‘Real cowboys don’t smoke menthol or ultra lights’

MUMBAI: “Great marketing is great storytelling,” wrote marketing guru Jack Trout in a recent column on www.Forbes.com. “All great religions are sold via storytelling, or parables, as they are often called in Christianity. This is a good strategy; people are inherently interested in stories, whether in films or novels or, even, brands.”

Nevertheless, that doesn’t seem to be happening. “Branding has been turned into a mountain by  hundreds of experts, by writing books, on their take on marketing. What is a simple, straight forward process has become very complicated,” he says.

To buttress his point, he gives the example of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.
“While everyone knows about its low prices, very few know the story behind them. To deliver these prices, the company uses some amazing technology and computer systems. It encourages suppliers to shrink package size to reduce shipping weight to save money; it buys local produce to avoid transportation costs. Sam’s Club (a chain of members-only stores owned by Wal-Mart) buys coffee directly from growers to avoid costly middlemen. The company works hard to save people’s money, but it’s a story never told.”

Jack Trout is president of Trout & Partners, a marketing firm with headquarters in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, USA. With Al Ries, he has authored such marketing classics like

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Marketing Warfare and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

Trout firmly believes that the essence of the marketing function is finding that differentiating idea and building a programme that drives it into the mind.

The idea is the nail. “The programme is the hammer that drives it into the minds of your customers and prospects,” he says.

But what seems to be happening the world over is completely different. Companies are launching more and more new products, a phenomenon Trout refers to as “creeping commoditisation.”

By launching more and more new products, companies are finding it difficult to differentiate their products. “Line extensions, or a number of different products with the same name, tend to make it difficult or impossible to clearly talk about a point of difference. Marlboro, which stands for cowboys and full-flavoured cigarettes, cannot sell menthol or ultra lights. Real cowboys don’t smoke these types of cigarettes,” says Trout.

In these days of the iPhone and the BlackBerry, Trout isn’t a great fan of convergence (where companies build in more and more features into the same product).

“If you study history, convergence rarely happens. Products that do more than they should are quick to die,” he wrote in a recent column.

“What I write about “convergence” is that engineering multiple functions into a product such as the iPhone is very difficult. Consider the following smartphone reviews: The
BlackBerry is great at e-mail, but the phone is barely adequate. Palm’s Treo stores data well, but is unreliable and unremarkable. The Motorola’s Q is fine, but it crashes as often as the Treo. The iPhone is terrific for music and media, but lousy for e-mail and phoning. I rest my case,” says Trout.

The other so-called differentiating trick these days is celebrity endorsing. But does it really work? “In my view, very few celebrity endorsements help differentiate a product.
There’s only one major exception: Tiger Woods does indeed sell golf balls. When it was a Nike golf ball, it did very poorly.”

Companies which have a differentiation in place tend to lose it over the years. “What drives this is pressure from Wall Street that pushes growth over common sense,” says Trout. A good recent example is the international coffee chain Starbucks. “Starbucks got swept up into the ‘growth’ mantra and opened far too many stores. They also failed to explain why their coffee cost so much.”

And to hammer home his point of keeping it simple, Trout says, simple brand names work the best. “The name is the hook that is hung on the ladders in the mind where brand names are stored. A complicated or confusing name never gets into the mind.
Work out a good positioning strategy, and try to come up with a name that best matches this strategy. If you invent a long-lasting battery, DieHard is a great name for it,” he says.

The marketing function over the years does not seem to be getting the kind of attention that it should.

Peter Ducker once famously said, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two — and only these two, basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

“Unfortunately, many have ignored Peter Drucker’s advice, but not all. Apple’s Steve Jobs is a classic example of a CEO that does indeed get the point Drucker is making. He is the best CEO marketer in the business and Apple’s success makes the point that Drucker was making,” says Trout.
k_vivek@dnaindia.net