Brand X-cess

By DENISE GELLENE

Oct. 23, 1997 12 AM PT

In the early 1990s, as recession-plagued consumers gravitated to inexpensive store brands, conventional wisdom held that big brands were dead. Never again would consumers pay a premium for a product’s name.

How times have changed. Brands have recovered along with the economy, and now building, extending and promoting brand names has become the mantra of marketers--just check the assortment of Cheerios in the supermarket.

“Everyone has jumped on the brand bandwagon,” said John J. Sarson Jr., president of the Assn. of National Advertisers, which held its annual meeting this week in Laguna Niguel.

Businesses are furiously branding every product or service in sight--commodities (Foster Farms chicken, Evian water); intangibles (credit cards); ingredients (Intel computer chips, Olestra fat substitute); and concepts (Radio Shack has answers)--in a bid for consumer loyalty. As they do so, they are planting their logos everywhere--on theater tickets, postcards and parking stubs.

But amid the enthusiasm for brand-building, some experts are detecting signs that a backlash is developing against companies that hype their brands too aggressively.

Among the companies picking up the mantra is ABC, which is trying to brand its network through a series of deeply ironic, irreverent ads. Newly appointed network President Preston Padden, who joined Walt Disney-owned ABC from Fox, said the spots grew out of the determination that people watch TV not to relax but to recuperate from their workday.

A series of ABC commercials that aired during the national advertisers conference drew howls of laughter from the audience made up of ad executives and marketers from the nation’s largest consumer products firms. One shot shows a bug zapper, with the voice-over: “TV. What would you watch without it?”

Despite the reaction to the ads, TV executives and some advertising experts have questioned ABC’s strategy, arguing that with few exceptions--such as PBS and perhaps ESPN--consumers are loyal to shows, not networks.

Padden believes the ads, created by TBWA Chiat/Day, are working for ABC, though the network continues to rank third in viewership this season, behind NBC and CBS. Padden cited research that shows that 50% of viewers said ABC has new programs they look forward to--though evidently they aren’t yet tuning in.

The formula for a successful brand is elusive. Charlotte Beers, chairman and chief executive of New York-based advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, noted that despite the emphasis on developing them, brands and new products are “still failing and declining.”

Value is an important element. Marketers were reminded of this the hard way in 1993, when Philip Morris was forced to slash prices of Marlboro cigarettes by 40 cents a pack to protect its market share from encroachment by cheaper private-label brands.

But marketers say there is more to a successful brand.

“Sometimes we forget what brands are about,” Beers said. “Price, features and attributes are not sufficient.” What transforms a product into a meaningful brand is an emotional connection with the consumer, she said.

“If you don’t have that relationship,” Beers said, “you have a product, not a brand.”

Such relationships arise from experience or memories, and they can be nurtured through advertising, experts said.

“A consistent brand message is critical,” said Irvine O. Hockaday Jr., chief executive of Hallmark, which has mastered the use of sentiment to sell greeting cards. The company has used the same slogan--”When you care enough to send the very best”--for nearly half a century.

Brands have paid dearly for inconsistency. Izod lost its cachet in the early 1980s when its once-coveted sports shirts became too widely available, said Dennis W. Rook, a marketing professor at USC. Similarly, Halston fell out of favor in the fashion world when the label turned up at J.C. Penney, Rook said.

At the same time, brands that have stumbled can use advertising to renew an emotional connection to consumers, thus working their way back up. Beers said American Express--an Ogilvy client--used advertising to tap into positive feelings consumers had about the long-established brand while the company worked on fixing its business. Apple Computer is attempting to accomplish a similar feat with its “crazy ones” campaign.

Consumers “will have a lot of patience with you if you have a relationship with them,” said Beers.

A challenge for marketers is bringing their relationship with consumers to the next level. Hallmark, for example, has taken steps over the last two years to turn “brand preference into brand insistence,” Hockaday said. As part of that effort, the company has been airing commercials that show people turning over their cards to look for the Hallmark logo. Beyond that, Hallmark has been slapping its logo on the backs of magazines, football tickets and theater tickets to remind consumers to look for the trademark on the reverse side of its greeting cards.

While Hockaday says Hallmark’s campaign has been a success, observers sense a backlash developing against some of the nation’s most successful--and aggressive--brand builders.

Comics are taking swipes at Disney’s ubiquitous mouse. And cartoonist Garry Trudeau has been taking aim at seemingly omnipresent Nike in his “Doonesbury” comic strip, satirizing an athletic director covered head-to-toe in swooshes.

Joining the chorus is an executive that helped build Nike. Scott Bedbury, former advertising chief at Nike and now marketing boss at Starbucks Coffee, said at the ANA conference that he isn’t sure Nike is sending “the right message to kids.” Bedbury blames his former employer for his 8-year-old son’s “absolute worship” of pro athletes and his strident demands for expensive athletic shoes.

“We’re starting to see a backlash to some of these branding efforts,” said Margaret C. Campbell, assistant professor of marketing at UCLA. “When the profit motive of a firm becomes so apparent, and the consumer infers that all the firm wants to do is make money, the consumer starts resisting.”

The irony, said Campbell, is that companies in danger of “wearing out their welcome” with consumers have been the most skillful brand builders. How to avoid or fix the problem, she said, isn’t clear.

Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this report.

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Leading Brands

McDonald’s leads a list of the world’s top 100 brands compiled by Interbrand Group, a San Francisco-based consultant. A look at the list’s top 20:

Rank: Brand

1. McDonald’s

2. Coca-Cola

3. Disney

4. Kodak

5. Sony

6. Gillette

7. Mercedes-Benz