hence, in the current culture of the networks, concepts like customer value and satisfaction are not only unheard of but completely irrelevant.

As Australian Pay TV continues to recruit new paying customers who perceive it as offering value (choice, timeshifted programs, commercial-free movies, personal digital recording TiVo-style, etc.), free-to-air broadcasters have got the wrong end of the stick. They are trying to hang on to the privileged position that once allowed them to succeed despite treating viewers like dirt. But the days when - as Kerry Packer famously said - a TV broadcasting licence was "a licence to print money" are over.

Free TV will only succeed in the future if free-to-air broadcasters start acknowledging TV viewers not only as valued customers but also as partners in the process of creating and delivering value to advertisers and shareholders.

It's simple: those who deliver superior customer value win. Hey Eddie, Kerry and John - that's how a "free" market works!

Can you be "ambushed" by a blimp?

Oh, the humanity!

Looking at the fuss in the media, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Holden Airship had collided with one of the MCG light towers and collapsed in flames onto the hallowed turf during the Toyota AFL Grand Final. But by simply hovering in the general vicinity of Jolimont, the General's blimp has cast a giant shadow - figuratively and literally - over current sponsorship practices.

Numerous commentators are having a field day, even invoking the current chestnut of "Australian values": according to Crikey.com.au, Peter Young of Cricket Australia says it was "just un-Australian (for Holden) to try and sneak a free ride off the back of someone else's work".

But then perhaps Toyota ought to know a free ride when it sees one. Only five years ago Toyota itself employed controversial tactics against Holden that were seen at the time as "ambush marketing", in a campaign I’m sure no-one at Holden has forgotten.

Champion golfer (and sometime pasta sauce maker!) Greg Norman was paid by Holden to endorse its Statesman luxury sedan range for several years but, in 2001, switched allegiance to the Toyota Avalon for a sum reckoned to be $10 million (as reported on Drive.com.au at the time). The TV advertisement that launched Norman’s involvement with Toyota featured a weekend hacker so over-awed by Norman’s arrival at the tee that he duffs his drive into the car park, smashing the window of a Holden Statesman. He apologises profusely to Norman, who reassures the wayward swinger that the Statesman is not his – "Mine’s the Toyota".

Holden certainly objected at the time, both publicly and directly (by letter) to Toyota. Comparisons were drawn with the famous Mortein vs Raid case that centred on John Laws' switch from one fly spray brand to another. Noises were made about the potential for Holden to sue Toyota for misleading and deceptive conduct under s52 of the Trade Practices Act, but (to my knowledge) it never made it anywhere near the Federal Court. Unlikely, anyway, as (in contrast to Mortein v Raid) the distinction between the two brands was made fairly explicit in the TVC, leaving little risk that consumers might be confused as to Norman's new allegiance or perceive any connection between Statesman and Toyota.

Anyway, I haven't yet seen any actual cries of "no fair" from Toyota about the Airship ambush, and any loud public expression of concern is, in my opinion, highly unlikely. Don't get me wrong - I am vehemently opposed to free riding in any form. But while the blimp may well have been sailing close to the wind, a strident complaint from Toyota could easily be seen as the pot calling the kettle black... and how un-Australian would that be?!

Pauline Hanson endorses the Donut King brand... Please explain?!

My lecture on "leveraging secondary brand assoc- iations" (by linking a brand to an entity like a celebrity, a country of origin, another brand, etc.) was still fresh in my mind the other night as I relaxed in front of the TV. Totally without warning, former One Nation leader and ex-con Pauline Hanson - one of the most divisive figures in recent Australian cultural history - appeared in the middle of an ad for Donut King, asking me something along the lines of "What do you feel like?".

Well, I'm happy to say that I felt like a fool - what would my students think? What would they ask me in next week's class if they'd seen this bizarre campaign? Surely all that stuff I'd been saying about marketers choosing celebrity endorsers for the beneficial secondary associations they bring to the brand must be complete rubbish?!

At first, I thought that I would have to explain it away as just another clearly bad choice - like (pictured) Ian Thorpe's THORPEDO tuna steaks or Greg Norman's pasta source (well Paul Newman did it... Greg Norman is near enough, isn't he?). And there are plenty of examples of using a celebrity - especially a notorious one like Mark "Chopper" Read - simply to get attention.

But then I started to wonder...

What if Donut King actually does want to tap into the network of brand associations that we hold (or some of us hold) about Pauline Hanson? Which of those associations could they possibly regard as potentially beneficial to the Donut King brand?

At a rational, brand performance level, there's nothing to go on - Pauline is vaguely known as a former fish and chip shop owner, but not a renowned expert on donuts whose endorsement would matter to us: Wow, she really knows donuts, so for her to put her name to those Donut Kings really means something! No, I think not. Homer Simpson comes to mind more readily (and would probably be a better electoral bet than Pauline these days, too).

It can't be about user imagery, surely? For how many Australians does Pauline Hanson have aspirational appeal? She's not exactly renowned for her good taste, so I consider it doubtful that there's anyone who would feel better eating a Donut King donut now that they know it's Pauline's choice.

So it must be more to do with linking to emotions, attitudes and perhaps even values that we associate with Pauline Hanson... and that, of course, is very dangerous territory. Perhaps it's an attempt to position the gaudy pink donut - iced with "hundreds and thousands" - firmly in the 1950s version of Australian cultural life that Ms Hanson seems to favour, alongside fairy bread at a kids' party, an Iced Vo-Vo biscuit, Bob Menzies in Canberra and the "yellow peril" still a few thousand miles to the north. Multiculturalism? Why, we've got all the diversity you'll ever need right here at the donut counter!

(By the way, donuts and multiculturalism are not mutually exclusive - I often enjoy an Italian style bomboloni with apricot jam filling from Caffe di Lusso in Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn.)

Another thought: maybe it's about protecting Australian interests against foreign takeovers of our markets. With business travellers still queuing to buy boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts at Sydney Airport, Melbourne's first KK store located at Fountain Gate (right in "Kath & Kim" territory), and KK's fund-raising program earning them tremendous kudos with community organisations, maybe Donut King is trying to send out a subtle call to patriotism (or xenophobia) by linking themselves to such a prominent anti-immigration, "White Australia" campaigner?

Or maybe I'm missing something more obvious. Perhaps, as a prominent Royalist, it's logical that Ms Hanson would support anything with "King" in the title: stand by for Pauline as spokesmodel for Burger King or King Oscar Sardines.

Better still, there's one product endorsement opportunity that would neatly combine her racist attitudes with support for royalty and good old fashioned Australian values: White King bleach.

Tick infestation is bad for the heart

The National Heart Foundation announced a couple of weeks ago that it would be extending its "Tick program" to "everyday eating out of the home", including restaurants and food courts.

In effect, this move constitutes an extension of the Tick brand into a new category. But it comes at a time when the brand has never been more under threat, and when (I would argue) attention should be focused on brand protection rather than extension.

Ticks are taking over the supermarket shelves. Over recent years a tick (and very often a white tick on a red background) has come to denote first any nutritional claim ("97% fat free"), then any functional claim ("baked not fried"), and now any claim at all (just look at the picture above)! I picked up a box of Betty Crocker Brownie Mix in a supermarket last week, having noticed the white ticks on red - a familiar cue that I have come to associate with at least some level of nutritional information or endorsement. I (honestly) assumed that Betty Crocker was making some health claim - low fat, low GI, high fibre, etc. But no! Apparently, in this age of "premiumisation", when it's OK to be indulgent, even a claim of being "Rich and decadent" deserves a tick! Even Coles has commandeered the tick as the central feature of its new master housebrand "You'll love".

Don't get me wrong: there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Heart Foundation has built brand equity in the Tick. In fact, I'm sure that many consumers have come to rely on the Tick - just ask the copycats why they have plastered ticks all over their packaging. Even those who pay to use the official Heart Foundation Tick often stretch the friendship - Parmalat, owner of the Rev brand of low-fat milk, uses two smaller ticks right alongside the Tick to denote a claim of being a "rich source of Calcium (and) Protein".

The Heart Foundation clearly understands what the Tick is supposed to do: "Consumers rely on the Heart Foundation Tick to help them to make healthier food choices quickly and easily (my emphasis)", as they say on their website. They want us to trust the endorsement and respond to the Tick on the basis that we believe that "All Tick approved products represent a healthier choice".

Research might well show that consumers are - rationally - aware of the Tick and the "Pick The Tick" campaign, and even of the underlying objectives of the program. But we are talking here about frequent, highly routine purchases in a supermarket context. Studies of consumer behaviour in supermarkets have found average shopping times of less than 12 seconds per item, including the time taken to walk down an aisle and approach the display. Under these conditions, recognition of salient brand cues - basic colours, shapes, symbols, colour schemes and product Gestalt - is critical.

Consumers expect that these brand cues will make decision-making easier by acting as a kind of shorthand, not only for manufacturer or origin, but also for intangible associations like the trust that comes from third-party endorsement.

Faced with evidence of growing consumer confusion, the Heart Foundation has been encouraging us to make more of an effort to ensure that we are picking up the RIGHT tick. Unfortunately, once you have to tell consumers to trust SOME ticks but not others, you completely undermine their confidence and destroy the value of the Tick as a symbol: decision-making becomes more difficult and the perceived risk (of making the wrong choice) is higher.

On any critical appraisal, the Heart Foundation has failed to protect its intellectual property and it continues to suffer from very significant "leakage" of its marketing investment. Part of this stems from a poor choice of vehicle for this investment in the first place. The 1988 Trade Mark registrations for what is described as a "Correct symbol, in disc, in circle" note explicitly that "Registration gives no right to the exclusive use of the device of a TICK (CORRECT SYMBOL)". In other words, it has been known for nearly 20 years that a "tick" was too generic a choice - the Foundation can't "own" a symbol that is used so widely and non-specifically.

Secondly (and strangely, given the endorsement on the registration), it seems the Heart Foundation took a long time to recognise that it had a problem with copycat ticks. It should not have come as a surprise that other marketers would seek to exploit and leverage brand equity any way they could. But it appears that the Foundation made no regulatory attempts to stop others appropriating equity in the Tick until 1997 - that's when it lodged a Trade Mark application for a white tick on a disc of solid colour but without the words "National Heart Foundation Approved" around it. This application was rejected pretty swiftly.

The Foundation should act now - and quickly, before others like Betty Crocker completely undermine consumer brand knowledge and hence completely devalue the program - to shore up its equity in its brand elements, and plug the leaks. There are many conceivable ways to create a modified branding device that is simple, distinctive, meaningful and (above all) protectable, yet builds on what equity remains in the Tick. I'd love to hear from the Heart Foundation if they are interested...

Attention Cummins: Don't hold others back... Resign the Connex account now!

OPEN ON MCU OF A GROUP OF ADVERTISING STRATEGY PLANNERS AND CREATIVES FROM SEVERAL DIFFERENT MELBOURNE AGENCIES. THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY TALENTED AND CAPABLE OF DOING GREAT WORK. CARRYING PORTFOLIOS AND STORYBOARDS, THEY ARE TRYING TO ENTER THE OFFICES OF MELBOURNE TRAIN OPERATOR CONNEX.

MUSIC FADES UP: OBSCURE TRANSYLVANIAN FUNERAL LAMENT.

CAMERA PULLS BACK TO REVEAL THAT THE TALENTED GROUP IS BEING RESTRAINED BY ANOTHER GROUP. SELF-INDULGENT CREATIVES FROM CUMMINS AND PARTNERS, THIS SECOND GROUP IS DESPERATELY GRABBING AT THE ANKLES OF THE FIRST.

ORDINARY VICTORIAN COMMUTERS LOOK ON, TOTALLY PERPLEXED.

Connex launched its Don't hold others back ad campaign on 13 August. According to the Connex press release, "the centrepiece of the campaign are (sic) TV ads that can only be described as intriguing".

Only as intriguing?!! You're kidding, right? From my first viewing of the campaign, I'm afraid numerous other adjectives came to mind!

This is a campaign designed to tell commuters that it's their fault Connex trains don't run on time more often. If you decide this is the right thing to be telling commuters (and I'm not at all certain that it is), it sets up a communications challenge that calls for brutal honesty and self-reflection on the part of the advertiser. You have to be prepared to disarm commuters' natural counter-arguments first - by acknowledging your own shortcomings - before you can begin to hope for a fair hearing. And your message needs to be delivered with a very high degree of empathy and, probably, ironic humour.

Cummins & Partners' creative strategy fails on both counts. The choice of black & white cinematography, the funereal music and the images themselves evoke Stalinist Russia - they are cold and there is not a jot of empathy. Then the message "tag" is delivered not by a human being, or even a human voice, but by a sign on the end of the platform - a piece of totalitarian bureaucracy worthy of Orwell's "thought police". There's no light at the end of the tunnel: the depiction of the problem is dark and heavy-handed, but the solution is just a sign telling us how we should think and behave.

Let's face it, we're not talking here about HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. A campaign to encourage commuters to contribute to the shared goal of helping the trains run on time doesn't exactly call for the Grim Reaper.

Spoilt for choice? (Or spoiled by choice?)

As discussed with Helen Razer on ABC Victoria local radio, Sunday 20 August

It's been your favourite chocolate bar for as long as you can remember. But suddenly it comes in King Size, Bite-sized, Chunky, "Bits", peanut butter-filled, white chocolate, dark chocolate, low GI and guarana-boosted varieties.

Or your current toothbrush is looking shaggy and needs replacing. You spend 5 minutes in front of the oral care shelves of the supermarket - it's only 3 months since you bought your last brush, but the range of product features has changed even in that short time. Suddenly you're worried about something you weren't even aware of when you walked in: Do I need whitening, tartar control, plaque removal, gum massage, and a tongue scraper? And in what combination?

We enjoy and value choice when it lets us get closer to exactly what we already know we want. We're delighted by choice when we're seeking variety and excitement. But we are often troubled by choice when it undermines our confidence in our ability to make the right decision. In many purchase situations - especially when we're not quite sure what we need - the more choices we have, the higher the perceived risk that we'll make the wrong choice.

There's a standard term in the lexicon of the consumer behaviourist: "post-purchase dissonance". We've all had it - that unpleasant feeling we get when something (or someone) tells us that we made the wrong choice, paid too much or bought last year's model. The complexity of choice in the category - whether it's mouthwash, mobile phones or mortgages - makes information processing and decision-making more taxing, and post-purchase dissonance more likely. In other words, too much choice can make us unhappy.

And when consumers feel that marketers are deliberately making things more difficult by offering more choices, then this can lead to resentment, because they are made to feel ignorant or inadequate for what should be a straightforward task.

It's a problem, too, for the marketer. Product and brand proliferation, making the choice too difficult and overwhelming for the consumer, is a risky strategy. Sales may look OK as consumers continue to buy - but grudgingly - until another marketer detects that level of disaffection and the feeling of being "trapped", and dramatically simplifies the whole offer, taking share away from the brands that were making it all too hard, and often attracting new consumers to the market in the process.

A classic example is herbal weight loss supplements. Once you had to DIY: first read up, then buy separate bottles of brindleberry, chromium picolinate, chitin, lecithin, etc. from your health food store. Then along came "Fat Blaster", with a name and a value proposition that told you they'd done all the worrying for you - everything you needed and nothing you didn't was in the one capsule. At around $50 a box, it doubled the size of the market overnight!

And when a FMCG company like Nestlé offers at least four different products in the chocolate mousse category alone (see my earlier blog on this), you also have to wonder about the economics of it - the cost of developing and managing such a complex product portfolio or "matrix" has to be justified by increased overall profitability or you're simply destroying shareholder value.

What can consumers do? Some marketers argue that consumers have the power to simply stop buying if they're not happy, but that's an unrealistic expectation when we feel like we're being held hostage.

You can look for a market maven - someone (without any vested interest) who collects and disseminates market and product information (you know, the brother-in-law or the guy at work who knows all about mobile phones or plasma TVs). Web forums are often a gathering place for such mavens, especially for technology-based products. You can find an intermediary who will do the simplifying and worrying for you - place your trust in a broker to find the best loan, super scheme, etc.

But few of us can afford a personal shopper to go to the supermarket! For groceries and other FMCG products, the best way to combat the tyranny of choice is feedback - call the 1-800 consumer line number on the package to tell marketers you're unhappy (they're crazy if they offer this and then don't listen). And, please, please, participate in market research and be painfully honest - we're often afraid to admit that we don't understand or are overwhelmed by choice, but marketers need to know... for their sake and ours as consumers.

Telstra and Trujillo: Media are overdoing the Mexican flavour

It's been a big week for Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo. First there was the scrapping of the fibre-to-the-node broadband strategy, then revelations of Mr Trujillo's severance package from US West a few years back, and then Telstra's financial announcements... and the news that the CEO had met his performance targets and earned his bonus. There were lots of calls for Sol to be sacked and oblique comments from John Howard about fat executive salaries.

I was astonished to see that, more than a year after his appointment, many editors, sub-editors and journalists are still using "Mexican" references when they discuss Trujillo and Telstra. A quick scan this week revealed the following:

...sends profits south of the border
...Sol Trujillo and his "Three Amigo" executive compadres are in the gun sights of furious Coalition MPs
...you've got to have faith, amigos...
...as you might expect from a true Mexican raised on chilli peppers, a bit of heat doesn't seem to fluster him
...Telstra opts for Mexican stand-off

By contrast, international reporting on Telstra this week invariably described Mr Trujillo as "an American", referring to his background and experience managing other telcos like Orange in France as well as US West.

The facts: Mr Trujillo has never been a Mexican citizen. He was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Mexican-American parents, educated in the US, gained an MBA from the University of Wyoming in 1974, and worked in the United States for the next 25 years. His Hispanic heritage is celebrated in the US - he was the first US-born Hispanic to become CEO of a Fortune 200 company.

But, hey, he has a "funny" name with a "J" that sounds like an "H" and a "LL" that you pronounce like a "Y". And a moustache...

In my Brand Management classes, I'd classify it as "leveraging a country-of-origin brand association". While we may try to assess Sol Trujillo's performance on purely rational grounds, by using "Mexican" clichés - not 21st-century Mexico, mind you, but those associated with the Mexicans of Hollywood Westerns - journalists tap into images and associations in our minds that have been reinforced over decades. First come the images: think sombreros, ponchos, siestas under a cactus, Speedy Gonzales, "Hey Cisco", etc. And hard on the heels of those images come the more judgmental associations: sleepy or lazy, thieving bandido, or just plum loco.

Of course, outside my brand management class, and applied to an individual, I'd call it racial stereotyping. Imagine the outrage if (for example) Jac Nasser, as a Lebanese-born Australian, had been subjected to the same sort of country-of-origin clichés when running Ford here or in the US.

If they can’t respect the facts or show some restraint, then perhaps it’s time some sections of the media laid off the tequila.

UPDATE 25 AUGUST: A piece based on this one appeared today in Crikey (subscription required), where it attracted a brief response from Eric Ellis, Walkley Award-winning SE Asian correspondent for Fortune and The Bulletin. In a piece written last April for Fortune, Eric noted - for an international readership - that Trujillo "has become the foreigner Australians most delight in mocking".

Brand equity lost in translation

Why do we take such delight in the stories of marketers who get it wrong? A particular favourite - not only on the Web, but also in respected textbooks like Kevin Lane Keller's "Strategic Brand Management" - is the dumb US or other English-speaking marketer that launches a product in a non-English-speaking market without bothering to get a local translation done first. A Google search on terms like "brand name", "translation" and "blunder" will get you hundreds of sites like this one and stories like the Clairol "Mist Stick" hair curling wand, which sold poorly in Germany where "mist" means manure... etc.

Of course, they're not all true: the wonderful Urban Legends Reference Pages actually debunks some of these, including the false tale of the Chevy Nova having failed in various Spanish-speaking countries simply because "no va" means "doesn't go" in Spanish. (As if there weren't any Hispanic employees at GM in Detroit in a position to say "hang on a second...") Then again, the one we've all heard about the Mitsubishi Pajero is, apparently, true, as this scholarly account of Spanish swearwords from Wikipedia testifies. [WARNING: SERIOUS PARENTAL ADVISORY - THIS ACCOUNT OF SPANISH PROFANITY HAS VERY FRANK ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS.]

But step into one of Melbourne's increasingly accessible Asian grocery stores (there are two within 200 metres of QBrand's offices) and you get a better idea of how much we rely on familiar brands to guide us when we're shopping, and how easy it must be to miss some cultural subtleties when naming a brand for export. Even though many of the brand names are in English, the sheer number of unfamiliar names to mentally process can be almost overwhelming as you try to make sense of the structure of a particular category.

Still, it was well worth a few minutes' mental overload to find these two...


My usual advice to marketers is to avoid any connection - explicit or implied - between chocolate products and the word "colon".
And perhaps "Good Fortune" might have conveyed the intended meaning more effectively... in Australian usage, naming a canned meat product "Good Luck" sounds like a warning!

Iconic landmark? I'm not having a bar of it!

It was fun being asked by The Age (put on the spot) to comment about what makes an "iconic Melbourne landmark". No, Showgirls Bar 20 isn't on my list. (By the way, the link is for those unaware of Bar 20 and in no way an endorsement, and yes, I had to go looking for it!)

In this case, "iconic Melbourne landmark" is, of course, just another expression from the real estate agents' lexicon (from the people who brought you "renovator's delight" and, in Sydney, "Harbour glimpses"). But it does prompt the interesting question of what makes for an icon, especially from a branding perspective.

"Icon" is generally used as a cultural term: to be regarded as an icon, a brand really needs to be linked to, and to symbolise, something that's culturally important. (For more on this, see the book How Brands Become Icons by Douglas B. Holt.)

But important to which culture? Our "national" culture? I don't believe we have a single national culture, so I'm generally very suspicious when anyone claims something like "mateship" as an inherently Australian cultural value (see Don Watson's excellent critique of the politicisation of mateship - he asks whether it isn't in fact gender-biased and xenophobic, and why John Howard seems so keen on promoting it).

I would, however, agree that the MCG is an iconic Melbourne landmark. It's very widely recognised and has enormous cultural relevance and resonance for a very broad cross-section of Australians. It calls to mind significant sporting and cultural events - not only the 1956 Olympics, 2006 Commonwealth Games, VFL/AFL football, Test cricket, soccer, rugby, etc., and great sporting achievements, many of which are themselves symbolic of cultural values. But there are all the other events and uses, too: military (First World War conscription rallies, a base for RAAF personnel and US Marines in the Second World War), spiritual (from evangelist Billy Graham to Pope John Paul II), artistic (concerts by David Bowie, David Cassidy, Madonna, U2, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones), and Royal... along with thousands of other schoolkids, I saw the Queen from the "hallowed turf" of the MCG on her 1970 Royal Tour. We were arranged into large herds, and Her Majesty was driven around us in a kind of Queen-mobile. Apparently, this was deemed culturally and educationally important enough at the time to take us out of school for the day, but it seems pretty bizarre 35 years on!

Likewise, Flinders Street Station is an iconic landmark. It has great symbolic value to the many generations of Melbournians, from all kinds of cultural backgrounds, who've arranged to meet "under the clocks" and is well and truly linked to notions of what it means to live here for most Melburnians.

So I'm not being a prude or a wowser (a tremendously useful and culturally-laden word that seems to have faded from use lately) when rejecting Bar 20 for icon-ification. It's not that a venue for adult entertainment and "showgirls" can't be an icon - I would certainly support icon status for the Folies Bergère or the Moulin Rouge in Paris. And I'm certainly prepared to acknowledge that many Melburnians have probably had a good time at Showgirls Bar 20, recognise it and perhaps even think fondly of it. But I'm afraid I just don't think it can really lay claim to symbolising any cultural truths about life in Melbourne for significant groups of our citizens.

Of course, I'd love to hear from anyone who thinks I'm not paying Bar 20 its due cultural respects - comments always welcome.