Just a Thought: Customers are the Brand

While living in London for the past year, now, I have only had three instances where a car almost hits me while running. Oddly, the three vehicles to almost hit me were all BMWs, and since two of these 3 occurrences happened this past weekend, it had me think, "BMW doesn't like me very much, and frankly, if they keep trying to hit me, I'm not going to like them at all."

This internal dialogue inevitably turned to a thought about branding, and how a brand's customers end up representing and communicating the brand's positioning via their actions. After all, it wasn't the BMW that was almost running me over, it was the drivers, but still I thought of it as the vehicle.

I guess Abercrombie & Fitch recently began to notice who wears their clothes ends up reflecting the type of brand it is, hence they've asked Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino, from Jersey Shore, to stop wearing its products. 


Looking at the kind of people who associate themselves with your brand (i.e. wear, drive, use, etc.) defines the kind of brand you are. So maybe it becomes a question of targeting. If A&F didn't have half naked teenage models standing out front of its stores, with blaring clubbing music at all hours of the day and oozing of an offensive amount of cologne, maybe it wouldn't appeal to a half naked all-hours partier like "The Situation".

A&F's stores are designed to appeal to people like "The Situation" drawing them in, and then they act surprised when he's actually wearing their products? If they genuinely want to stop attracting people like "The Situation", the brand experience must change to reflect they type of people they wish to attract and feel are better suited to the brand they are or want to be.

So maybe BMW should have a test for prospect customers to see if they make the cut for being BMW drivers, which I hope includes those who don't want to accelerate when they see runners. Who knows maybe the quiz to be selected as a BMW drivers will make the brand more exclusive and stimulate greater demand... just a thought.

Louboutin isn't Louboutin without its red soles

Image created by the amazing Garance Dorè

If you are a woman, or have some interest in fashion, I'm sure just by looking at the red soles of these drawn shoes, you're already thinking Christian Louboutin. A shoe brand famous for its vibrant red soles. I once saw a program on TV about luxury shoes, where Mr. Louboutin was interviewed on where he came up with the idea to paint the soles of his shoes red -- he was sitting around with one of his friends, who was painting her nails, when he started to paint the sole of a shoe and fell in love with how the shoe looked from behind. Then the rest is history...well, until now.

Recently, Louboutin has taken YSL to court on the basis of trademark infringement,  as YSL is selling shoes with a red sole.  Unfortunately, the judge does not believe a designer can trademark a colour. In fact, he "has made up his mind that no fashion designer should be allowed a monopoly on colour because as artists they need to be able to use a full palette".

Personally, I think the wrong argument is being made here. Sure the colour is essential, but more importantly, it's the location of the colour -- on the sole of the shoe -- which makes it quintessentially Louboutin.  So rather than fighting so hard over a colour, Louboutin should be registering the design element of having a red sole as its trademark.

Frankly, I had no idea what the Louboutin logo looked like until a few years ago. Up to that point I only recognised the brand via the red soles. In fact, my friend, Jade, gave me a business card for her friend, who designed accessories for a shoe brand she couldn't remember the name of...this is the card she handed me:

I didn't need to turn the card over; I knew exactly what company she worked for -- Christian Louboutin!

If we're looking at this business card alone, it's clear that Louboutin considers its red soles a powerful trademark for its brand.  I would consider this an excellent example that brand identification lies beyond the logo.  Look at Apple, they even go as far to register all its products, from the shape of its iPad to its desktop icons and apps. We can also look at Coca-Cola and the original design of its glass bottles. The brief to design the Coca-Cola bottle was to create something that when held in your hand blind-folded you knew it was Coca-Cola, and when shattered into a million shards of glass you knew it was Coca-Cola.

This goes back to Martin Lindstrom's concept of smashability. The idea here, is that you should be able to take away the logo from the product and/or service, and instinctually know the brand it comes from. Louboutin clearly has this going for them just like Apple and Coca-Cola, maybe even more so, since Louboutin's logo seems secondary to its red soles.

I truly believe Louboutin must win this case over YSL selling red soled shoes. Simply for the fact that red soled shoes are a key brand identifier for Louboutin. And if we agree on the definition YSL's lawyer gives trademarks - "merely the right to indicate the origin of a product or service" - than Louboutin will win. Having said that, if they keep fighting for the colour rather than the combined power of the colour and its location on the shoe, they won't win this case. The power of the red sole, as a trademark for Louboutin, is not so much the colour as it is the location of the colour.

Google+: A new playground for the same games

I've been wanting to write about Google+ for some time -- not to critique the new social platform, as I don't think it's worth making a full-on critique until I see how people use the platform and if they use it at a sustained rate like Facebook.

However, Google+ has grown at an incredible rate - 18 million users in 21 days...something that took Facebook 2.5 years to achieve, as stated in the below presentation. What interests me most about this, was something I was asked a year ago, "Is Facebook a fad?"  The answer has been made clear by the launch of Google+. Facebook may come and go, but the behaviour it has strongly influenced is not a fad and won't go away.

In essence, the playground may change, from MySpace to Facebook to Google+, but the games will remain the same. If anything, people's social behaviour will only grow and evolve to a more elevated social level. After all, we've always been social creatures, and the tools have evolved to allow our social behaviour to stretch farther, to more people and faster.

So, it would be silly if brands avoided joining the social conversation, and not develop a strategy on the role its brand can play in the online social environment.

Here's a presentation I came across the other day, which I felt was a good summary of how organizations should start looking at Google+...enjoy:

Google+ for brands_ogilvy

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