Brand Shorthand’s 100th Episode

We’ve reached a milestone! 100 episodes — all about positioning. Spend 30ish with Mark and Lorraine as they remind us of the value of positioning, the meaning behind the name Brand Shorthand, some golf talk at The Masters and why they have such a “master” brand, and some recent good and bad moves of brands through the filter of timeless positioning principles.

Transcript

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Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to the latest episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast and today is a very special episode. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me is the marathon marketer Lorraine Kessler. 

Lorraine Kessler 
Oh my gosh. 

Mark Vandegrift
Lorraine, speaking of marathons, today we are celebrating our 100th episode. Can you believe we made it this far?

Lorraine Kessler
I cannot believe it. I feel like I'm 100, but I just can't believe we made it this far. And to the 10 people who really like us and subscribe, thank you.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yes, we appreciate it. Thank you so much. Well, I am donning my special apparel. I was at the Masters yesterday. And so I had to put on my special green Masters apparel with the logo.

Lorraine Kessler 
That's amazing.

Mark Vandegrift 
As you said, it's not very big.

Lorraine Kessler 
It's so light. It's so small.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, it is very small. 

Lorraine Kessler
It looks like from here, it looks like a goldfish with a flag on it.

Mark Vandegrift
Here, I'll zoom in.

Lorraine Kessler
Oh, okay. That's the United States.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, you know, that's an interesting one. You know you talk about great brands and the masters surely has captured that. Did you know that on the course there is literally zero branding other than this little guy here and the masters and that they do not allow any logos on anything. I went to their concessions and their concessions have cola, lemon, lime, sweet tea, water, beer. There's nowhere is there a logo. There's nothing anywhere on the course that allows any advertising. And that, I think, is a brand unto itself to say we're exclusive. We're the master.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, that's, I, first of all, I'll do my best Johnny Carson. I did not know that. Don't, my husband should come up because he can do impersonations. No, I did not know that. That's, wow, kind of, it's anti-branding that is their brand. Right?

Mark Vandegrift 
Yes, it is. It was so stark that it jumps out at you. Like you can't not not see it. We're so used to seeing logos everywhere and expecting tents to be set up from all their different sponsors. Nothing, nada.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, that's an interesting brand discussion because that is a brand, right? It's a brand attitude. It's a brand vibe. It's certainly something a leader, and they are the leading golf event, right, can do by acting the leader. How many times have we told leaders to do that, behave or act like the leader? And usually that means that you don't draw too much attention to yourself, you're not ostentatious, you know, unlike our current political situation aside, but there's a restraint to that. It's really kind of interesting. I did not know that. Now I did hear on the radio the other day, which I also didn't know, that like the concessions are extremely like depression places like you can get a hot dog for a dollar fifty, a coke for like a dollar. Is that, well they don't call it coke but a cola is that...

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. No, the cola. Yep. And we had their infamous, if you will, pimento cheese sandwich. You have to have one, even if you don't like pimento cheese, you just got to do the experience. You weren't allowed any phones, cameras, nothing electronic on the course. They let you take, you go through this long line to go to a picture place. They take your picture, give you a card like Disney. You scan the QR code and you get your one picture that shows you were at the masters. The other thing is, unless you're buying it from a used apparel site or something, you cannot actually order any apparel off site. I can't go online and buy a masters this or masters that.

Lorraine Kessler 
So there's not a master's like website or where

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, there is, but you can't buy anything from it. You can see what they have in the store, but you have to go on site to the store to buy the apparel.

Lorraine Kessler 
Like in Atlanta?

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, in Augusta, Georgia.

Lorraine Kessler
In Augusta, Georgia rather, wow. Wow. That's. Well.

Mark Vandegrift 
So interesting marketing when you're exclusive like that.

Lorraine Kessler
What does that, you know, when you have a value like that, I remember hearing one of our great speakers years ago, I think it was Williams who wrote Positioning for Professionals. I think it's either, Tim Williams? Yeah, I think it's Tim Williams. And he said a value should cost you something. If you really have a value, then it's not authentic unless it costs you something. Like you give up certain clients or customers. So, what are they giving up with this anti-branding brand approach?

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, some estimates say $250 million in potential on course advertising every year. Every year.

Lorraine Kessler 
Every year. Wow.

Mark Vandegrift
Yes. $250 million.

Lorraine Kessler
That's, that is, well, it cost them something, but they're integrity.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yes. I can't tell you the apparel is not cheap. We did get a pimento cheese sandwich for $1.50. My daughter got a chicken salad sandwich for $3. We got a cookie for 50 cents. I mean, it is very cheap. The food is cheap. I'm very impressed with the people moving skills, whether you go into the store or in concessions. Man, you are moving constantly. It's an impressive, it almost feels like they hired Disney to come in and figure out crowd control because 40,000 people a day go on that course. And we never felt like we were standing in line waiting on anything. Even the picture line, what they do is they wind you clear out, which was kind of funny because they had no wait when we went to get our picture, but you walked what it felt like was a mile to get up there, get your picture taken, and then you exit, but you're moving the whole time, so you never feel like you're waiting.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, yeah. Wow

Mark Vandegrift
So yeah, it was all incredible. It was an amazing, amazing experience. So.

Lorraine Kessler 
Cool. I know my brother and my father went there once, but my brother lived in Atlanta for a good amount of years.

Mark Vandegrift 
Good. Yeah, you can enter a lottery. I think they opened it up a couple months before and you can get tickets to it. So pretty neat experience. So anyhow.

Lorraine Kessler 
I think it's so hard. I mean, what if you show up with a hat that says Detroit on it, the D, they're going to kick you out?

Mark Vandegrift 
There were a lot of logos on the course. I just think they exclude you from ever being on camera because it does say on their website, no logo to peril, no this, no that. So my daughter called me up who was the one that got the tickets because she works for a company that entertains financial clients. And she said, dad, you can't wear this, you can't wear this, you can't wear any of your logo to peril. I said, great, I won't. So I just had a nice golf shirt on that my wife picked out for me and it was great. We had a good time.

Lorraine Kessler 
You still have your wife pick out your clothes for you Mark?

Mark Vandegrift 
No, I mean, you got me a new shirt for this. This was like, yeah, this is a birthday present. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
okay. Okay. Yeah, I think she does. She's sweet, by the way. She has good taste.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, I hope so. I think so, but I'm biased. So we're celebrating our 100th. And I just thought I'd tell people because, who knows when we've picked up subscribers, but a lot of people go, why the Brand Shorthand podcast? Like, where'd you get Brand Shorthand? And, you know, that popped in my brain, I don't know, probably seven, eight, 10 years ago before we ever started the podcast. Just understanding that we are trying to get an idea in the mind through positioning that is a shorthand to a brand. And that's where it came up. Even though most young people I don't think know what shorthand is, I think they know that a shorthand is a brief connection to something.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever, when you started, did you ever have someone take shorthand while you spoke? Because I did.

Mark Vandegrift 
In in seventh grade we had to take as part of our typing class We had like a one week period where we had to learn some of the shorthand things now obviously never used it because the typewriter quickly turned into computer classes by the time I was in high school, so that's about that's about the amount of shorthand I ever learned. Yeah. Anyhow, Brand Shorthand connecting to positioning. So give us a little sense why we focus on positioning, Lorraine.

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, if you don't have a difference that's meaningful and relevant to your target audience, and I always say relevance has to come first, you have to have an important idea that differentiates you from the competition, then the consumers, the customers, whether they be business to business or consumer, have no clear reason why to choose you other than price. And if that's the way they're going to make their choice based on price, then that's going to compress your value, your margin, your profit. And that is not the point of branding. The point of branding is to increase your margin and increase your profit by making you somewhat remarkable in some way that's unique and important to the audience. We also know from empirical research done, the study, the long and the short of it. I never remember who wrote that. There's two people. Well, they've been studying this for many years. But empirically, we know that the long term, building a brand value allowed an idea that is a meaningful difference, floats all ships that it makes your short term transactional marketing, which is right now I'm teaching all digital on the college level, right? It's so transactional and yeah, you can measure everything and there's all these analytics and you can numb yourself with how much you can think you're in control. But if you don't have a brand value, it's like a groundhog day every day. You've got to just go back and work these ads and do A-B testing and change this and change that and fuss with that and fuss with your audience and your segmentation and in the Google platforms or in the trade desk. And at the end of the day, it's exhausting. But if you have, if you invest in the long term, in the brand building, the study proves it improves the short term, the trend, what we might call transaction. Whereas, the reverse doesn't work. You could be transactional all day long, selling all day long. It does not build a brand, so you never get that lift. You know, to me, it would be like running an airplane on the ground 24-7 with its big wings, you know. It's not a very good car, and it needs some lift, and the brand gives your product or whatever you're selling lift. What is a brand? Is it the logo? Is it the tagline? Is it the colors? We often will talk about that with clients. These are all important, but they're identifiers of the brand. Probably the closest to the strategic idea of positioning is the tagline, if it's a good tagline and it's delivering on the position and not just saying something that, you know, is kind of a warm fuzzy, but it has a specificity to what makes you unique and different. So that comes from the strategy, the position. And that's really what a brand ends up being, is my gut impression of what makes you unique in my mind and important.

Mark Vandegrift 
And then once you develop a brand, you have a shorthand to the mind when someone's making a considered purchase. So I'm always asked.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, yeah, well, even the best positions should be simple. And I thought that was one thing you were going to say when you were said the short, the Brand Shorthand. You can't make a list of things. It's one idea. And it should be so simple, like always low price, reliable, speed, slow. I mean, it can be any of these attributes that are like one word. If you can get it to one word, that's unbelievably ideal. Sometimes you can't. Overnight delivery, okay? Two words. But it's a simple idea. It doesn't, you're not trying to write a treatise or a thesis. We do that.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yep. And then if we can get generic, we're even doing better. Cause if we can say ketchup like Heinz, you think ketchup. They also own slow, which you brought up earlier or thick, but, that's really the end goal is to be the brand equivalent.

Lorraine Kessler 
It is. And you know, I was thinking of two companies that I know we worked on and we took a look at the category which they were, I wouldn't say they were late to, but they were certainly not the originator of the market. So how do you position against a leading brand that is known for something? And what we found, and I thought this was a great idea, was high performance. The other products in that market didn't deliver performance benefits to the degree that our clients could. We had two mutually exclusive clients in two different categories. And so to come into a market where you're high performance because you meet certain standards that are required for the application, and this is really important in application markets, for example, then you can charge more. You're already a premium because people think I want those performance to the extent they're important and in those two industries they were very important. I'll pay more for that. And so I think that, you know, that simple idea, high performance, but you have to look at it against everything else is just ordinary. So there's the repositioning. You know, do you want ordinary XYZ or do you want the high performance? What are you trying to do? Sometimes some people might want the ordinary. They don't really care that much about their customers or whatever the performance benefits are, but the target market, the distinctive customer who cares about that is going to be your customer.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, and I know the one category you're thinking of, and it's interesting because if you watch the development of that category, you had an initial invention, right? That became a product to the consumer and it grew like crazy, but everyone decided to copy one another and the price became the thing. And so what you had was a slew of cheap products and everyone competing on price all the time. And the one that really owned the market and became the generic in the category, that was the only thing that would have been differentiating in that category. So everything was cheap, low price, and that's what the category was competing on. So there's this huge vacuum, like you said, with margin for someone to come in and go, you know what, we're going to rethink this and develop it and manufacture it a different way.

Lorraine Kessler 
For every application, for every, yep, and that's the key. They did something, if they didn't do this with the product to begin with, so they had great instincts, all we did was kind of say, why aren't you claiming it this way? They designed the product for every application based on the different performance benefits that you needed in different applications. For a sun, you needed wicking of moisture. In another, you needed durability. In another, you needed safety like soft clay. So they didn't sell one product and say it fits all applications. They specifically designed products for what made the product the best or ideal for each type of use. And that was genius because that gave us the ability to say, high performance, whatever the performance is you need. And I think that's the genius. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well Lorraine, I'm always asked how we claim America's #1 Positioning ad agency. And you want to share the story of Jack Trout and how he engaged with us and what he said that triggered our decision to secure that claim?

Lorraine Kessler 
Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, Jack was a good friend of Dick and a good friend of the agency. And then I had had relationships with Jack prior to this. And so there was a relationship. 

Mark Vandegrift 
Professional relationship.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yes, yes, yes. I wasn't clear. Professional relationship. And so when we met with Jack, and we talked about a couple different things, how we wanted to own this idea, and we had shaped the agency around owning it. And at that time, I think, I had just created the Appreciative Discovery, because I figured as a service, you needed tangibility, and the Appreciative Discovery is that entry process where we really force clients to kind of think about what is their difference that they can own and claim. And went through that with him when he was in our offices. He was like, that's genius. That's genius. And he goes, no one else is doing this. And so we kind of floated the idea. And he thought, why not? Like, that's what you're doing. And I don't know anybody else. So you have to know Jack because he just kind of talks. 

Mark Vandegrift 
He was East Coast. So everyone knows.

Lorraine Kessler 
He's very East Coast, which of course I love, and talked in a very clip a kind of a clip and so we did it and it reminded me when we did our last podcast about the crime true crime podcast, Surviving The Survivor where he boldly just says best guest best community if he says it all the time and now he says you know he always says that and he says we're a global phenomena okay he had some people in the chat like, how do you claim this? But guess what? He is that. And he is global because people are from all over the world chatting. And why not? So go for it. You know what? You're never going to get a point. You have to, when you choose a position, you want to choose something that's aspirational too. We weren't completely as an agency aligned around positioning in terms of every associate whatever but we set the bar we set the star if you will the North Star and said this is what we're going to be and we're to be America's best at it and so it's as much an aspirational rally cry internally as it is an external this is who we are statement and it it makes the culture with the proper leadership begin to say well how do we do that what do we need to do, what do we need to do tomorrow that we're not doing today, or do different that we're not doing, or stop doing. This is one of the biggest things I think clients have to ask themselves. What should we stop doing? Not just what should we do more of and do that we're not doing, but what should we stop doing that's distracting us? So all that happened, and it was with Jack Trout in person, we went to Baker's Steakhouse. It's first time and the only time I've ever been there. And was a delightful evening. And then on top of it, and I know I'm telling this little story, but it's really an important story. There was a little book that Dick gave the agency called Obvious Addams. Really little. I think I have it somewhere, if I can find it. It's really small. Anyway, great book. And I think it was written in the 20s. And so when I

Mark Vandegrift 
1920s.

Lorraine Kessler 
1920s. Yeah, that's right. So I actually realized I'm in the 21st century. Like, oh my God. So Dick handed the book out. I read the book, of course, and it so resonated with so much that Jack Trout and Al Reis had written that I actually thought his book Simplicity, like, was based on a lot of these principles, right? So I went into Dick and I said, I think Jack Trout knows this book really well. so when Jack came in, Dick handed him the book in kind of in a cute way. He was like, I think you've got a lot of ideas from this. And Jack's like, I never heard of this book. I never read this book. I didn't know anything about this book. It's this big. And that's how the book, his book, In Search of the Obvious came about, dedicated to Dick Maggiore. It's because we handed him something he had never seen and he loved it and then ripped off of it for that book.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yep. Great story. Well, you know, a lot of people go, oh, that came, he wrote about it first in 1969 and he released the book, his first book in 1981. So how does it apply today? This is our fourth year doing this podcast and you and I like to espouse that we believe there has to be growth in strategy, right? You're always adapting to what's going on. So while we still claim positioning is our position and it represents the best way to market, what do you see as the most significant change either in the past four years since we started the podcast or in your lifetime of marketing? Is there anything that shakes your confidence about this best strategic approach being positioning?

Lorraine Kessler
No, absolutely not. In fact, without a doubt, it is more needed than ever. And Jack Trout actually made this point in a private conversation that we had with Dick and I. And you have to ask your two questions. First, is there less competition today than in the past?

Mark Vandegrift
Nope.

Lorraine Kessler 
From the very get-go, positioning was a strategy to deal with competition. That's what it is. Fundamentally, it was to deal with competition based on the premise that there are no virgin markets. So that's number one. And so now we're in an era of hyper, hyper competition. So it's more needed than ever. And the second thing I would say is we're also in an age of rapid transformation technologically where new categories are created in a speed that is mind-numbing. New categories like Uber, Self-driving cars, EV cars. I mean, just go through the categories. Meals delivered to the home that are meal prep. The speed at which new categories are being created or subcategories is just enormous and so what happens when that happens is that creates you have to work against the main category that you spun off of so that's competition and so guess what guess why these types of things work because EV works because there's gas engines that's competition so the position of being the newest greatest thing on the planet saves petroleum becomes the mojo. So I just think those two factors make it more, and I always tell my college students when I'm teaching or even when I used to teach at the agency to clients or staff, I'd say don't latch on to the examples in the 1981 book or even the revised books. They're just examples and they demonstrate the point. Instead, follow the principle. It's the principle that's being taught about positioning and how to do it and the ways you can do it that's really more important. Just like the principles of music or the principles of art, the art may change, the music changes, but there's still fundamental principles.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yep. Very good. Yeah. Even our tools that you've so diligently created and masterfully created. We've had to update those over the years. It's amazing to me when I say, you know, give me the brand that stands for kills germs and as a mouthwash. They don't know that they don't know. They don't know overnight delivery. They don't know that FedEx stood for that. They don't know that Volvo used to stand for safe cars. So there's so many brands that have said, you know what, we're going to go a different route. You have literally anybody 40 and under, they don't know these.

Lorraine Kessler 
No, they don't. They don't.

Mark Vandegrift 
And you've lost two and a half, three generations of people that it's still a great position. If you owned it, I look at safe cars. Who owns that now?

Lorraine Kessler 
Probably Subaru.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep, every kid that I, when I'm in a class teaching, I say safe cars, they'll say Subaru. So Volvo lost that.

Lorraine Kessler 
The say Subaru. Yeah, you can't. Does it mean that the idea wasn't the right idea and it wasn't the right position? No. What it shows is when you fail to execute on your idea, people's minds move on. The container is limited and fleeted. So you've got to keep rebooting it, rebooting. And the problem we do have is that you hire new CMOs, new marketing people and they all want to create and they all for their own purposes for their own ego they want to do their own thing and so they move away from the position and often to the harm of that company and so guess what the the audience moves on too, but it doesn't mean that the principal and even that idea doesn't have enormous value so someone else can grab it, and you know one of the brands I think is doing a really good job with an old position and is doing all the right things. They have a new CEO and so applause to them is Burger King.

Mark Vandegrift 
They went back to have it your way

Lorraine Kessler
And they made it more fun. They actually delivered on the King by you rule and that's a way of saying have it your way and they're doing kind of what Domino's did a few years ago. They're improving the consistency of their whopper. I always thought the whopper was the best fast food burger, but it depended when you got it where you got it because it was the they didn't have the consistency that McDonald's had, you could get on McDonald's from you know Augusta, Georgia to Collinswood, New Jersey and it's gonna taste the same where Burger King it was anybody's guess right so they're actually working the CEOs and in the end actually working on making sure that hamburger is the way it's supposed to be all the time. So genius. And I think they're going to, well, I know they've seen rewards with this campaign much more so than the weird freaky king and Crispin Porter stuff. Yeah. So I would say applause to that brand.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, some good and some bad that proves positioning is still relevant today. And let's wrap up today's episode, our 100th Lorraine, we made it. Congratulations.

Lorraine Kessler 
Yeah, yeah. I thought maybe you'd have a cake and we'd have to blow it out. With a fireman.

Mark Vandegrift 
No, I just got back from Augusta. I didn't have time to bake one.

Lorraine Kessler 
Because we could have had a fireman there, you know, someone.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, thank you to our listeners. Thank you to you Lorraine for sticking in there for a hundred episodes. We'll be back for more. So just be sure to like, subscribe and share with a friend and please subscribe. That helps us out greatly. And until next time, have an amazing day.