Branding veterans still admire an advertising headline penned in 1958 by David Ogilvy as one of the best ever written: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock." In Ogilvy's case, the product to be sold was a pretty nice one, but he had to start with a blank page, nonetheless. Loaded down with every conceivable fact and figure about the car, provided with a plethora of features and benefits, it was up to him and his team to cull from this laundry list the one simple, meaningful thing on which they could build a sustainable brand promise. A single notion that would represent to consumers what the Rolls-Royce brand was all about. After sifting and thinking, they recognized that because of the vehicle's finely tuned mechanics, its air-tight interior, air-tight exterior, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, the car drove so quietly and elegantly that, yes, the only thing one could hear was that clock ticking.
For many years, this simple idea stood for the quality and workmanship that distinguished the Rolls-Royce brand from every other luxury brand of automobile. What Ogilvy knew and followed were the rules of taking a brand from zero to success. You identify a simple selling point that differentiates the product or service from its competition in the minds of consumers, and you use the branding to ensure that this selling point sticks. Fifty-two years after its writing, this headline still resonates.
For those faced with a product or service a tad more mundane than a $200,000 car, say a $1.00 brick, the same rules still apply. Identify something you can say about your product that is meaningfully different to consumers, and make sure it has sticking power. For example, Liberty Mutual, charged with selling insurance, among the most commoditized of categories, determined that pitching "responsibility" would help its brand stand out in a sea of price quotes and same-as-same-old promises. Its strong growth in the industry is evidence of a successful mission.
Sexier, but in no less a commodity category, Sephora took on both the over-the-counter department store cosmetic brands and the under-wraps drug store brands and created an open-sell environment as its distinguishing brand factor. Simple in concept and brilliant in its branding, from retail site to online service, the brand's reputation--and its sales--have soared since its inception.
On the other side of the sell-it spectrum is the product that sells itself, the iPad. How does this happen? A company identifies a specific need in the marketplace and develops a product or service to fill this need, generally in a first-mover manner. This is not to say that the other marketers don't do their homework. It's a matter of exponential vs. incremental. In other words, there's no need to determine which bells or whistles or ticking clocks to focus on in order to make this kind of sale, but simply a de facto presentation of the story; "you asked, we listened, and here it is."
This scenario is still the exception. But in this digital marketing environment in which listening and reacting to consumer input becomes easier, it's likely that more companies will take advantage of the available technology to ensure they've got a product people have asked for before they develop it. While the iPad is the quintessential example, consider, too, every product in the Method brand's line of environmentally friendly cleaning products, each created with the consumer's socially-aware needs in mind. Think about Swiffer, Dyson vacuum cleaners, Special K cereal, Wikipedia, or Google. Each unique in its category, and each a self-seller because it needs no story line other than the one written by consumer desire.
Find something that differentiates your brand of brick from any other. Make sure people care about what this is and will remember it as a result of its distinctive character and its equally distinctive branding. Oh yes, one other thing. As you do your homework (which you should) don't confuse the razzle-dazzle effects of digital branding with the razzle-dazzle of the point you're trying to make. Ogilvy had only a print ad with which to get his simple idea across and this idea helped spawn a multimillion dollar global communications firm. The clock's ticking. Get to work.
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