Notes

[MUSIC]
So, we've talked about lots of things with
regard to brands.
We've talked about the initial positioning
of a brand.
We've talked about how to create brand
elements
that go together to create a brand image.
And one of the things I've been
emphasizing throughout the
whole sessions, is that a brand has to be
updated.
A brand has to stay modern.
A brand has to adapt.
And so a very important
part of branding, is to think about how to
reposition a brand.
You have an initial start, but maybe the
times have changed.
Maybe the customer base has changed.
And, you have to think about how can you
keep this brand fresh.
How do you reposition a br, a brand.
So, we're gona talk about that now.
And it's this notion that the brand equity
must be actively managed over time.
If you wait until
a brand is out-of-date, it's much harder
then to re-position the brand.
So ideally, the best way to keep a brand
fresh is to constantly think about it.
Might tweak it here and there.
Think about it all the time so that it
stays fresh.
That would be the best way.
Brand meanings must be reinforced.
but sometimes they need to be adjusted
just a little bit.
A new sources,
new, new ways of identifying the equity
should be identified.
Why does this happen?
Well, I can think of at least five reasons
and there's
probably more reasons than that, but let's
go over some of these.
One reason for a brand repositioning is
that the
initial positioning that you came up with
wasn't right.
it was poorly conceived.
so, and you might know this because you
thought this was really cool and customers
were going to be interested.
But, actually you didn't see the interest
you anticipated.
Or the sales are just not what you thought
and
one of the reasons is, is the brand is
poorly conceived.
That being the case, you gotta re-position
the brand.
Another reason is, maybe you have a
perfect positioning, for a particular
target audience, but that audience is hard
to reach, isn't profitable.
It was a really good idea for a really
good customer segment, but it wasn't a
good business opportunity.
And so therefore you may need to
re-position the brand.
Another reason may be because it just gets
out of date.
As I mentioned over and over, one of the
things about being a marketing professor
is that things change.
You gotta constantly change, you gotta
keep up with things.
and so your old marketing approach might
become obsolete.
Then you have to change it.
The other
thing could be, it might just lose its
edge.
It made sense at one point, it's just kind
of old
and now people want to do something new,
and it isn't
really that it was wrong or that things,
that people's taste
change so much, it's just that it seems
old and tired.
And so you need to do something to make it
fresh.
and another idea, it's along those same
line as tired.
So one is more that it becomes old fashion
and the other
it just becomes old hat.
but those are similar ideas, it just gets
old, it's, it's there
was nothing wrong with it but you really
want it to be new.
And by the way, one of the really big
things that happens is, people go
out and make purchases sometimes because
they have
needs and sometimes they make a new
purchase.
Just because they want something
different, something new.
And if the brand seems same old, same old,
that's not
enough of a reason to go out and make a
new purchase.
So these are some of the reasons that are
needed for a brand change.
There are others.
When you think about re-positioning a
brand, the biggest
thing you have to think about is
consistency, consistency, consistency.
So, except for that one example where I
told you about
Google, where they go out of their way to
do things that
are a little bit different each time, most
brands when they do
this re-position, they do this
re-position, they have to have a position
that's consistent with the old position.
Or, at least close enough to the old
positioning so that consumers believe it.
If it's really radically different.
People won't make the connection
necessarily.
there's some examples where that can work,
but most of the time, the best
way to re-position a brand is to
do something that's consistent with the
brand DNA.
And so let's think about, there's some,
some psychological theory that can go back
behind this, so I can show you why
this happens, why consistency is generally
so important.
And this is some very old research
that was done on understanding why people
smoke.
and it had to do with people's attitudes
towards smoking.
So this is some, a psychological theory
here.
So let's assume, I'm me, I'm myself.
And let's say I smoke.
And let's say
that I know that smoking causes cancer,
cancer causes death.
And I don't want to die.
Now, if that's the case, how do I justify
that I smoke?
Because there's this inconsistency.
I'm me, I, I like myself, I don't want to
die.
I think smoking causes cancer.
something doesn't work.
And so what, what psychologists found out
that was people rationalized.
Or they do something to one of the links
of this chain so that it is consistent.
And that's the way they can justify their
behavior because people like to be
consistent with themselves.
So what are the ways different people
kind of rationalize to allow themselves to
smoke?
Well, one resolution is you'd say.
Okay, I smoke.
I don't want to die of cancer.
I don't believe the data.
And so this is the kind of thing
where I say you have this buyer selective
interpretation.
I was mentioning presidential campaigns.
You, there's experiments that shows, you
show
the same data to smokers and non-smokers.
And they will interpret it differently.
So people frequently interpret the message
or
the data, consistent with what they
already believe.
This is a theme that I have mentioned all
along.
So this is a, a pretty well-known,
way to rationalize behavior.
Another way to do it, is to say, no no, I
believe the data, it's pretty conclusive.
Smoking causes cancer.
I really don't want to die from cancer.
So, what you do is kind of lie to
yourself.
And you say, you know, I don't really
smoke.
I only smoke when I drink, I only smoke on
vacation.
And, so it doesn't really count.
And, therefore I have no inconsistancy.
People do this with diets all the time.
They make all
sorts of rules.
When I'm on vacation.
Food isn't fattening.
If it's a little bit burnt, I can eat as
much as I want.
You know, there's all sorts of rules that
people make.
That's that resolution where you kind of
figure out
a way that you can feel good about
yourself.
The third resolution to this particular
one says, okay, I know I smoke.
I know it causes cancer.
But, you know what?
I'm going to die anyway.
And it may not be that I die from this.
All of these are consistent and that is a
very important concept for marketers.
So if you're putting out a message, when
you're
trying to reposition your brand, that
isn't consistent, consumers
will reject it and will look for ways to
rationalize the message so it makes sense
to them.
It's a consistency theory.
There is a drive to maintain consistency
within your
thinking systems.
and what you do is if it's not consistent,
you
change whichever one is weakest so that it
is consistent.
So what's the famous example?
It's with Oldsmobile.
Oldsmobile was known as a car that was
associated with Dad, with my father.
Okay, now one thing that's probably
obvious but let me just say it here.
Cars are for young people.
Cars are
powerful, performance.
People like young people cars, energy
cars.
They don't like old people cars, okay?
So the notion that Oldsmobile was
associated with
my father was a turnoff to younger people.
Oldsmobile understood that.
That was obvious.
And so what they tried to do was, they
came out with a new
ad, new excitement, new car to say, no, no
we're not a fuddy duddy car.
We're an exciting car.
This is a car for young people.
What happened here?
There's cognitive dissonance here.
The problem is, the association with dad
and Oldsmobile was extremely strong.
The association that my dad is not
exciting was extremely strong.
So the weak link here was that Oldsmobile
cannot be an exciting car.
And that was a very strong
inconsistency they couldn't fight.
it was so strongly-associated with my
father and fathers are so not
exciting that people just, not, believe,
did not believe the new ad.
It was obviously hurt even more by the ad.
The slogan at the time was, This is not
your father's Oldsmobile.
And anybody knows, as soon as I say, this
is not
my father's Oldsmobile, what you're doing
is reinforcing that it's exactly
my father's Oldsmobile.
So this is known as one of, not a good
campaign.
Most marketers will say, you just didn't
get this right.
And you know, there was another problem
here.
Think about the brand name.
It is literally called an old mobile.
That is, all of this is not good, and it
was such a hard thing to
change and to reposition that they
actually took
the car off the market, which was kind
of astonishing, because Oldsmobile had
very, very high brand awareness.
But they just could not get themselves out
of this cognitive inconsistency.
So this is a very important thing.
A better way to do it is to not wait until
it's so hard
to change that it's impossible and you
have to take the product off the market.
A better way to do it is to gradually
change these associations in small ways
so that people can still maintain
that brand familiarity and believe the
re-positioning.
so you can do it, and I mentioned this
earlier.
You can do it by kind of, updating the
symbols.
Or, maybe you can start to change the
brand name.
And I can show you how to can show, change
the brand name slowly to to, to reflect
the evolving identity.
Or you can use different slogans.
So all of these elements that we talked
about before,
can be subtly tweaked.
In order to reposition the brand as a, as
you need to, to keep
it modern, and you can also do it if
you're going to use the brand to
stretch the brand to go into new products
and so you might want to broaden the
brand meaning so then it's more flexible
and adaptable to go in the new product.
There are two ways to do this.
One of the ways is called the Just
Noticeable difference.
And what this says
is that you make these little tweaks, very
subtle,
from point to point to point, so they're
barely noticed