I'll Just Do The Hoovering While Listening To My Walkman

In Marketing lectures we were always told that having a range of products is better than having just one. When shopping, research suggests that customers like to have choice. It is part of the fun to choose which flavour, variety, shape or size of a particular product you would like to buy. There are brands that have sub-brands, that have sub-brands, that have a choice of colour, taste or style. If you look at the male deodorant shelf in any supermarket you will see what I mean.

Lynx are the king of spinning off variants, special editions and new smells. First there is deodorant or anti-perspirant. Then there is spray or roller-ball. A million different smells. Even after-shave varieties and "The Final Ever Edition" (which isn't really). The same applies to any UniLever brand really like Head & Shoulders. Or anything made by anyone really.

But the stand out exception to that rule has always been the iPhone. By having one name, one model and by not really advertising the fact you can get different memory capacities, this alone has made it stand out from the crowd. No "X26" version, no different names for each model (a quick glance at the HTC range shows how many different names can be very confusing, the list is endless!), no research needed. It's a nice easy choice, all the adverts have the same name with a product that looks very similar. Yet, now there are 3 models. The older 3GS, the old 4 and the new-ish 4S. There will be four later in the year (around August time seems to be a good guess) with the introduction of the iPhone5. Surely then, by offering a range of goods, Apple are slipping away from what made it stand out so much

Mini Paceman - A 4x4/Coupe. Erm, no?

Another example is the Kindle. By creating one product with one name, it becomes a buzz word. Very simple, very effective. Again though, there are up to 3 Kindles now available. An even better example is Mini. Now there is not just the Cooper or quicker Cooper S. First there was the cheaper One, followed by the First. Then diesel and recently Cooper S quick diesel. Or a 5-door estate come hatchback thingy entitled Clubman, the Convertible, the Roadster (two types of soft-top Mini, really?) the Coupe and of course, the 4x4 Countryman. It will get even worse of the next few years with a Paceman 4x4 Coupe and even a people carrier Mini! By filling every conceivable niche (some that I'm sure that are completely made up) there is also the worry of stretching the brand too far and ruining the allure in the first place.

However, the core appeal of having something with a singular name is still manages to be effective to both Kindles and iPhone's alike. This is nothing new of course. The once proud king of electronics, Sony, knocked every other brand into a cocked hat with the Walkman. Likewise Hover with the, erm Hoover.

But, the Walkman and the Hoover highlight the downside of such an approach. By trying to carve out a brand that epitomises the present, you stand at great risk of not being cool any more. It is very "in" to say you downloaded an app to your iPhone, played a game on your iPad, read a book on your Kindle, all on the way to buy a Jack Wills jumper. But fashion moves on, brands fade and new things become the latest must haves (Jack Wills, becoming a little chavvy already, just saying). There is a risk that they simply become something to remember a by gone era by.

Of course, I'm not saying that these brands and products are doomed and the world is going to end. Many brands pull through by re-inventing themselves. As much as I don't put the latest Coldplay album down as a classic, the band have reinvented themselves yet again to remain current and still oh-so popular. If anyone has the marketing chutzpah to pull it off, Apple does.

What's In A Brand?

My camera. I love it.

I own a Sony DLST camera. It's chief rivals would be cameras made by Canon or Nikon. My camera has won many "Camera of the Year" awards, has a much higher specification than rival models and yet it cost less. In every possible measurable yardstick, it is a clear winner. Yet most people will not even consider buying one. Sony cameras can't shake off the reputation of being a TV company, as opposed to a photography company. This is despite buying out Minolta's camera division entirely (you know, they launched the worlds first digital SLR camera...)

At a new years party I was taking some pictures when a friend of mine who does a photography course and uses a Nikon openly mocked my camera because it was a Sony. He reckoned it wasn't a proper camera. He is wrong of course, but at a house party I wasn't about to go into great lengths explaining how he was so out of touch. But my point is now, more than ever before, brand image is at the top of buyers wishlist's. This applies to seemingly everything.

BMW 3-Series Outsells Every Other Saloon On The Market

Take cars for example and BMW. Once a very premium brand in such a way where only the wealthy could afford one and thus they were quite exclusive. Yet for the past 5 years the BMW 3-Series has comprehensively outsold the humble Ford Mondeo. The Ford is comparable in many ways, apart from brand image, yet it is considerably cheaper. Far, far cheaper and comes with more goodies. So, BMW can charge a higher price and get the added benefits of economies of scale through being the major volume producer in the market. Think about that for a second.

You can charge a lot more for a Rolls Royce because of it's prestige and exclusivity. Yet, BMW (and Audi for that matter) can charge more for the sake of increasing profit margins. It hinges on their expensive marketing campaigns which all enhance the brand. So while "volume" makers like Peugeot and Renault have to be cheap, they are also losing sales at a vast rate of knots. For the French it's a worrying situation, meanwhile it is win win for the Germans.

The world's best-selling phone. Not that you know it.

In many respects this could apply to the iPhone. There are a myriad of Android devices that do what an iPhone 4 can do, and more. For less money too, or similarly priced but with more spec. In March will come a raft of quad-core SmartPhones that will provide a significant amount more oomph than the iPhone 4S. Worldwide the Samsung Galaxy S2 is the best selling phone by quite a margin. Not in the UK it isn't. Us brand-concious Brits plump for Apple's design masterpiece over more competitive options more often than not. Again, marketing is key. Why buy the brilliant Windows powered Nokia Lumia when Nokia is regarded as a cheap phone you once had in the early 00's that you played Snake on? Hey, right next to it is the eponymous iPhone, wow! It costs more, does less, but it looks good and has an Apple logo on the rear (which was stolen form The Beatles). 

Don't get me wrong, I admire Apple's position. Make more, for less and then charge more. They somehow have this halo effect, whereby if any other company had announced £13bn profit they would have been lynched as profiteering bastards.

The over riding point is brand is literally everything. I'm sure if BMW produced a medium-sized 4x4 made for 50p in the states that was sub-par, even it would sell like hot cakes because of image and image alone. Oh, they already do, it's called an X3. Yet, you can go too far. Lest us not forgot how Mercedes cannibalised it's own image with some shocking reliability in the late 90's, a mess they still haven't quite recovered from yet. Audi themselves took a good 15 years to recover from cars with faulty gearboxes in the US.

Perception is key and even if you make the greatest product known to man, it is utterly meaningless if you don't have an image that is seen as prestigious. My Sony camera is a prime example. Canon spend vast amounts of money not only advertising it's products, but paying for sales assistants training to embed the brand of Canon into their psyche. Despite being in a second recession, premium brands are prospering, while the middle ground is shrinking fast. Either you are a budget product or an expensive one, but no one wants to be stuck in the middle. While you could research your next car, phone or camera and know the ins and out of the market, this is also seen as geeky. Perhaps you buy an iPhone, not because it's the best, but because it is the default choice.

As a friend at an art gallery told me today after I said I know nothing about the subject matter: "You don't have to know about it to like it." How very true.

Branding. Turns out it's like a Peter Brook painting.