Brand Shorthand

Ways to Differentiate: Heritage

• Mark Vandegrift and Lorraine Kessler • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Italian wines. French romance. German engineering. Amish furniture. These all have a common thread and are the topic of today's discussion — how to differentiate using a Heritage position. Mark and Lorraine do a deep dive on why Heritage can be such a powerful position, including some sensitivities and potential competitor moves that can back your brand into a corner.

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

Mark Vandegrift:
Welcome to the latest episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me is the Italian diva of positioning, Lorraine Kessler. Thing one, I'm going to throw you for a loop today and ask you to share with us a good Italian wine you've had lately.

Lorraine Kessler:
Wow, that's one a good one. No, there are so many. So for the uninitiated, I will share this because this is Wendy's pick, right? You just shared with me. Amarone is an Italian wine, a big Italian wine and Amarone means great bitter. It is a wine that you have to eat with big food. The Italian than a lot of other countries, their philosophy is that wine is food. So they're very big on having the right wine with the right food. And of course we all know about pairing, but it really finds its, I think, origin in Italian thinking. So Amarone is made near in Veneto, near Verona. It is, they take the grapes and they dry them on straw. It's quite a process. Then they press them. And there are three grapes that make up the Amarone. There's a Corvino, there's a Rondelle, and then they use any one of the common Bordeaux grapes, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, or Serac, in some combination. So it is a big, big wine. It's absolutely lush. It's great wine. But I love great Chianti's.

Mark Vandegrift:
Is there one in particular that you've had in the last week that just knocked you off your socks?

Lorraine Kessler:
Well, I drink a lot of Chianti in the summer, because it's a lighter Italian wine. And we are using our Solo stove. And I have a steel pizza cooker for the lake, where we put on the grill. So we're making homemade pizzas. And Chianti is such a coiffable, approachable wine. And there's anything from very affordable grocery store, like Da Vinci is a very good one, or Banffy has a very good Chianti Classico. But then you can jump up to what, to Fontoni, which is, you know, pricey, but absolutely fantastic brand or vinter of Chianti Classico. So if you like a little lighter fare in the summer, it's a very approachable Italian wine. 

Mark Vandegrift:
Well, we're going to keep working our way through the 11 ways to differentiate, which help our clients determine how they will position themselves. So I think today, a good one to pick up with since we're talking about Italian wines, we'll pick up with the heritage position. And before we dive in at all Lorraine, I'm going to go ahead and start with our textbook definition. from our ways to differentiate tool. And I'll throw that up on the screen as usual. But I'm only going to read the first part because we actually break it down into four different heritage plays that are listed on our tool. So here goes, the rules of play. 

There's a natural psychological importance in having a long history, one that makes people secure in their choice. Heritage and trust work together. There is power in being a participant in a continuous line that connects and bonds one to a history that one carries forward from the living past. Without a sense of heritage, people tend to feel vulnerable, emotionally cut off and ungrounded. Another way to look at this approach is to recognize that being around a long time also gives prospects the feeling they are dealing with the industry leader. Some examples, Steinway, “The Instrument of the Immortals.” I love Steinways by the way, as a piano player. Cross Pens, “flawless classics since 1846.” And I think I got about 321 of those when I graduated from high school. And Glenlivet Scotch, “the father of all Scotch.” So, before we get into the specifics and the four heritage plays Lorraine, give us your perspective and comments on the heritage way to differentiate.

Lorraine Kessler:
Well, as you said, there's different ways. So, I'll talk about what the value is, which I think you covered, is that the heritage links to trust. And people are naturally insecure. We're always looking to either others or to some verification for the purchases we make, or particularly when it comes to personal taste and style. Like if you can think about clothes or the wines we drink or the restaurants we go to, we're very much concerned with social approval. 

So, Heritage really plays to that. So that's the psychological advantage it has. It kind of credentials the brand before we have the chance to maybe check it out with others. And in Heritage, I would say that relevance is absolutely a critical ingredient. You have to play in your Heritage play to what the customer… what they either fear or what they care a lot about. So, it can be very emotional. And it also is pertinent, or it's limited by category. Certain categories lend themselves to heritage better than others. Anything that's craftsmanship made, like a furniture or a window or food or a muffin or coffee or scotch, a piano, an instrument of beauty. These categories really relate very well. Heritage will not relate as well as I think would be obvious to technology, right? Because technology is so fast forward and evolving and by definition, it's almost always new generation. So, you do have to be sensitive to, again, the customer and the psychology, what they're afraid of, what they're trying to avoid, or what they want to gain, care a lot about and the category, how does it fit with that category?

Mark Vandegrift:
Good opening comments. Okay, so let's go to the four plays that I talked about. The first one up is Location Heritage. And our description for this is: Over the years, places and countries have become well known for certain products. Japan, autos and electronics. The US, computers and airplanes. Germany, engineering and beer. Britain, China, fabrics and glassware. France. wine and perfume, Russia, vodka and caviar, Cuba, cigars, etc. So, Lorraine, this is the probably, if I had to guess, the most common heritage play we've run across. I think it's probably because the world is a big place. So that means there are a lot of locations that have come to mean something to our psyche, right? So, give us a little bit of background on how this all plays out, but it really can be powerful, but there's a kind of a sensitivity to using it correctly.

Lorraine Kessler:
That's right. And I don't think we can say it enough as we've said in these podcasts, but positioning is what you do in the mind of the customer. It's not what you do to the product. So, a big part of finding the right strategy is understanding what's in the customer's, you know, cabanza, what are they thinking about and how do they think about things from the beginning? What perceptions do they have? What preferences, what prejudices? Because you're really trying to tie into those synapses, if I can use that word in that way. 

So again, there's this psychological advantage to these synapses, but you have to make sure that you can connect some way. So, the fact that we know people attribute chocolate to Switzerland and beer to Germany and engineering to Germany and Japan to cars and electronics and so on, that's a good start. Amish to furniture. Amish to baked goods. So that's another kind of location way of thinking about. So, when you know that, then you can begin to tie your brand into what's already in the mind. Now you're making a really great connection. 

You can also use location and pair it with an attribute. So, I'm not so sure if this is all totally location branding or heritage or a combination of attribute and location. Romance with Paris, right? “What happens here stays here” with Las Vegas … adult entertainment, right? Adventure Alaska, pure with Michigan, the heart of it all with Ohio, right? So, I mean, branding locations, actual locations with an attribute is another kind of a reversal of what we're talking about. One is taking a product and attaching it to a location as a way of credentialing it. Another way is to take a location and do what we call location branding and attaching an attribute to elevate that location.

Mark Vandegrift:
We even do that here with Canton. If you're in the football world and you say “Canton,” people automatically go, Football Hall of Fame. We were in Ireland a month or so ago and someone asked me where we were from and I said, Canton, Ohio. And they said, oh, Pro Football Hall of Fame. So even over in Ireland where football isn't a huge thing, this guy in particular liked football, had gone to a couple of the games when Notre Dame was over there. And he knew exactly where Canton, Ohio was. And I think to your point, one of the things that the previous director of the Hall of Fame did is he attached the notion of excellence to that. Because when you think of a Hall of Fame, you think of excellence, the pinnacle of your sport in this case. So Canton, kind of like the address of excellence and we think of the pro football Hall of Fame.

Lorraine Kessler:
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because years ago, we advocated fairly strongly that we brand Canton the Hall of Fame city, and Visit Canton is using that today. And that is exactly the right position, because it will float all ships. If we're the hall of fame city, that means we have a quality and an excellence, as you were saying, that can speak to art galleries, to clothing shops, to boutiques, to anything related to sports, not just football.

Mark Vandegrift:
Well, let's go to the next play, which is playing against that location called the Anti-Competitor Heritage. This play is also location-based for the most part. And here are a few examples. Stolichnaya ran an ad that said, most American vodkas look Russian. Stolichnaya is different. It is Russian. Another one, Becks, which we talked about in the last couple episodes. Becks ran an ad to counter Lowenbrau's success. It said in effect, “you've tasted the number one German beer in the United States, now taste the number one beer in Germany.” And then we have one more, Pace Salsa is another example we use on the tool set. Pace Salsa made hay with a campaign that pointed out it was made in Texas, while other leading salsas were made in New York. So, we've talked about Becks. maybe walk us through either Stolichnaya or the paste salsa example.

Lorraine Kessler:
Well, first I'm going to kind of qualify what we're talking about in the anti-competitor approach. It is an advertising approach. It's a way of using your own heritage to advantage your brand by exposing a negative that can be verified as true about a competitor. So that's what happened here with these brands, you know? The interesting thing is each of these campaigns you mentioned, Becks, Pace, Stolichnaya, were all extremely successful for the brands. But again, as an advertising approach, there's kind of a shorter term window than there is for positioning. You can still be Germany's the number one beer in Germany, but you may not always be able to attack you know, Lowenbrau, right? Because things have changed in the market. 

I'll give you an example. The number one beer in Germany today is Krohnbacher. Beck's is number two. So, you know, getting to the top is only half of the game. Staying there is the other half. Stolichnaya, interestingly Stoli, which originated in rough in 1938. The vodka sold today in the US is not made in Russia. It's made in Latvia. The company itself is now in Luxembourg and it's owned by the exiled billionaire, Yuri Scheffler from Russia. So, you know, that no longer works. 

And Pace has dropped considerably in sales. It's become kind of a low price grocery store commodity. And I think the salsa market is one of the most commoditized, crazy, expanded, you know, there's all types of salsa with con queso and with all sorts of different ingredients. So, it's really hard, but I would say there's an opportunity here. It seems like Tostitos is number one in the U S that's I think a Frito-Lay product, I'm pretty sure. But number one in Mexico. And I think Mexican salsa would be a great. location heritage kind of play is Herdez and Herdez is number one in Mexico. So, if they're listening, they should exploit that in their US marketing that all these other ones are made in the US, but we're the number one in Mexico. Just like Barilla does, it's the number one pasta in Italy. So, if you're going to choose a pasta, I'm going to look at Barilla first.

Mark Vandegrift:
Good. Yeah, I think what the one thing that Heritage points out, especially this anti-competitor heritage, is that we said this before, any time you choose a position, you're automatically repositioning a competitor or the entire field. So this is another good example of that.

So third on the list is family heritage. And we already mentioned Steinway, but let me read our description here. This is common and we typically see it play out with a line that reads since 1980 or 1890 or 1950 or something like that. And we always mentioned Steinway as the instrument of the immortals. I love that line. And that references a family of great composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, et cetera. So, our definition reads: people appear to be more kindly toward a family-run business as opposed to a cold and personal public corporation that's beholden to a bunch of greedy stockholders. A family company is believed to be more involved with their product. They are also given higher marks for community involvement. 

So, Lorraine, it seems as though the “since...” part has been diminished somewhat because we've lost a little bit of a tie to the past. But I think what has crept up even higher to that is the local idea, buy local, because of all the big corporations and their antics. And typically, the local companies are family, small business type companies. So, share with us a little bit how this family heritage plays out.

Lorraine Kessler:
Well, family heritage, as you've said, can be powerful for the reasons you noted, but authenticity is absolutely critical. And when you just say something like, “since 1938 or 1831,” that can do a little bit of work, but it doesn't have the magic of saying the “instrument of the immortals,” right? You have to deliver a specific benefit. There has to be either made the same way for the last 200 years. So there has to be some tangible promise of a specific in either how the product is made or what it's going to deliver or benefit me that separates it from other brands, either mass manufactured or whatever it is. So, you have to get beyond the just the since stuff and not just because history. I think people value that, but they don't know what that means. So, you have to help them. And authenticity, as I said, can be really great. 

Now, on the way home the other day from the lake, I saw this truck and I just had a chuckle to myself because it plays right into what you just said about the sense message. It was this, you know, a big truck and it said on the side, “40 years delivering seedlings.” And I'm like, 40 years isn't that long. And wow, they really do have a narrow niche. They are positioned. They're doing seedlings. I don't know what time. But I hope it's not pods from the body snatchers or something like that. But 40 years is like not a long time in the way people think about time. So

Mark Vandegrift:
1983 is yesterday, you know?

Lorraine Kessler:
I know. I know. I just heard that. What was it I heard the other day? and the movie was only 20 years old and they were making fun of it. This is a 20 year old movie. I'm like, oh my God, I felt like I saw it yesterday.

So again, going back to the family thing … the family organization has to be prepared to deliver that differentiated value or benefit that people can rely on and be delighted by for a very long time. And I always liked this mathematical equation for those people who like to think logically. We talk a lot of kind of out there, but the math here is: reliability + delight = trust. So, a family business has to be absolutely committed to delivering that. 
And an interesting topical story, I don't know if you followed this, Ben and Jerry's, what happened to them just recently? Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift:
Yeah, oh, that was a disaster.

Lorraine Kessler:
Now they've always been found they were family run and then they sold to Unilever, one of the biggest global companies there is. And they were able to keep their progressive politics on the board, which they've always been progressive, so they were always saying, “Hey, if you don't like our politics, then don't buy our ice cream.” So, okay, credit to them. I have no problem with that. That was part of their positioning from the beginning. But then on July 4th, they tweeted, concerning condemning the US for existing on stolen indigenous land. And they tweeted, “it's high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen indigenous land and commit to returning it.” And then the tweet went on to state the faces on Mount Rushmore should be changed because these are the faces of men who actively work to destroy indigenous cultures and ways of life to deny indigenous people their basic rights. 

Okay, so they make this blatant statement, cost Unilever $2 billion in value, almost overnight. Right, now here's the fun part. Newsweek reported that Don Stevens, chief of the Nalgian Band of Kusuk Abenaki Nation, one of the four descended from the Abenaki that are recognized in Vermont told Newsweek, “he was always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands, but that the company had yet to approach them. And he questioned them when they would give up Burlington, Vermont, where their headquarters is, because that's Indian land.” 

So, if you're going to bite, you better make sure that what bites you back isn't bigger. Kind of a lesson.

Mark Vandegrift:
Yeah. And when you think about family heritage, the name itself has to already have value to it. In other words, if I were to say, you know, here's a mug, and I called it the Vandegrift mug, there would be no value to having that heritage play because there's been no value built up around the name Vandegrift. So, from that standpoint, you can't just say, well, we're a family-run business, so we're going to call it Carter's or Kessler's or something like that. I think your in-laws had a clothing store in Perrysburg and it was called Kessler's, but they were very, very well respected in town. And I think we said upfront, you have to have a lot of community involvement. And that store lasted for decades and decades because it was a name known in the community with high value. Maybe share a little bit more about that because I don't want anyone to walk away thinking they can take their first name or last name and just throw it on a product and think, “oh, now we have a difference.”

Lorraine Kessler:
Yeah, well, the name has to stand for something like the Vandegrift mug has to deliver some sort of benefit that is of value. It's actually a good name, Mark. We should think of what value, what you could do to that mug to make it a product.

Mark Vandegrift:
Definitely.

Lorraine Kessler:
But, you know, this is where I think when you led off, you asked about both family and then local. And local can be an effective way, more effective today than I ever thought it was going to be simply because everything's getting big, just like Unilever bought Ben & Jerry's, and there's Walmart, now Meijer coming into our town in big way, and local groceries are squeezed out. We just see this commoditization on a mass scale, and so everything's voicemail jail. You know, you don't get a real person. You've just lost so much of the customer service touch that you get from what a family company can offer. And if you're really going to go that route, first of all, don't use your local placement as a guilt trip. I've seen local companies do this. In other words, we're local, so buy from us. People are still, what's in it for me? Not what's in it for you. So, you can stay local, I'm gonna buy from you. Well, you've gotta do something for me. 

So, you have to deliver a unique, tangible benefit. And I think today in the big-bag box world, there’s more opportunity than ever for private business, family business, local business, tying those together, to win. First of all, what could you do? It's customer experience, okay? You can be highly intimate and personal because you don't need to boil the ocean, right? So, you can focus on those core customers. You can treat customers like members, not like just walk-ins and transactions. You can know their names, you can personalize rewards, you can send them personal notes, handwritten. You can have free deliveries, local grown or local made products not available in mass, specialty products. So there's a lot you can do to really make that authentic and real and relevant. And that's what I was saying about relevance is the key to all the heritage. So that you separate, and people go there for the experience.

Mark Vandegrift:
Well, it's interesting when you think about a family business, there's usually a lot of sweat equity in that business. There's a lot of hard work. So externalizing that would mean I'm really working hard to both get you and keep you as a customer. You can expect a lot more effort from me, a lot more customer service, going the extra mile to both keep and get customers in the first place. So, there's a caution I would throw out that you just don't slap a name on something and think you have a difference. But at the same time, it can be really powerful as it plays out over the years. This is one of those things where time is critical when it comes to family heritage.

Finally, we have the Character as a heritage play. And this is an interesting way to exploit a brand's heritage with what made the brand famous in the first place. What do I mean by that? Think of the Jolly Green Giant, Colonel Sanders, Charlie the Tuna, Mr. Peanut, Orville Redenbacher. Clarify for us what we mean when we indicate the Character as a Heritage play.

Lorraine Kessler:
It's a way of creating heritage by exploiting a brand personality. So, you exploit that personality by creating a character. It's a twist on heritage, but it doesn't depend on heritage. It actually ends up creating it. The heritage for Geico is the gecko. The heritage now for Progressive is Flo. They become symbols or stand-ins for these brands and their other position, which you mentioned is price. So, they're just stands-ins. They’re like the American flag. Like if you think of the American flag, it's a symbol for all of what America is based on, the virtues, the values that we hold dear and some want to a smear. 

We should write that down: “We hold dear and some want to smear.”

It is a symbol for those ideals. And so Flo and the gecko become that. So, in the commodity categories you're talking about, Jolly Green Giant… popcorn category, Orville Rennbacher, etc. What these do is they bring some distinctive creative differentiation through personality to a commodity product that there's way too much choice. So, it becomes a way of identifying that product so people can remember that product a little bit better. Mr. Peanut is another one and these kinds of things. 

So, often in overly commoditized categories do you see that. It's put in the heritage bucket, but it really is about creating a character as a way of creating a distinguishing differentiated symbol for usually a more commoditized product.

Mark Vandegrift:
Yeah, I think that where it might get confusing for people is when we list some of these, the Jolly Green Giant doesn't evoke a particular aspect of those vegetables, right? Charlie the tuna doesn't evoke a certain differentiation for the tuna. 

Whereas Colonel Sanders is finger-looking good, so we have a taste position there. Orville Redenbacher is premium popcorn, so we have a kind of a leadership position there. Geico's gecko, Flo from Progressive, the Liberty Mutual emu, those are all things, but they're all... different ways to be low price. So the gecko is about 15 minutes, saves you 15% or more. Flo from Progressive is use the price checker. The EMU is personalization or customization of your coverage so you only get what you need.

So those are different ways to do low price. And what they're doing is it's going back to that time that you need to develop something. You know, it's funny, I looked up the Afflac Duck the other day. It's been around since January 1st of 2000. So we've had 23 years, speaking of time, of the Aflac Duck. So, you're now connecting the Aflac Duck to supplemental insurance, but their original difference was they had to explain what supplemental insurance was. And now that it exists, we recognize that Aflac Duck. So... I think that as long as you're giving it time and you don't abandon it right away, a character is a good way to go because as you say, eventually there's that heritage connection to it. It's almost like a logo to a company like a Nike swoosh evokes emotion in us because we know what it stands for because there's been a lot of investment in what that stands for. So, I think it's worth working through this because sometimes positioning is a little mugwampy and we got to bring clarity to it. So good.

Lorraine Kessler:
I think you make a very good point that if you look at all the brands you just mentioned, without exception, they've been consistent and constant with time and money on that idea. And that's what it takes. That's the advertising side of positioning. It's one thing to have the idea. The other thing is the execution of that idea and how you stick with it. And so they have and as much as the emu in Liberty Mutual annoys the heck out of me, they're doing the right thing and they're sticking with it and I got to say it must be working for them because they wouldn't stick with it.

Mark Vandegrift:
Very good. Well, Lorraine, let's bring this episode to a close. I think it's obvious that the two of us have been around for a while, so maybe we both have a heritage play we can come up with for our own positions in the psyche.

Lorraine Kessler:
Since 1955!

Mark Vandegrift:
Yes, …since 1970.

Lorraine Kessler:
Yeah. Oh, that's scary.

Mark Vandegrift:
Well, to all our loyal listeners, remember to like, share, and tell others about the Brand Shorthand Podcast. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode when we dive deep on some core principles of positioning. Until then, have an amazing day.