Q&A Session: Positioning. Values...and Adver-tainment

Mark and Lorraine answer listener's questions: What are Lorraine's top two positioning books, with a +1? How can Innis Maggiore claim it's the nation's leading positioning ad agency? What's wrong with advertising a company's values? And the last question, what in the world is going on with the new paradigm shift and what Mark calls adver-tainment? This episode is fully listener-inspired. 

Spend 30-ish with Mark and Lorraine to learn more about advertising, marketing, and positioning. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:02 Q1: Positioning Book Recommendations
• 7:09 Q2: Positioning Expertise and Positionist Origins
• 13:41 Q3: Should Companies Advertise Their Values?
• 20:24 What is Adver-tainment? And is it Good or Bad?
• 29:25 Outro

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift:

Welcome to the latest episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me is one incredibly frustrated positionist…

Thing one, why all the frustration? 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Well, I just would like to invite all brand marketers to get back to real branding right, you know finding their product or service’s unique difference and Its value to its distinctive audience and focusing on that instead of on cultural values that may or may not align with their public, their core customer, or even where people's heads are. So, amen.  

What's happened in the last, I don't know, months or so, right, between Miller Lite, Bud Lite, Adidas, Dodgers with the Sisters of Perpetual, whatever, Indulgence, who, that's a whole other, like, why is Major League Baseball going there? And if people don't know that, I'll tell them, just read on it. Because it's not about pro-transgender, it's about anti-religion, anti-Catholic, anti-Christian religion. 

It reminds me of a movie which I loved called Network by Paddy Chayefsky, the great writer. There was a character called Howard Beale who's an anchorman/producer who's like drama creates customers, right? Viewers, people are watching for bad news. It's so prescient to where we are today. But in that Howard Beale, the anchorman, goes off in this trench coat, soliloquy, he goes mad on air and he just says, “we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.” 

And I feel like that's where people are, you know. Just... You know, I think it what is that movie 40 years old… 45 years old? 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Oh, at least. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like we've entered the Twilight Zone a little bit of brand craziness. 

But before we get real long in the tooth on this one, let's get to the business of our podcast today. And we actually had some listener questions come in that were prompted from our first view episodes. The first came on the heels of the last two podcasts that covered the 22 immutable laws of marketing book. The question is from Abby and it was directed to you Lorraine. 

What two books would you recommend for a budding Positionist? They don't have to be Trout books. Assume I only have a week’s vacation. So please keep them to your top two books that explain the concepts of positioning. Okay, maybe three. So Lorraine, give us your top two books on positioning and then add a plus one. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Okay, so number one, read Positioning. Get yourself a copy. I don't care what edition, the oldest, the first, the latest. This was written by Jack Trout and Al Ries, both now deceased. The first book, I think edition, was published in ‘81. It came off an article that Jack Trout wrote in ‘69 in Industrial Marketer. Read that and it will encourage you. And it is definitely vacation-worthy. It's a little paperback and one of the things I have to tell new generations of people, is don't pay attention to the examples. They're only to illustrate the principle. Pay attention to the principles that they're trying to teach because you're going to find the examples rather archaic and a lot of people say throw out the baby with the bathwater. They throw out the principle because we're talking about GM and Ford and the big three, and it's no longer the big three, etc. So don't get yourselves confused. Those just help to illustrate the principles. The second book, just by Trout, is Differentiate or Die. And that's a really good illustrative book. It's a fun read about brands that have successfully differentiated and those who have not and what kind of the consequences are when you're kind of in this malaise of copying and not differentiating. 

So that's a really good book. Third book, a little harder to get through, a little more intense, but equally important. I think most important for business owners, like if I had a book for CEOs, I'd say read this book. by Al Ries: Focus. I think it's something like the life of your business depends on it, something like that, subtitle, but Focus, by Al Ries, R-I-E-S, for those who are not familiar. That book is, every CEO should read that book. And so that might not be your vacation book, but that's a good one to read. Yeah. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Good. And you know, to your point Lorraine about old examples, okay. One thing I like about those is you have a history now, even when the first one was in ‘81. So we're at 41 years after that book was written. It's interesting to see the examples that are used and where those companies are today. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Right. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 And if they were to revisit themselves with the filter or overlay of positioning again. would they have taken a different path? 

It kind of goes to what we're talking about recently with all this brand malaise of stupid marketing moves and promoting the wrong things instead of just their products and services. I think that those examples are still relevant because if you're paying attention, you can see where they are today, what they've done wrong, apply it to your own business and say, hopefully one day, I won't end up in that same place. Or if they're doing really well, hopefully one day I will arrive in that same place. So I don't think those old examples are all that bad. It's just, it might be for younger people who weren't around: “I don't even understand what those brands are, so I have to learn a little bit.” But going back and doing some research isn't a bad thing either. So anyhow, our next question is from, I don't know if it's Alissa or Alyssa. but she says, “Mark and Lorraine, why do you believe you are some of the top positioning experts and where did the term positionist originate?” Lorraine, I'll let you go first because my answer is really easy. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Okay. Well, why do we believe that we're some of the top positioning experts? Because we focus on it. Because it is absolutely the operating, not only philosophy, but the organizing principle for everything we do in our agency. And because Jack Trout endorsed us in our commitment. Dick Maggiore had a long relationship with Jack Trout. I had a relationship with Jack Trout. He visited the agency and did some things for us. We had a major presentation in the Northeast Ohio market, with Jack, which you can see the YouTubes on, some of the conversation, if you Google that. And so, we just took a space that agencies gave lip service, we felt, to this, but they were organizing everything around this beautiful idea. It is our tether. It is our anatomy. It is the pole we stick in the ground, and we live it every day.  

There's not a creative person in the agency who doesn't know that their job is to convey the positioning strategy with as much magic and color and life as possible. Their job is not to come up with three or four alternative strategies to communicate. It's a very different thing. We're very disciplined into that. So in fact, when we created the process, the Appreciative Discovery®, and we're the only agency that we know of and firm that actually uses this process. It's one we created with the four filters you've heard. They've heard us talk about the four filters of company. How does this idea relate to your core DNA? What you're passionate about beyond making money, your belief, the kind of Simon Sinek, why we do what we do. Why we make our products thinner, faster, sleeker, cost less, whatever that is. So we have the company filter. We have the competitive filter, how does our idea maximize the distance between our product and service and competitors that we know in our category. Then we have the customer, who really cares a lot about this idea? Who really cares a lot about faster, slimmer, right, sexier, whatever, whatever this product or service is really delivering in a remarkable measure. And then context, how does it fit with the times and then what's going on in terms of threats opportunities. So by organizing around those, we actually previewed how we were doing this with customers, with Jack Trout. And I just remember, because I was sitting right next to him in Dick's office, he just said, that's genius. You know, that was a good time. Now, the term positionist, interestingly, we had an associate named James Alay who has since created a snack called Cracked Corn. Here's an unsponsored advertisement for that, James, that has won two Snack Expo awards in Chicago the last two years. It is a puffed, melt-in-your-mouth, sweet or savory corn snack that is... to die for. So if you see it, go ahead and buy it. They called it at QVC, I think, the new Dots, if anybody's had Dots in Ace Hardware or whatever. So anyway, James walked into my office and just casually, he just came up with this word, positionist. He wasn't trying to do anything with it. He just said, “I think if we're going to be positionists…” and I just stopped him there and that word caught me. And I said, that's a great word. We need to do something with that. So that's how that came about. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Great. Yeah, and I think Lorraine, I'm gonna pile on your answer for you personally. I don't see too many people in the world like you and Dick that are constantly chasing the principles of physician. You read new books. You have already consumed all that Trout and Ries have offered. But I mean, you look at it from others. It's a life passion for you. And so it's really neat to watch that. And that's part of my answer. If you're around Lorraine and Dick, that's how I can say that I'm a positioning expert and I'm a positionist. I've never seen two disciples any more skilled in their master teacher’s material than these two. I've actually seen both Dick and Lorraine challenge Jack Trout on positioning principles that he gave answers to. Honestly, if all you did was sit in one of our Appreciative Discovery® sessions, which I've done probably over 100 now, and just hear Lorraine go at it with how to discover the positions of our clients, then you naturally become an expert in it. I've been here 25 years, so I've soaked up a ton, but you can't help but be an expert on the principles of positioning if you just listen. You have listening ears to what Lorraine and Dick have promoted over the years. So it's natural for me because I like to learn and I learn a lot on other things, but soaking up positioning has been very natural. The other thing is Positionist has prompted the name of our blog, which is PositionistView. So it is used beyond just the idea of who we are, but it's also what we do and how we communicate to others. So anything else to add Lorraine, we'll go to our next question if not. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 No, I don't think so. Thanks for the question. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Okay, yeah. So the next question, and I think this is triggered by our beer commercial commentary. So this one might challenge us a little bit, Lorraine. I was thinking of the answer and I might take it first here.  

So Chris, who I think is a client contact of ours actually, said, “If a company really believes in a certain value, isn't it important for them to let their customers know about it. I get that it didn't go over well, but why was it wrong for Anheuser-Busch to fight for what they believe?”  

So Lorraine, let me take this first and then I'll let you chime in because you've answered first the last two times and I just have a particular take on this, Chris.  

I think it's because most brands never express a moral value, or the value is assumed. So if they did, they may not have the same number or type of customers that they have today. The best example I came up with was this. Take a Christian bookstore. I just said, “Christian bookstore.” You automatically assume a value. That company decided from the start of its business to compete in a specific subcategory. We're going back to what we talked about before, which is the law of category and the law of division, they created that subcategory or they chose to participate in it versus the larger category of bookstores. So in stating Christian as a value, you know, Books a Million might sell books to Christians by Christian authors, but a Christian bookstore is a specialist in this type of book and they assume there's already a Christian value that is attractive to a certain niche of book buyers. Those customers, obviously, interact with them when they walk in the store, they already know who they are. They have a knowledge of who they are, what they sell, and that's actually why they shop there. So they at least somewhat align on values. And if that customer base is big enough, that Christian bookstore will stay in business.  

I think what Bud Light and Miller Light did was to introduce a value to their existing customer base after the fact. So Lorraine, in one of our earlier episodes, you said Anheuser-Busch could have gone and created a new beer with a new brand name that was specific to the particular audience that Bud Light tried to gain, which was, I think you said, 0.6% of all of America. And Bud Light drinkers probably wouldn't have even known that they had done that. And they probably wouldn't have cared if they found out about it.  

I think even after the image of Dylan Mulvaney went viral, the Bud Light CMO piled on that by making comments that shunned that existing customer base. And they called them out-of-touch frat boys. And the sense is that this new value was coming down from on high, meaning that there are executives who are probably the ones who are truly out-of-reach and out-of-touch. So the customer's reaction was, whoa, I didn't sign up for this, I'm out. So think about how many other thousands of beer options there are out there. And so making a commentary on a beer drinker's value set, it was easy for about 50% of Bud-like drinkers to just switch. And that's what they did.  

I know that's a long answer, but if a company has a particular perspective or a value on life that's important to its management and employees, I think it can and should be expressed. But don't be surprised when you express that, that there are those who opt out of what you stand for. So if you think it's going to be a large portion of your customer base, which I can't believe that Bud Light didn't think through this, but proceed with caution. We all have a different value set, every single one of us can say we all have a different value set. And when those values are too far apart from where the brand is to where you are, don't expect that customer base to move lockstep with you, especially if it's never been part of your expression of your brand or it's been part of the expression of the history of your company. So again, Lorraine, I'm sorry that's a long answer but... It was a thoughtful question and I think it needs a thoughtful response. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Very thoughtful. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Do you have anything you want to add to that? 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Yeah, I, just a couple. I think you've covered the most. I would just say this. You can't diss your current customer by labeling them with pejoratives as if you don't appreciate them and then expect them to keep buying your product. So that's number one.  

Then they definitely threw kerosene on the fire that they created. And as you said, if they wanted a new beer for the swinging part of the community, for swingers and... people who think differently, what a fun brand to create, right? I mean, why are you trying to, no one who's a Bud Light drinker is even going to believe that you're the beer for the swinging part of the population in that regard.  

This totally defies any understanding of branding, marketing, and how the connection between the core customer has to be maintained. So, it's a great question. It's very, it's if what we're … what we have to do is continue to learn from what's happening. I think we're at a new normal because maybe Nike stepped into this with the Colin Kaepernick thing and they didn't lose anything from that because it was those values were pretty close to their core customer and I think they were willing to sacrifice loss of those who said, I'm not going to buy Nike because of this. And I don't believe they did any super detrimental harm.  

But we've moved. The landscape has moved. And it's become so divisive. And just like I said with the Dodgers thing, the ML inviting that queer, and these are not my words. They call themselves Queer and Transgender Group, Sisters of Perpetual, I can't remember what the rest of it was now, inspiration or something. That group isn't just pro-queer and transgender, they're anti-Christian. And we seem to have come to this point where we can't be pro-something without being anti-somebody else. And that's a new normal and I think we're just going to have to watch and see how this keeps going. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Yeah, and speaking of new normal, I actually had a question that I wanted to ask you, and it's in two parts. When do you think advertising switched from, I don't know, I want to call it the truly great advertising, classic advertising that we knew and grew up with, and it wasn't all perfect, I don't want to paint that picture, but I think we have something different today, and I like to call it adver-tainment. With these big misses by these big brands, do you think we're seeing another paradigm shift in the wrong direction? In terms of that, what I call the advertisement. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 And what do you mean by that term? So I understand. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Well, think of the Super Bowl ads, right? My test is: when I'm at a Super Bowl party and someone goes, “that was a great ad.” About five minutes later, I'll go and I'll say, “hey, what brand was that for?” And they go, “I don't remember.” And then I'll say, “well, what kind of product was it for?” And they go, “I don't remember that either.” So it might've been a puppy dog ad about, I don't know, a beer commercial or a chips commercial and the person that had just said what a great ad it was cannot even recall what the product was, let alone the brand within that category. So that's where to me it's become, hey ad agency, create a great entertainment around my brand. I don't care if it sticks in the mind of the consumer. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Yeah, well, I might nuance this a little bit, not totally agree. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Okay. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 I don't think adver-tainment is a problem. I think that having a strong positioning message and combining that with entertainment, they're friends, not foes. Why is that so? I mean, even the best idea in the world, if it's delivered in a boring way, will be ignored. So everything else is... academics. So we have to entertain to grab attention. There has to be an element of surprise and fun or emotion and that to me is part of the entertainment. That's crafted storytelling in a way that engages the person. The problem is when it's creative for creative sake. And I think that's the problem that you're seeing. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Yeah, that's what I'm asking. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Yeah, and creative for creative sake is a little bit different. In fact, I will give you an example of the opposite of what you're talking about. Persil Pro, the competitor to Tide cleaner, which was proven to clean better than Tide and anything else, launched its first Superbowl commercial in 2016. They had a perfect position. We're pro. We're the pro cleaner. You want a pro cleaning your home? Do you want the best clean? Right? It's Persil. It was the most boring commercial on the planet. Jack Trout loved that commercial, but it was a terrible commercial. Great position. But, you know, our job isn't to bore the consumer into buying the product. It's to really make it sing, as I think Bernbach would say. You know, you got to stir the soul.  

So I think they're friends, not foe. I think you have to combine it. But it's when one oversteps the other. In either in the case of Purcell when the position stymies a great creative execution or as many of the Super Bowl ads do they are on the side of entertainment which now what gets left on the cutting room floor is the brand name and the brand position then it's bad advertising and you know, so we've seen a lot of that I think it's a matter of the balance and I think it's a of artistry in our business and to put those two hands together. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Yeah. And, you know, I think where the creative for creative’s sake, that's the element. I love how you said that because I think that's the element that's confusing marketers in our space. Not just the people we work with, but other agencies, because we've always said that, let's say we're presenting creative and there's five creative options. Right. What do we say about ours? We know it's going to be tethered to the one positioning idea. Pepsi is always a good example of that. The drink of the new generation, but their advertising over the years has been wildly different. Geico, another one. 15 minutes will save you 15% or more. It doesn't matter whether it was the caveman, or it's the gecko, or it's the superstar advertising it. It all ties back to the same thing. Conversely, on the other side of the aisle, we see a lot of agencies, they walk in, they have five different creatives with five different ideas. 

And so those ideas, if the owner says, I like the pink and purple today. And they pick that ad, that could have completely the wrong position tied to it. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Absolutely. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 If it's even a positioning idea, it might just be some random idea. And so to me, that's the idea of creative for creative sake. And then you add on top of that, this Oh, well, it's a Super Bowl ad, so it must be done well. I don't know about you, but I would say 50% or more of the Super Bowl ads are actually bad advertising because they're creative for creative sake. Do you agree, disagree? What's your thought on that? 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Yeah, the only time for the most part, yes, I would only say that sometimes what appears creative for creative’s sake today, if it's given enough legs and time and money behind it can become a new cultural phenomena for that brand down the road. And so you have to kind of, you kind of have to watch and see where it goes. But so many of those ads, and I agree with you, are like one-offs, right? 

So you see it at the Super Bowl and you really don't see it again and there's not a lot of weight behind it or it's anemic after that. And they don't ever rise to that level of creating kind of a new cultural icon for that brand or something. So, you know, one of the things is as a brand marketer, you got to own it and not just for one showing. You've got to own the idea for a while and really, really give it some life. But yeah, if it's not connected to. If I can't remember the name of the brand or why I should buy it, that's what I'm saying. The who and the why, then all the entertainment is, it's kind of like when you think of a rocket that they launch at NASA, they have the booster and it falls away, right? That's what the entertainment is. It's the part that's supposed to fall away. If it keeps traveling with the rocket, it's ineffective. It doesn't work. It's in the way. And so that's something that... I think takes some integrity on the part of the advertising agency and the CMOs to pay attention to. Very careful. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Yeah, yeah. And you know, it is interesting. We always talk about dramatizing the position as our next step once we get the idea. It's so critical and that's the 99% of the work. 1% of it is getting the right idea, but it makes 99% of the difference. 99% of the work though is dramatizing that. And I think it'd be neat maybe in a future episode to talk about the elements of creative. 

I know from a name to... Some people want a tagline if that's necessary to the words, the pictures, everything that we use to dramatize a position is so critical. So I think that'd be a good thing to, yeah, that'd be great to do. 

Lorraine Kessler:
 Some of the mnemonics, the sounds, like you can almost play in your head the McDonald's, do, do, do, do, do, do, you know, you know I'm not musical, but you know what I mean. You know immediately.. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Don't sing, Lorraine! 

Lorraine Kessler:
 before, don't sing Lorraine, we're gonna have to do a whole episode on it. But you know immediately when you hear that, that it's McDonald's. And there's several brands that have that kind of mnemonic built in … super powerful. 

Mark Vandegrift:
 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. And even local commercials, it's funny, my girls who would never buy some of these things, products, they can sing tunes that they've heard on the radio and they stick with them. And that's a great example of good creative execution or dramatization of position. 

So well, that's it for this episode of Brand Shorthand. With that additional touch of brand malaise that we have in there, we have to bring today's episode to a close. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode when we, as always, will dive deeper on some of the core concepts of positioning. Until then, have an amazing day.