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Issue SEVEN

Talking the talkHow brands capture consumers’ hearts through language and storytelling

How can brands offer a little exclusivityto their customers?•Tell your product story – what is rare or special?•Think about offering a limited edition range•Emphasize your heritage credentials•Form associations with premium partners•Offer bespoke products and services

Bord Bia offers a fullrange of bespoke brandmarketing servicesincluding Brand Creation,Brand Audit, StrategicBrand Design, PublicRelations andeMarketing. Theseservices are undertakenby our specialistmarketing partners inconjunction with theclient company and areco-funded by Bord Bia.

If your brand was a person, how would it talk to people? One part of the brand experience that has often been overlooked isthe words that the brand uses. But increasingly, brands use copywritersfor their product descriptions and ingredients lists as well as for theiradvertising. Using words in a different way to your competitors is a greatway of giving a brand a bit of oomph and personality.Innocent Drinks Company have prided themselves on being a smallcompany who really love their product. They are always using innovativebrand communication and combine product information with fun &engaging stories. They have even started their own blog because they“need somewhere to post our pictures and tell our stories”.

Flocks knitwear stories, The NetherlandsKnitwear brand Flocks gives customers details about theindividual animals that provided the wool for their sweatersand mittens. Every item in the collection can be traced backto its source. Since one sheep supplies exactly enough woolfor one sweater, each sweater is tagged with a specificanimal’s ID number, and comes with a certificate: theanimal's passport.

What’s your story?Against a backdrop of mass production, consumers can be charmed by a brandthat tells a unique story, explaining where it has come from and what it believes in.Brand stories should be strategic – developing and growing chapter by chapterover time. The storyteller has to capture his or her audience’s interest and respectthrough clarity, consistency and a good deal of character. But it is amazing howmany brands are sitting on interesting histories or unusual ways of doing thingswithout talking about them.

Stonyfield YogurtOne of the best ways to stand outthrough what you say is through theuse of humour. Stony Yoghurts in theUS give each of their flavour variantsa quirky personality. Their blueberryyogurt says: “True blueberry isactually a real queen, descendedfrom the prehistoric Caveberry Kings.

Her motto is “Organic fruit rules”’’.

Waitrose cheflanguageWaitrose in the UK haslivened up it’s store-cupboard basics bydescribing them in thevoice of a chefmaking a recipe.

Cully & Sully Soups and pies, IrelandThis Irish soup and pie company is led by Cully who ‘loves food’and Sully ‘who loves business’. Their soups include “‘Creamytomato & basil soup’ (recipe (borrowed) from Cully’s mum)”.Their goal is to make ‘good, honest and tasty meals’. They useclever and quirky language to talk about their ingredients andrecipes.www.cullyandsully.com/

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Issue SEVEN

A Simple Proposition: Muji, Global

Keeping it simpleBrand strategies for a complex world

Simple Communications: Innocent, UK

A Simple Brand Look and Feel: Booths, UK

A Simple Brand Environment: Grapedisrict, HollandMany consumers have trouble picking abottle of wine they'lllike in store. Some shops revel incomplicating matters by pointing outtannins, mouthfeel, and appellations.Grapedistrict 's founders decided tosimplify things. In their sleek, modern store,they categorizes wines by flavour,arranged in colour-coded zones.

As we have seen in Bord Bia’s Consumer Lifestyle Trends, consumers are looking for simple solutions in reaction toour time-pressured, information-overloaded world. For some people living simply is equated with living well –brands that appeal to this need can command a premium in the market. So what do brands need to do tooperate in this space?Simple brands strip away the clutter and streamline their offer. Their values are easy to grasp and theircommunication easy to understand. This all sounds simple in itself – but paring down detail can actually be harderthan piling it on. Minimising requires strong discipline and a bit of bravery – but your consumers will thank you for it!Here are four case studies of brands who have adopted strategies for simplicity…

The Japanese household goods brand, Muji,is determined to reduce all their products totheir basic essence. The Muji brand promiseis simple. They believe that there is‘elegance in plainness’ and ‘depth inminimalism’. Muji offers a powerfuldemonstration of how the principle ofsimplicity works in action.

The clean, fresh designs of the packagingand signage in Booths Supermarket stronglydifferentiate the experience of shopping intheir stores.They have adopted un-fussy type faces,primary colours and charmingly naïveillustrations. But the secret of their successlies in the amount of clear space onthe packs.

Consumers complain time and again aboutcomplex messaging and product informationthat is hard to decipher. In contrast with this,Innocent use as few words as possible – incommunications and on pack.

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Issue SEVEN

Axe deodorant and Coke Zerocollaboration, ArgentinaLynx and Coke Zero are talking to the sameaudience – young men who l ike to impress. Thispromotional partnership has proved an effective wayof achieving product sampling of new launch CokeZero, by building an all iance between cool like-minded brands.

A perfect match?Is there power in numbers? And who is your ideal partner?

Marmite Guinness, UKMarmite and Guinness are both an acquired taste – asMarmite would say you ‘love them or hate them.’ Theyare also traditional brands not known for ringing thechanges. This limited edition combination challengedthat assumption. It was released on St Patrick's Day in2007 and has gained it’s own following of fans. Theinnovative combination of the two unusual flavours hassurprised delighted consumers.

How can we help?Bord Bia’s brand forum has published aseries of best practice guides to helpcompanies analyse and refresh theirbrand thinking. These include BrandAudit, Brand Creation, MarketingPlanning, Brand Finance, PR, Design andeMarketing.

What are the success factors for brand partnerships?•Partners should have complementary personalities – if your brands were people, would they befriends with each other?•Surprise people! Find unlikely combinations that work – think about cross-pollination with othercategories and target audiences•Remember the relationship should be symbiotic: the two brands mustadd value to each other in some way

Party of friends:Another option is to form a brand community – a like-minded collective of individual brands orproducts who believe in the same thing A charitable example is the (RED) campaign whichaligns global brand names such as GAP, Motorola and Apple in a philanthropic win-win: theypromote a (RED) product and money from the sale goes to the Global Fund, which fundsprograms to fight AIDS. Brands in the group reinforce each other’s style as well as their socialresponsibility. Nike+iPod have joined forces to offer consumers the Sport Kit, a wireless system thatallows Nike+ footwear to talk with your iPod nano to connect you to the ultimate personalrunning and workout experience. “We’re working with Nike to take music and sport to a newlevel,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

As the market place becomes more cluttered and consumers become more demanding, it isharder for brands to stand out and be counted in their respective categories. One way toprompt people to notice you for the first time, or to reassess relevance, is to team up with otherbrands in ways that engage and surprise people.

Double the success:One way to prompt people to notice you for the first time, or toreassess your relevance to them, is to team up with other brandsin ways that surprise people. It is possible to disrupt the categorynorms by importing some of the values of an entirely different one.For example, you could bring some of the attributes and personalityof a chocolate brand to an ice cream brand – as McDonald’s dowith their McFlurry ice creams. Or you could team up with anotherbrand in a surprising flavour combination – as Walkers did with theirBranston Pickle limited edition. Collaborations such as these help tokeep the brand propositions of both partners fresh.

Some winning combinations:

Ecotricity and Ben & Jerry’s join forcesto stop the world’s ice meltingFor every pound a customer spends through theirelectricity bil l, Ecotricity invests a pound in thebuilding of new clean energy sources - every year, onaverage that works out at £400 per year on behalf ofevery customer. Ben & Jerry are offering £15 worth ofice cream vouchers when customers sign up toEcotricity

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Issue SEVEN

Introducing…the Millennials

Creativity and customisation

What are Millennials looking for from brands ?

“…the trends that are propelling the young to the fore todaytranscend generational waves. They are accelerating, andhave reached a tipping point…young people have clout thatvirtually none of [the generations before] had in the past”

The Economist

Millennials – the generation born between 1980 and 1995, alsoknown as Gen-Y or echo-boomers – are, quite simply, the mostaffluent, globalised, technologically savvy and brand literategeneration in history. There are 1.17 billion 15 – 25 year oldsworldwide. To give an example of their extraordinary spendingpower, during 2007 European 15-24 year olds spent over $150billion on their mobile phones. As they grow up and theirinfluence increases, they are changing the world we live in.

Three key dimensions characterise Millennials:Firstly their creative entrepreneurial spirit. Millennials are typicallywell-educated and extremely independent. They have theconfidence to turn their ideas into innovative business plans - justlook at Mark Zuckerberg who was 19 when he createdFacebook, now a multi-million dollar company. Secondly, a thirstfor exploration, variety, adventure, and to embrace andcelebrate diversity. Millennials are always multi-tasking and tryingto make every activity, whether work or life, as meaningful aspossible. And, finally, ambition with a purpose – to change theworld for the better. Millennials have a strong social andenvironmental conscience and believe that actions not wordswill make a difference in the world.

Red Bull really speaks to this audience,bringing to life its adventurous brandvalues in soap-box races, ski jumps, speedtrials and stunts around the world

Integrity and purpose

Exploration and adventure

Brands that stand for something – whether it be social equalityor environmental harmony – andthat fight for their cause with attitude, resonate with Millennials.Anya Hindmarch’s statement bag for Sainsbury’s caused a stir inthe UK.

Brands that enable and support creativity – forexample allowing Millennials to customise theirproducts as with these Nike ID trainers – appeal toMillennials who have grown up choosing and creatingtheir own content.

Haagen Dazs Flavour Search, USGourmet magazine sponsored a flavour search for a newice-cream . The flavour, chosen by the public at samplestands in NYC and elsewhere, will debut as the ice-creamof the people.

Coca-Cola Music Studio, BrazilCoca-Cola Brazil has released a Coke Studio to bringdifferent musical communities together. Bracelets with verydifferent band names written on them were distributed indifferent parts of the city to encourage people watchingdifferent musical genres in the Coke Studio.

Simple Coffee, fair & simple, USSimple Coffee was started in 2006 by 3 conscientiousentrepreneurs in their early 20’s. They pay small growers inthird world countries better than the fair trade price andrely mostly on word of mouth for their marketing.

2008 DIARY

DATES

Brand Forum EventsTuesday 13th May - Brand Forum, DublinTuesday 16th September - Brand Forum,DublinTuesday 14th October - Brand Forum,MullingarThursday 27th November - Brand Forum,Dublin

Workshops18th & 19th September - eMarketing