Brand vs Bland: Homogenizing the Market

Whether it’s lateral CEO hiring from Chipotle, commoditizing the coffee experience at Starbucks, or boiling down branding to fit in with the crowd, it seems that a lot of big business brands are starting to feel the same. Join Mark and Lorraine as they navigate the seas of sameness flooding through modern advertising and discuss how differentiation and positioning can help you stand out in a cluttered market.

Spend 30ish minutes with Mark and Lorraine as they talk all things marketing, advertising, and of course … positioning!

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the Brain Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is the Positioning Protagonist, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, big news in the world of Starbucks, since we seem to bring them up so often. They have a new CEO. It's the former CEO of Chipotle, Brian Niccol. Did you hear about that?

Lorraine Kessler
No, I haven't. I've been out of the loop, even though I've been following Starbucks, missed that.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, they were due for a change because they've seen a 40% drop in market valuation since their high in 2021, which, you know, the only word I have for that is coffee-pocalypse. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, that's a pretty good word actually, I think we should trademark that.

Mark Vandegrift
But I think I understand why and it just happened to me this week. So, you know, those that listen probably won't know where we're referencing, but Lorraine, think you might. Have you been in the Starbucks at Washington Square ever across from Walsh College?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, way back, yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
Okay, way back. If you remember, you walk in the counters on the right and you have all this seating area. Well, I walked in there this week. Boom, there's a counter and nothing else. The whole place was turned into a kitchen, or coffee prep area, other than two bathrooms off to the left. But there couldn't have been 10 feet before you hit the counter. They took all the signage off of the walls. It's like a stale gray. It feels like you're walking into a reception area at a hospital and the only thing they had, get this, was a digital sign on the left says "order received". In the middle it says "order being made", and on the right, "order ready for pickup". And it almost looks like, you know, when you, see the hospital signs where it says checked in, you know, next up and in surgery or something. I don't know what they are, but it makes me think that we always talk about Starbucks hitting the highest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and that self-affirmation, right? Starbucks, the cup is my identity. They invented the coffee experience.

Lorraine Kessler
Right. Experience is key.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. And yet, you know, at the same time, we also talk about- you've mentioned this recently on the last three or four episodes- is you have to be nimble because definitions change. Like I think last time we talked about the definition of quality and Tupperware, right? The definition of quality has changed. So is it the fact that maybe coffee experience has changed and we have so many competitors? You know, I just think it's interesting that they hired the former CEO of Chipotle, which by my recollection was the first fast food place to push a feeling of that professionalism or modernism instead of the family friendly feeling that you get. So I was just curious, maybe you had a lot of time to think about this, but do think he's going to take them back to the coffee experience? Or do you think he'll push for this "coffee-as-a-transaction" approach?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, as a transaction, you've just squeezed any brand value out of it. So I would encourage our viewers and those who are listening to Google on YouTube "Horn and Hardart" [The Automat]. It's a documentary. I think Mel Brooks is featured in it. And that chain of restaurants, which was about the turn of the century, two guys, Horn and Hardart, had all about an experience for migrants who were coming to the immigrants who were coming to this country who didn't quite all speak the same language and how they could convene and how they could be treated with quality and have food and convene and be in community. And that was Howard Schultz's inspiration. He's in the documentary. That to me is the DNA that Starbucks has week by week, year by year, month by month, whatever, just winnowed out out of this idea that they're supposed to be a transactional brand. I think it's totally been the wrong way. Will Brian Niccol turn it around? I don't know, because I think Chipotle's had its own problems, as I understand. They've had some health problems. They've had some other things. I like their new commercials. They're back to food fresh and how it's prepared and made every day. And in the same vein, I would encourage our viewers and listeners to Google "Sebastian Maniscalco" and a bit that he does on Subway and now they prepare your food. Because it's funny as heck. So that tells me that they achieved some sort of celebrity status when a celebrity comedian is able to make fun of your process for how you put your food together. But I don't know. What you just said to me is 180, the wrong direction. And I think I would do what Dunkin' did a few years ago, if you remember, Dunkin' closed 800 stores a few years ago. They were in, I forget what store they were within, they were within a store, that really didn't reflect the brand and they got rid of 450 of those stores. Sometimes--

Mark Vandegrift
Speedway is who it was.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh yeah. Totally wrong place to be in. What says more transactional than "Speedway"? And by the way, hope you don't get food poisoning. They did the hard thing. They rationalized their stores. They rationalized their line and they're stronger than ever. So if I were in Starbucks, I'd be looking at Dunkin', I'd see the template, how they're trying to bring a greater experience to some of the meal times that they serve, like breakfast. And I would put my money more on that than in trying to do whatever happened in Washington Square.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, and the one down the street the other way, down Whipple, is just the drive-thru. They have a walk-up window, but it's only a drive-thru.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, we know where this comes from, right? It's greed. It's just money and speed and "make it fast" as if that's the only thing these customers value. Meanwhile, look at all the little coffee experience hubs or businesses- some are regional, some are local- that have grown up, that have people convening in the morning with their computers and enjoying a danish, having really great coffee and conversation with the barista. That's where I'd want to be.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, we have a ton of them around here. The Ohio Coffee Roasters is a great place. Muggswigz, who else recently has gone in? Carpe Diem has been around for a while. So all these places that are fantastic for that coffee experience where people convene. And it's almost like Starbucks said, "Okay, folks, I set this up for you. You run with it. We're going a different way now."

Lorraine Kessler
Well, and I don't understand because they're such a smart company in so many ways. But, you know, they've made some dumb political moves. We know that's hurt. But the thing is that you have two segments of customers. You have that customer who "I just need to get my coffee on my way to work and I need it quick." And why can't you have an express lane totally dedicated to that? And then you have the customer who's like, you know, wants to be like La-z-Boy.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
We just talked about La-z-Boy in another one of our podcasts. They just want to hang out. They want to do their work there. They want to see some people. They want to be seen. They want to relax. They want to have a true, what this is supposed to be, as an Italian coffee experience. So I don't know why you can't serve both.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, the topic at hand isn't quite that, but I think that might be what Starbucks is chasing and that's brand homogenization. Now, let me define that for listeners. If anybody knows the word "homogenization", it's basically making things the same- "homo"- basically the kind of being like. And so brand homogenization is making all brands very similar to one another, following what they're doing from anything to starting with the logo to the slogan to the fonts that are being used to even the advertisements. And these companies seem to be going in the opposite direction of positioning, which is about differentiation, and instead making them look and feel and very nearly identical to other brands. So I'm gonna start this off a little differently here, rather than have you wax eloquently on this, we'll get there. But I'm gonna give you a slogan for a big brand name and you try to tell me which brand it goes to, you ready? 

Lorraine Kessler
Yup.

Mark Vandegrift
Okay, the first one is "Up for Whatever".

Lorraine Kessler
Again, it's the Titan, right? It's a big brand.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, it's a big brand name. It's one of our favorites. We've been up, we've beat up on them a lot.

Lorraine Kessler
Gosh, I have no clue.

Mark Vandegrift
You will never connect it to this. Bud Light.

Lorraine Kessler
So yeah, "Up for Whatever".

Mark Vandegrift
"Up for Whatever?" Okay, number two--

Lorraine Kessler
Do we have a buzzer?

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, we'll have Denver work that in for us. Okay. So number two is "The Power of Dreams".

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Power of dreams. Okay. Is that a cannabis ad?

Mark Vandegrift
It's for Honda.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. I thought Honda right away. That really, all I know is in our market, there's been a lot of motorcycle accidents. Really bad.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, maybe they were dreaming. Yeah, they were asleep at the wheel and dreaming.

Lorraine Kessler
Maybe they were dreaming. "The Power of Dreams". Maybe "The Power of Nightmares".

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Okay, here's another one for you. Ready? It's one word. "Healthing".

Lorraine Kessler
Oh, that one. That one's terrible. That one's terrible.

Mark Vandegrift
Guess who that belongs to.

Lorraine Kessler
I think it's Lysol, but it's terrible. I hate it.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, you at least got it. I didn't think you would get that one. I didn't know it when Denver challenged me with it.

Lorraine Kessler
Because I'm a clean fanatic. I'm an OCD clean- I turned in my mother. I don't know how this has happened. And John has turned into my- the other half of my mother because he's obsessed with trash. There can never be a speck of trash in the trash cans in the house before it being taken outside.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, in my opinion, okay- this is my opinion again, the same reason I had an opinion about Starbucks not doing well- but brand homogenization seems to be coming more widespread in recent years. And I think this is the reason, is there's this set of advertising execs and all they're doing is changing positions. So this guy that was here, like even the CEO of Chipotle is over at Starbucks now.

Lorraine Kessler
Right, right.

Mark Vandegrift
Right? So what is he going to do? He's probably going to take everything he did at Chipotle and do it at Starbucks and say, "Well, it worked there. We ought to do it here." And I think this tier of advertising execs, they do is switch positions within these companies. And so you're starting to get brands that look the same, logos that look the same, slogans that look the same. It's just like a me-too thing. And you've always said, It's basic human nature to copy. If I do this and scratch my head, you're gonna do it. But I think there's a layer additional to this and that's these individuals that are just swapping positions. And now they're just starting to all like think alike, be alike- they're robots. Do you have any other examples of this going on right now off the top of your head?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, examples of it, reasons for it, think you hit one, that's the recirculation of same people with same thoughts within the category, right? And they're not being strategic about it. I think the other thing is there's a sense of how do we play it safe, right? If this worked here, then it should work here. And so, but I would say that in marketing, playing it safe is the most dangerous strategy of all. It is for sure to do what we're talking about, it's homogenization. And so it becomes like, I mean, I have to think off the top of my head what brands are really homogenized, but there's some that stand out that are not. For example, John Deere to me stands out, right? Every other- and there's a lot, Cub Cadet, and they're all meshed together for me. And I think in a lot of the tool business, there's a lot of homogenization. They're not standing out the way they used to. They don't have the kind of distinction they used to have.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, the one that always jumped out to me, and I thought the original was really good, which was Charmin's "For the Go", right? That was their tagline. But the second I saw an ad for Hilton's that was "For the Stay", I'm like, "you so ripped that off".

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, well, we could put a for the whatever and fill in the blank, right? "For the Morning", "For the People", right? "For the Children". I mean, you can finish the sentence. So this is where formula takes over. If you can turn it into a formula like that, it's a pretty good bet that you're on the wrong track.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, do you remember the Got Milk campaign? And how many things came out of that? I mean, they even pulled it into the church. Got Jesus?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, it's just, what do we call that? What do we call that?

Mark Vandegrift
Laziness. It's lazy to the point of unwilling to create your own original differentiation. That's my opinion. I mean, some people go, "No, it works. Why wouldn't we apply it to ours?" But immediately when someone sees it, they're going to understand that you ripped it off. So now your credibility just went down the tank.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, it's a bad habit. I hate to say it, I think I did that once too. I think I was the one behind "Advertise Responsibly", which was rip off. That's all right. We can call ourselves sometimes as being off.

Mark Vandegrift
Very good. Well, you admitted it.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I admitted it.

Mark Vandegrift
We'll put some samples on screen here, too. But you can take some brands like Pringles or Lamborghini, where they just trim their logo down to a black-and-white version. And a lot of them are beginning to blend in with each other and even with brands from other markets.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, one of the things I noticed and I was totally confused is there's this new vehicle that every time I see it, I love the style and Genesis. Is that Hyundai's high-end brand, Genesis? But their logo looks just like the Mini Cooper. It looks like, I think it's Chrysler. There's like three or four automotive logos that have that airplane kind of look. And we should find them because I was just like, "what am I looking at here?" I was trying to figure out. And the way that they do their full logo with the word on the back of a vehicle, the Genesis is so spaced out. You can't read it easily, right? Cause there's too much kerning between the letters. And I've seen this mark and I'm like, "I've seen that mark before." This is--

Mark Vandegrift
It's a Mini Cooper.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, Mini Cooper. Like what is this vehicle? That's a really good example. But the other thing is we, can go through, logos in the 2000s era, the 90s, the 80s, the 70s and now. And I remember everybody had kind of a swoop, like kind of a, some version of a circular swoop, something in a sphere of some kind. God, if I see another one of those, I mean, I'm just gonna implode, right?

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I think they're doing it with buildings too. When I was driving up on Applegrove in North Canton there, there's a building going up and I don't know which fast food place it is, but I literally think it could be one of about 12 because they're all starting to look the same. It looks like a Starbucks drive-thru, but it could also look like a Wendy's drive-thru and it could also look like a McDonald's drive-thru. I mean, you remember McDonald's when their arches went clear to the ground and the shape of the building. You just knew it was a McDonald's. Even our own client member Aultman with their, way they did their overhangs, they had the A in it, right? And they still have that so that their building is branded. But all the fast food places seem to be going into these gray box- just, you know, there's a variation in terms of some of the roof line, but they slapped this junk manufactured stone on it. It goes up in about three months, if maybe not faster. And so there's nothing in the whole experience that says "we are separating ourselves from the competition". We're not even separating ourselves from any other distinct kind of industry. And we know with positioning, the whole point is to make your brand and your company and your people and your buildings and your whatever other asset you have stand apart. Wouldn't you agree that what we're seeing today is going against the principles of positioning for by and large?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think the best testament to homogenization is my husband did a lot of business in China. And occasionally, he would bring the Chinese executives to random manufacturing plants here to the States. So they would be traveling from New York to Ohio to Mississippi, right, to California. And you know what their comment was? All these towns look exactly alike. Because all of the fast food, all the food franchises, they could not get over the homogenization. So sometimes it takes new eyes to see. Like they didn't know, they actually said they didn't know at some point where they were, like if they were in Ohio or Mississippi. Now when you think of those as extremely different areas and cultures, but by the visual, the highway and what's off the highway, you can imagine that. You know, look, it cracks me up that we're in this capitalistic free market society. You go to the airport, people get off a crowded plane. Tell me how many suitcases do you see that are not black?

Mark Vandegrift
Not many.

Lorraine Kessler
Right, so people have to tie s*** around their handles so they know it's theirs. I'm like, we could have choice unlimited, but we normalize. We normalize. And so there's this urge to copy. It's much more powerful than we think it is. And it's very dangerous in marketing.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, in tech markets right now are really going that way. Of all the places that I think of being kind of inventive and innovative right now, you have Microsoft, Spotify and Pinterest all going to this like basic bold font. And then one that needed a refresh was eBay, but they also use the same bold font. So I think it's very interesting and contrasty to this individualized identity politics climate that America has today versus the homogenization. So I don't know, what are your thoughts on that?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think here's one of the things, like go through any creative department, what will you see? You'll see books of the new trends and logos and designs and whatever. And then guess what you're gonna see come out of that is iterations of those things. Because everybody wants to be on style. They don't wanna create new style, right? So there's a safety in that. There's a safety in like, well, this is where everybody is. So I'm gonna be there, cause that's good taste. But there's not safety in inventing new taste and breaking out. And we see it in design and colors. I mean, there's color palettes, right? I mean, and what, Joanna Gaines, God bless her, did- Magnolia for the housing market. I mean, I have seen, I hope I see the last of every white and black house. It's going to be built, right? Right. You're going to look back. I'm telling you right now, people, you're going to look back and say that was 2020, or 2015 to 2020, right? Just like in the 80s and 90s, all the houses had like a brick facade with an oval window at the top. That was the 80s and 90s. It just, it becomes stuck in time rather than commonplace.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, we're gonna see shiplap in our nightmares.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I am on a rampage to bring color back into my house, you know. I have seen every single house with white woodwork and gray walls. And it's like, come on, people, there's a world of color out here. We can have fun. Can have fun.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I have seen some arguments in favor of stylistic trends, which I think are justified, but I think we can pull them off without getting homogenization. So the first is that the fonts that these brands are converting to are very easy to read over computers and phones and anywhere that text gets shrunken down. So some of the big swoopy letters of some brands might not be very legible in cases like that. And the other point I found, and part of that's accessibility. So we have a new cry for making things accessible for people, which I'm all about, right? But I think there's a way to do that without making everything look the same. And then the other point that I found was as brands become more global, there's a need for brands and logos and type to be able to be read or at least recognized by people of different languages. So they may not do the translation, but they want something that's short and easy to read and the typography is not too crazy. I don't know. Those are the only two things that I could see as far as setting trends toward what we're seeing with homogenization. But I think at the same time, we could probably get to a point where you can still differentiate at that level.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I mean, there's always an opportunity to differentiate. And I think that's the harder challenge because you use the word lazy, right? This is where you can't be lazy and you really have to exhaust many possibilities. And I think particularly when you're in the creative side of things, why not? Go from, you know, we used to like to do this and I advise clients to insist on this. I want to see particularly, let's say we're doing a logo revision. I want to see your logo where it is. And then I want to see the extreme to where it can go on one end and others that are closer. see an evolution from this is pretty close, this is pretty close, this is pretty close. And then you get further and further out and show the range. Now, the place that's dangerous is obviously we know this on packaged goods because the logo is such an identifier if it's a well-known brand, right? If it's a well-known brand, you only want to take an evolutionary approach because you want people to still recognize Tide is Tide, Dove is Dove, know, Smith's milk is Smith's milk. You don't want to get so far afield that they think it's under new management, something's happened. This isn't the product I like. But for a lot of our clients, particularly B-2-B, they have really bad logos to begin with. Or it's just not, aesthetics are a language. So the aesthetics aren't there for a lot of either startups or small companies or business-to-business. I think that's an opportunity where you can kind of stretch that and show someone a spectrum. And be brave. Just go somewhere wild and see what happens because there might be one piece of that that ends up being genius and make all the difference on a piece that is more familiar to the audience or the owner.

Mark Vandegrift
So Lorraine, get out your crystal ball and get out your Joanna Gaines mindset here. And we have a bunch of brands right now that are being homogenized. Okay, where does this end? Do we see that even though these brands are successful today, they're not tomorrow, or do we just see a new style come out in the future and they all move that way together? Or do we actually get back to differentiation? What do you think?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think we're gonna continue to see what we see because we've seen it through the history of advertising. If you go back and study advertising from 1910, 1920, 30, you'll see that the styles were all within a range of what was known in that time for familiarity, for the type of font, a lot of cursive fonts because people wrote in cursive and things like that. So I think we're gonna continue to see a lot of sameness. The breakthrough brands will always be the breakthrough brands and kudos to them. And I hope that particularly if you're a new startup and your new brand, this is the time to really fight for being differential in your logo, in your identity. These are the identifiers of the brand. They're not the sum total of the brand. Rarely does a logo convey a meaning. It can convey a feeling like trust or happiness or joy or fluidity, but it rarely conveys a true meaning. I guess if I were- my advice would be, if you're business to business and if you have more range, if you're a business-to-business, a startup, or an unfamiliar brand, you have much more range to kind of really be bold and step into a place that you wouldn't think you would normally go.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I for one will be very happy when all these ads that have people dancing in the stores or in the streets singing very bad songs go away. Because there are drug commercials. I complained about Target not long ago. Home Goods has it. You name it, all these different brands right now. have people break out into the street and they're dancing and they're singing and it's like, my goodness. I don't want to see another one of these ads because it's just.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, and then they give you all the, can hurt your liver, your heart. You could have diabetes. You could have paralysis, gastrointestinal disease--

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, but we're all dancing in the street. We're all happy.

Lorraine Kessler
You know, I'm old enough to remember, when you could, pharmaceuticals could not advertise direct to consumers. That changed around the 80s somewhere. And I think when you look at the amount of advertising spent by Big Pharma, I'm really anti Big Pharma. It's got America by the chokehold, particularly with this weight loss stuff. We don't even know the serious conditions that it's going to cause. I think, gosh, there should be regulation on how much noise they can make. It's out of control.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, every other ad is a drug ad. You got it.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, yeah. And they're all doing it. You're right. And this points to something else. Another, you said same people shifting jobs, of like turnstiles. We talked about just styles and kind of there's books and codes of what is the new color trend or logo trend or building trend. But there's another thing that really is- you got to break if you're an agency, you got to break it with your client. Every industry has an orthodoxy where they think that, like, hospital advertising should all sound and look the same. How many smiling people on billboards can you see, right? And they have this idea that it has to look this way. And I think that in itself creates commoditization or homogenization. And I meant to send you and I forgot and I'm gonna have to try and find this. I think it's the Huxley [Hurley] Healthcare System that's in Flint and Ann Arbor, they have an all green billboard and it only has words on it with their- and they have different divisions. So they have like a children's hospital. And I remember this, it said "Most of our patients aren't old enough to read this billboard". And it was a Children's Hospital. I thought that was genius. I mean, it's something like that. I'm gonna have to find it, so maybe we can find it.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, it breaks from the norm, whether it's effective or not, at least it breaks from the norm and people are going to notice it.

Lorraine Kessler
And they had several billboards for different specialties that had as much a clever kind of thought that you wouldn't associate. I thought that is bold, that is simple, that is clean, and it's unique. And kudos to them.

Mark Vandegrift
Good. Well, let's stop there for today. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you haven't liked, subscribed, shared, subscribed, told your friends about the Brain Shorthand podcast and subscribed, please make sure to do that. And if I forget to mention it, please make sure to subscribe. And until next time, have an amazing day.