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If you really want to work at the frontier of branding, it would be a mistake to focus on communications, measurement or even brand strategy. The place where all the big brand decisions are now being made is brand architecture. Which brands do we want to keep? Which can we afford to lose? How do we transition from one to the other? These are the questions that are keeping senior marketers awake at night. Most major companies have too many brands at their disposal and, in direct contrast with the 90s, when most looked to expand their brand portfolios, consolidation is now the big topic. Thanks to global expansion, merger and acquisition, and the spiralling costs of building brand equity, major organisations are learning first-hand about the inherent risks and rewards of killing off some brands to benefit others. Take AT&T - through the acquisition of BellSouth in 2006, the company gained ownership of the leading mobile network brand in the US, Cingular. AT&T does not have its own mobile network brand, having sold the AT&T Wireless brand to, of all people, Cingular in 2004 for $41bn. A year later, Cingular retired the AT&T Wireless brand and transferred its customers across. Barely three years later, AT&T purchased Cingular as part of the $86bn acquisition of BellSouth. It retired the Cingular brand and transferred all the customers across to... you guessed it...AT&T. In the history of marketing has there ever been a more expensive set of swings and roundabouts? At first glance, killing off Cingular seemed brand lunacy. It was only six years old, but had already invested more than $6bn in building its own brand equity. In the first nine months of 2006 it spent more than $1bn on media advertising alone. Not surprisingly, Cingular had strong associations as a modern, dynamic mobile network that appealed to younger demographics. It was the ninth-biggest mobile brand in the world and Millward Brown Optimor calculated its brand to be worth $6.6bn. For AT&T, however, the advantages of consolidating Cingular into its corporate brand outweighed the benefits of retaining it as an independent brand. AT&T’s chief executive Edward E Whitacre Jr, declared 'AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular are now one company, and going to market with our services under one brand is the right thing to do'. Fair point, but Whitacre needs to find $6.6bn-worth of reasons to back up his claim. He could start with the marketing savings. Mobile telecoms is a $1bn-a-year branding business and a single brand can soon stack up big cost savings versus maintaining two distinct entities. Then there is the added strategic advantage of focusing all the resources, staff and leadership on a single brand. Most big corporations struggle to build a single strong global brand - just look at Vodafone - so the challenge of managing multiple brands in this sector is almost inconceivable. AT&T also believed it could update its own stodgy, conservative and increasingly irrelevant brand equity by associating itself with Cingular over an extended phase-out period. During 2007 the AT&T and Cingular brands were co-branded in stores, in advertising, and across all other touchpoints. AT&T is betting it can have the best of both worlds: a single AT&T brand that retains all the attractive associations from the Cingular transition. Has it retained them? As Cingular completely fades into the archives of business history one final chapter is still being written – did the $6bn plus gamble pay off? 30 SECONDS ON... AT&T - On 1 January 1984 AT&T was forced by the US Department of Justice to divest itself of its regional phone companies. - It was broken up into BellSouth, AT&T Long Distance, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, American Information Technologies, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX and US West. - Of these, the majority had sub-brands of their own. American Information Technologies (AIT), for example, comprised Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell, Indiana Bell, Wisconsin Bell and Illinois Bell. - In 1993, AIT subsumed those divisions to become Ameritech. - On 5 March 2006 it was announced that AT&T was to acquire BellSouth for $86bn. The deal was executed on 29 December 2006. - Of the 22 Bell operating companies that AT&T owned prior to its 1984 divestment, 10 are now part of AT&T following its acquisition of BellSouth.
Sponsored By: Brand Aid Penguin and Match.com's dating site for book-lovers is a marketer's dream... He saw her first. Glancing up from his laptop, he found himself utterly spellbound at the sight of the deliciously beautiful, very proper, 40-something woman on the other side of the room. She sensed the strong, predatory, glance. Glancing icily from over the top of her orange-covered book, she prepared to look disapprovingly at her crude observer. But when she met the gaze of the young, raven-haired man with the computer, she found herself, to her surprise, blushing. He closed his laptop sharply and stood up. She realised, with a start, that he was approaching her. Secretly thrilled, she waited for what felt like an eternity. Finally, she meekly looked up from her book into his deep, green eyes. 'I am fresh to the old country,' he said with a deep American baritone. 'And I know you don't do this kind of thing often.' He smiled. 'But I just had to head over and make you a proposal that I think you will find mighty agreeable.' Breathlessly she exclaimed: 'I assure you, I have never been approached in this manner before.' But, oh, the longing... What could this vibrant American have in view? Her mind raced with passionate speculation. He smiled at her again. 'My name is Match.com.' Suddenly, the handsome American's proposal began to make sense. 'Oh, I see... ' she beamed. 'My name is Penguin. Penguin Books.' It may sound like bad fiction, but it's a real story of successful partnership, and one every good marketer should study carefully. Last month, Match.com opened a special dating site for Penguin book-lovers. The site, which is co-branded as 'PenguinDating - powered by Match.com', is positioned as 'a place to meet and indulge in the age-old art of writing love letters'. For a small monthly fee, book-lovers can use their knowledge of literature to help find that special someone. Like most co-brands, the offer seems, at first sight, a little ridiculous. But read on and the partnership makes a lot of sense and illustrates four key strategic advantages that strong co-branded partnerships can deliver. First, the two brand equities combine very well and provide a genuine synergy that neither could achieve on its own. Second, despite these synergies, the two brands serve very distinct market segments with little existing crossover. By bringing the two brands together, the potential target market for the co-branded site is doubled and the partnership will introduce both to a new market for their other services. Third, co-branding is often highly newsworthy, and the press coverage of the partnership last week will help Match.com maintain brand awareness and boost member recruitment, while maintaining Penguin's position as Britain's best-known book publisher. Fourth, research suggests the two co-brands often gain positive brand associations from their partner in the relationship. Match.com could gain from Penguin much-needed establishment credentials and lose any remaining associations of sleaze, while the publisher gets to rejuvenate its 73-year-old brand, by association with the young, very 21st-century website. Finally, with Penguin promoting the site in 2m paperbacks each year and Match.com charging the usual fees, both brands stand to share profits while building brand equity. When was the last time you read those two points in the same sentence? As she lay awake next to his warm, sleeping body she thought: 'This is so good. Why did I not think of it sooner?' Then, with a mischievous smile, she added: 'I wonder who else could offer me more of the same?' 30 SECONDS ON... THE CO-BRANDED LOVE-MATCH BETWEEN PENGUIN AND MATCH.COM - Penguin was founded in the UK in 1935 by Allen Lane, to offer high-quality literature in an accessible format. The books were an instant hit, thanks to an iconic design that included a distinctive orange-and-white livery and the famous Penguin logo. - Penguin digital marketing director Anna Rafferty sees PenguinDating as part of its mission to 'develop meaningful connections'. - Match.Com was founded in the US in 1994 and was one of the first websites to launch a subscription service. More than 50m people have joined since its launch. In 2004, Guinness World Records recognised Match.com as the world's biggest online dating service. - According to Jason Stockwood, managing director of match.com: 'Online dating has returned us to the romantic notions of letter-writing.' - PenguinDating.co.uk has been live for a week. Current members
include Rachel from London, who loves Nabokov, and Steve from
Salisbury, reading Kerouac. All customers are not created equal. A good marketer worries just as much about avoiding 'bad' customers as attracting the 'good' ones. But once you do acquire a 'bad' customer it can be awfully difficult to get rid of them. Take Citigroup’s Egg for example. Earlier this year, it wrote to 7% of its 2m cardholders, informing them that their cards would stop working in 35 days due to their 'higher than acceptable risk profile'. When Citigroup bought Egg for a knock-down price from Prudential last year, it was clearly a brand in trouble. Losses of £145m in 2006 meant that it was always likely that its new owner would act quickly to stem the tide. Removing bad customers was an obvious but much-needed move; the key issue, however, is how Citigroup has gone about defining 'bad' customers. There are two ways to lose money in the credit card business. The first is to lend to a customer who eventually defaults on their payments. The other is to lend to a customer who never fails to pay off their monthly debt on time. Which of these 'bad' customers is Egg now rejecting? If we accept the official Egg line, this is a bold act of responsibility in a time of financial crisis. Citigroup analysts have reviewed Egg databases and, using complex modelling, identified those customers most likely to get into financial difficulties. By cutting them off, Egg is avoiding a potential loss in the future, acting in the best interests of these over-extended customers, and differentiating itself against all those irresponsible sub-prime lenders which have been blamed for the current threat of recession. As Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers Association, put it on the Today programme, it is 'a sensible way of looking after a business'. But there is an alternative hypothesis based on a different definition of a 'bad' customer. Egg's problems began in 1998, when it successfully launched its brand with an online savings account that offered a generous 8% interest rate. Within 6 months the firm had reached its five-year target of 500,000 customers, and it launched its credit card. The Egg card had a specific point of difference in that it guaranteed safe purchases on the internet. The combination of a very good interest rate and a trusted brand for internet purchases attracted all the wrong kind of customers to Egg: conservative, risk-averse, financially savvy people who always pay off their credit card balance each month and rarely switch banks. These customers were one of the key reasons for the gradual loss in profits at Egg. Perhaps the bank has taken the opportunity to remove some of them as well as shedding the 'credit risks'. This would explain the torrent of letters and blog posts that have suddenly emerged from some of the 160,000 people rejected by Egg. Most tell the same story - they have never exceeded their limit, always pay off their balance prior to the due date and in many cases have significant assets. Several rejected customers even checked their credit rating only to discover it was in the high 900s - essentially perfect credit. The adverse public reaction to the letters received from Egg could be explained by bruised egos. Nobody likes to be rejected, especially in relation to their finances. But there seem to be too many plausible stories to dismiss. Equally conspicuous are the anecdotes of the Egg customers who have registered their surprise at not receiving one of the letters, despite continually maxing out their cards and failing to make payments on time. Surely, Citigroup is not naive enough to believe that it can reject stable but unprofitable customers under the guise of financial responsibility? Only time, and the gathering calls for an enquiry, will tell. 30 SECONDS ON ... REACTIONS TO EGG'S LETTERS - Gillian Cox of Farnham told the BBC: 'My husband and I are retired, no mortgage, no debts, joint income of about £35,000. I phoned Egg, but the adviser could only recite the same paragraph that was in the letter.' She also contacted credit reference agency Experian, which said she had an excellent credit rating, 'thus totally negating Egg's claim that this measure is about credit risk'. - Dave from London commented: 'I thought I would be affected, as we regularly max out our Egg card through balance transfers. "Risky customer," you may think, but I am yet to receive a letter'. - An Egg spokesman said: 'We are sorry that some customers are upset after receiving notification that we are ending their credit card arrangement ... We understand the concerns, but even if they are up to date with repayments, they are people we no longer wish to lend to, regardless of their status.' Sponsored By: Brand Aid Just when the bold days of silly brand naming appeared to be over, along comes another act of marketing madness. In October of 06’ Swiss Re won the race to buy GE Life, the UK life assurance arm of General Electric, with a bid of £465m. The deal included about 400,000 policies with total assets of about £8bn. The one asset that Swiss Re could not retain, however, was the GE parent brand. Six months after the acquisition, and having sought the help of identity firm Kent Lyons, the company launched its new brand: Tomorrow. The colon is important, because Tomorrow is not the date when it's going to happen – in March of last year, Tomorrow became the new name of the brand. Are you still with me? According to Tomorrow's head of marketing communications, Kirsty Macpherson: 'We wanted to change to a name that expressed the importance of the products that we offer and what they represent. We are here to help people make the best possible financial plans for retirement to ensure income in later life, so "Tomorrow" is the perfect choice.' From a marketer's point of view, she is right. This is a name born of creative thinking and one that is consistent with breakthrough communications. The name is very distinctive when you consider Tomorrow's more traditionally branded competitors. It is also a name that allows maximum future flexibility when it comes to brand extension and future growth. It was interesting, however, that the spokeswoman for this rebranding was a marketing communications person and not someone more senior or in a non-marketing role. This suggests that the marketers ran the rebrand, and that usually means exciting but impractical identity decisions. In the great debacle of PWC's rebranding to Monday, it was the marketers who led the charge and the senior partners who reversed the decision less than 24 hours later. Marketers like to focus on differentiation and identity and communication - all fine goals. But a brand must encompass a lot more than breakthrough communications to succeed. I am sceptical that working for Tomorrow will be a lot of fun for the majority of its employees who are, after all, mostly insurance people. One of the biggest tests of brand equity is the reaction that workers get in the pub when they tell people who they work for. If Tomorrow is lucky, its employees will simply refer back to the GE Life brand that used to employ them for clearer social co-ordinates. In the worst-case scenario, employees will disclaim the name as a dumb marketing ploy, therein damaging the company's brand equity and the employees' long-term likelihood of staying put. Then there are the existing and target customers. Baby-boomers are more adventurous than previous retirement generations, but surely many will bridle at investing their savings in a firm with a modish name that sprung on them out of nowhere. This is a generation that grew up in the era of big, safe, traditional corporate brands with clear brand architecture. They probably selected GE, or its predecessor National Mutual, for precisely that reason. And now their money is being looked after by Tomorrow? Let's hope in the long run Tomorrow has done its homework. Maybe it pre-tested the name with its target and existing customers and got a glowing response. Perhaps it ran a major employee brand engagement programme prior to the name change and they are all now 100% behind the new brand. Let's also assume that the senior management are delighted with the name and are embracing it at the boardroom level. It's very easy to be cynical about big, bold moves. Perhaps the world is ready for this kind of branding. Perhaps it is still too soon for Tomorrow. 30 SECONDS ON ... TOMORROW - Tomorrow's head of marketing communications, Kirsty Macpherson, added the following insights on the company's change in brand identity: - 'Tomorrow will be a vibrant business, building on the successes of the past. With a history dating back to 1896, we have demonstrated our dedication to the market and customers through innovations such as enhanced annuities and Income Drawdown.' - We will be the same company, same people and offer the same high level of integrity, commitment and service for our clients. We will simply have a different name. - Tomorrow will continue to build on its existing strengths as a leading provider of pre- and post-retirement products. - We intend to continue to be an innovative, key player in the market and will continue to sell our products exclusively through financial advisers.' Sponsored By: Brand Aid It all started with a flash of American superiority and a bruised royal ego. In 1851, a yacht owned by the New York Yacht Club easily beat 15 of the fastest British yachts in a race around the Isle of Wight. Surprised at the result, Queen Victoria was reported to have asked who had come second and was politely informed: 'There is no second, your Majesty.' The America's Cup had begun. After 156 years and 38 contests, the finally returned to Europe. In April of last year, yachts from 11 nations began competing in Valencia to see who would eventually race the current holder, the Swiss yacht Alinghi. It always is a massive event, but arguably those with the most to lose are not the yachtsmen or countries involved. In fact they play an almost peripheral role compared with the companies spending nine-figure sums to associate their brand with the event. As I walked around Valencia, Spain's newly designed marina it could easily be likened to visiting an exotic menagerie of big brands with some of the fattest marketing budgets on the planet. BMW and Oracle had joined forces with Allianz to sponsor the American yacht. A few meters away the French boat sponsored by Areva, the French nuclear power company. For reasons that weren’t immediately obvious, New Zealand's entrant was sponsored by Emirates. Most companies pay upwards of $100m to be a sponsor. Meanwhile, supporter brands such as Vodafone (the official phone network), Nespresso (the official coffee) and Adecco (the official HR supplier) were also stumping up millions to be a part of it. With stunning locations adorned with glamorous yachting fraternity, it would be all too easy for marketers to lose their focus and fall into the ancient trap of assuming anyone spending this kind of money must know what they are doing. It is exactly these big-money events at which a marketer must maintain their ROI focus. How, we should ask, can a B2B software company such as Oracle justify spending that kind of money on a yacht race? What, we may wonder, is the link between nuclear power and yachting? And what has Emirates got to do with the Kiwis? The answer is in the two elements of brand equity. To create a strong brand, marketers must first build awareness among the target market to establish its existence. Then they need to build the right associations that will ensure differentiation and strong relationships with customers. While it is true that most of the sponsoring brands gained significant awareness from the event, it is hard to justify their investment simply with media mentions. There were 11 boats competing for attention on the water and soon 10 of them would be out of the race. It is even harder to prove ROI in terms of brand associations. Most of the sponsoring brands had no legitimate connection to yachting or the Cup itself, so their marketing teams were working overtime to highlight their 'authentic' role in the event. Alcatel-Lucent showcased the race live at its Second Life stall. BMW went to great pains to point out that four of its engineers advised on their yacht's hull design. Apparently, researchers from the Allianz Center for Technology developed a more robust spinnaker pole for the same boat. According to Bjoern Widemann, global sponsorship manager at Allianz, 'Allianz's partnership with the BMW Oracle Racing Team is more than just sponsorship; we draw on our core competencies to offer specialist support that gives the team a competitive edge out there on the water.' The real message remains much clearer. Forget marketing ROI and brand positioning and have some old-fashioned marketing fun. Girls in bikinis, sea and sunshine, millions in unmeasured marketing spend and, in the distance, the magical sound of clinking champagne flutes. All aboard! 30 SECONDS ON ... AMERICA'S CUP - The Americas Cup trophy was designed in 1848 by Garrard & Co and yachtsmen colloquially refer to it as 'the auld jug'. - The most famous person to have competed in the event was Sir Thomas Lipton. The Scottish tea baron tried and failed five times to win the Cup. While the Cup eluded him, his reputation as the world's most cheerful loser built the Lipton tea brand in the US and Britain. - Mirko Groeschner, marketing director of the BMW Oracle team, made capital out of the fact that the VIP section at the event offered an area where the team had breakfast and lunches. 'Guests can actually see the team eating. You don't get that with Formula 1.' - The ultimate VIP seat was a spare 18th seat on one of the 25m
sailboats alongside the crew. At least one team is considering selling
the seat to raise money - the price tag is rumoured to be 1m. - Currently the sailing community has shifted its focus from the race to this nasty lawsuit. The Germans are coming. That was the clear message from TNS, which revealed that German discount retailer Aldi had grown its sales in the UK by 20% in the past three months compared with the same period in 2007. If ever there was a good time for Aldi to make a move on the British shopper, it is clearly now (and the American shopper for that matter). With supermarket prices rising faster than at any time in the past 10 years, and an inevitable recession taking hold, Aldi's low prices could enable it to grasp an opportunity to grow its UK market share from 2.9% to the 10% figure the company seeks. Tesco is certainly taking the threat seriously. For the past 12 months, Britain's leading supermarket has used a secret, mocked-up Aldi store at its headquarters in Cheshunt to develop Aldi counter-strategies. Finance director Andrew Higginson recently acknowledged that hard discounters such as Aldi were enjoying their 'moment in the sun' and Tesco is reported to be on the verge of announcing major price cuts across many of its own-label lines in direct response to Aldi's growing popularity. Aldi is now acknowledged as operating the leanest low-cost model in the world. The key to its success is low service and even lower choice. While the average big four supermarket will carry up to 40,000 SKUs in a typical store, Aldi keeps that figure at about 1000. This results in massive economies of scale, huge buying power and an enormous reduction in the operating costs of Aldi stores, which are smaller and require very few employees. Aldi also keeps its costs low by reducing profits - a typical store operates on gross margins of 15%, about half that of the big four British supermarkets. The really interesting issue about Aldi, however, is its approach to brands. It has been able to reduce costs by building an offer around own labels and eschewing most manufacturer brands. At least 90% of products sold are own labels, usually produced by leading manufacturers but sold under a meaningless, house-brand name. The major challenge that Aldi now faces in the UK is convincing the British public that a century of branded advertising has misled them, and that generic, unbranded consumer goods can be as good, if not better, than the more expensive and more familiar brands they usually buy. It's a concept that German consumers have embraced wholeheartedly. Many of them believe products can be very good quality and very cheap. We British, on the other hand, have been more susceptible to the art of branding. The empirical evidence suggests that the Germans have a point. Earlier this month, independent British market research revealed that Aldi's unbranded offerings were deemed at least as good as their big-brand competitors in 14 out of 15 blind taste tests of major food categories. Of course, as long as there have been brands, there have been blind taste tests. Coke vs Pepsi. Australian wine vs French. Remove the labels and see which one consumers really prefer. The standard marketing response to these tests has been to claim that consumers are never actually able to test the products 'blind', and therefore any data on quality that emerges is inadmissible in the court of the consumer. But now we have a retailer that offers a real-life equivalent of a single, giant blind taste test. Combine that with a market of increasingly cynical, cash-strapped British consumers and Aldi's vision of a shop in every British town starts to make sense. Or will the UK's entirely irrational love of consumer brands repel this German invader? 30 SECONDS ON ... THE ALDI LOW-SERVICE, LOW-PRICE MODEL - Brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht took over their mother's local store in Essen, Germany, in 1946 when they returned from World War II. In 1961, they opened their first Aldi. According to Karl, Aldi was founded on a solid anti-marketing principles: 'At Aldi the customer is not king. We are providing not service, but mass production.' - Aldi dominates its home market. More than 70% of German households shop at Aldi and it has a 40% market share. Aldi was cited as the prime reason for Wal-Mart's 2006 withdrawal from the German market. - Many big brands now manufacture for Aldi in various parts of the world. Nestle and Unilever are among the companies that supply the supermarket, and in 2000, Kellogg broke with years of tradition and signed a deal to supply five cereals to Aldi in Germany. - Aldi plans to invest £1.5bn in a five-year expansion plan in the UK, which will increase its chain of stores from about 400 currently to an eventual total of 1500. Sponsored By: Brand Aid In the pivotal scene of the epic movie Spartacus, Kirk Douglas, playing the eponymous renegade hero who has led an uprising of his fellow slaves against their Roman masters, now faces defeat at the hands of the Roman army. The Roman general announces that if Spartacus identifies himself, he will be crucified, but his fellow warriors will be spared. As Spartacus begins to step forward, a slave next to him announces 'I am Spartacus', then another and another, until the whole battlefield echoes with the cry. Spartacus surveys the tragic scene with a mixture of wonder and doom. Everyone will be crucified. I had my own Spartacus moment a few years ago, while addressing a big group of advertising executives. One claimed that consumers welcomed advertising and saw it as interesting and valuable. Surprised by this, I asked for a show of hands to see who else believed in this positive perception of advertising. Arms were slowly raised skyward until the whole lecture theatre was a forest of defiant raised fists. Ad agencies have spent decades convincing themselves that the production of advertising is a positive, welcomed experience for customers. Until the advent of the Digital Video Recorder this was a harmless delusion. With the introduction of the DVR, however, this rose-tinted view could blind them to the apocalyptic changes looming. Independent studies suggest that between 25% and 50% of television advertising is deliberately avoided by audiences. Once equipped with a DVR, this figure exceeds 90% of ads experienced while watching time-shifted programmes. Remember, this does not even mean the viewer is in the room for, let alone watching, the remaining 10% of ads not zipped through. Only about half the TV watching in a DVR household is time shifted, but bear in mind that DVRs also enable you to skip ads in real time. Starcom estimates 17% of ads are avoided in this manner by DVR owners in the US. Forrester Research found that advertising exposure in the average US household fell by more than 50% after the purchase of a DVR. Now take into account BSkyB: a big company with a marketing budget to match and a strategy to install its new HDTV (high definition television) systems, all of which will come with a DVR as standard, in 10m British homes by 2010. Remember, too, that other companies, such as Sony and Phillips, are investing heavily in developing DVR systems. According to the National Advertising Association, 75% of US advertisers expect to cut TV budgets in response to DVRs. Big advertisers such as P&G, Ford and Heinz have embarked on experimental initiatives to take them beyond a reliance on traditional 30-second TV ads. Let me end by offering some reassurance to those in advertising - WPP chairman Sir Martin Sorrell sees DVRs as 'an opportunity not a threat'. PHD estimates advertising impacts will drop by only 8.7% by 2010. Rupert Howell, chairman of McCann-Erickson UK, maintains 'the underlying principles haven't changed' and points out that 'TV never killed radio'. Charles Allen, chief executive of ITV, believes the threat from DVRs is 'not immediate' and ITV has a 'clear strategy for growth'. I'm Spartacus. No I'm Spartacus... 30 SECONDS ON...DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDERS (DVRs) - The two most notable DVR brands are Sky+ and TiVo. DVRs enable users to time-shift programmes from when they are broadcast to a more convenient time. They also allow viewers to pause live TV, as well as zip through programs and, crucially, advertising. - The clearest evidence of the threat DVRs pose to advertising is the level of reassurance coming from Sky. Managing Director Dawn Airey defended Sky+ pointing out that it prevents viewers from deleting ads. She claimed Sky+ owners' ad recall was the same as other viewers. - By 2010 there are expected to be between 8m and 10m households with a DVR. - Mediamark Research (MRI) finds that 11.2 percent of U.S. adult households have DVRs, up from 8.6 in the fall of 2005 and 3 percent in 2004. - An analysis by Simon Andrews of Big Picture, which works with brands on audience connection, claimed 74% of DVR users agreed it had 'enhanced their life'. He estimated that the increasing DVR penetration will result in millions of wasted ad spend. Sponsored By: Brand Aid Not too long ago Management Consulting News asked my opinion on business strategy and the consulting industry. Maybe you will share my opinions. Maybe you won't. How you would assess the state of strategy in the consulting industry? What’s unfortunate is that so many great companies have followed the advice of consultants and now find themselves on the brink of disaster. And that’s because too many consultants will tell clients exactly what they want to hear, instead of being objective advisers who look you in the eye and give you the good news with the bad. So what are the keys to an effective strategy for a consultant? First and foremost, I’d say specialization. Clients are looking for the best of breed when choosing consultants. They’ll pick one consultant for creative work, another for strategy work, and a different one for change management projects. The client will use consultants they perceive to be specialists in a coordinated way to achieve the total result they’re after. General Electric learned the lesson of specialization many years ago when they launched a concept called the turnkey power plant. The concept was simple: GE would provide all of the components that an electric utility needed for a complete power plant. It was a one-stop shop concept. But they found that customers wanted to give different parts of the contract to those who they believed to be the specialists in those areas. GE may have received the contract for the turbine generators while other specialists got the contracts for the controls, switchgears and other components. Even though GE is credited with inventing electricity, that fact wasn’t enough to overcome their customer’s strong desire to buy from specialists. Consulting clients are behaving in the same way. They are buying services from a variety of specialists, not relying on generalists. Any thoughts on why consultants resist the idea of specialization? Most consultants don’t want to be tied to a single specialty. They want to be as many things to as many clients as possible. What they fail to understand is that, once they start to extend into areas outside of their true areas of expertise, they leave space for new specialists to creep into their markets and take their place. The advantage of specialization is that it simplifies the marketing, selling and buying of consulting services. If clients understand that you’re a marketing strategy consultant, they won’t ask you to help them solve a logistics problem. They’ll know exactly how and when to use your firm and when to seek help from someone else. Specialized consultants don’t waste scarce resources chasing projects that are outside their areas of expertise. It’s easier to qualify a prospective client when your specialty is well defined. It’s more efficient and more effective. You’ve said that strategy “is all about perception, so don’t get confused by facts.” What do you mean? Consultants tend to spend a lot of their marketing time and money discussing their complex case studies, qualifications and methodologies when they should be working harder to position, in the minds of their clients and prospects, how they are differentiated from competitors. Let me give you an example from the last U.S. presidential campaign. Both candidates were hoping to gain an advantage by positioning themselves in the minds of the voters. The incumbent, George Bush, had a natural advantage, as he’d been pushing his “strong leadership” position since his first presidential campaign. And that was many voters’ perception of George Bush and his administration. Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, had a different positioning challenge. He was the lesser-known candidate, so he had to find a way to identify himself in the minds of voters who didn’t know him or his political views. Kerry had options. He could attempt to dislodge the voting public’s perception of Bush, which would take a long time. Or he could relate his own position, in some way, to Bush’s positioning to get his message across. For example, Kerry could have taken the stance that Bush is “Strong, but wrong.” That would be a simple, but powerful, way to use the president’s own positioning to create a different perception in voters’ minds. Consultants have the same opportunity. What’s important is to create a perception in the minds of your clients and prospects, not just present facts about your firm. And most consultants are not good at creating that perception. Many consulting firms believe they win with the quality of their people. Is that an effective strategy? No. Every firm makes that same claim. It’s not believable, nor is it a good differentiator. There’s a standard distribution of people in the world and no single firm has a lock on all of the good people, and clients understand that. What one thing should a consultant remember when putting together a strategy for a practice? To thrive, specialize. Don’t be tempted to do everything for your clients. It’s not good for them or for you. What’s on your reading list? Three books come to mind. The first is The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. The second is Testosterone Inc.: Tales of CEOs Gone Wild, by Christopher M. Byron. And finally, I’d recommend The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Sponsored By: Brand Aid From the moment the fireworks exploded over Beijing at the Olympics' opening ceremony, you knew something fantastic was taking place. But you'd have been forgiven for underestimating just how truly fantastic those fireworks were, because many of them did not actually occur. They were digitally enhanced video effects superimposed onto the Beijing night sky by a team of special-effects experts headed by Gao Xiaolong. 'Most of the audience thought the display was filmed live, so that was mission accomplished,' smiled a clearly delighted Mr Gao after the event. Meanwhile, equally fantastical events were taking place inside the 'Bird's Nest' stadium, where little Lin Miaoke was belting out a rousing rendition of Ode to the Motherland. It emerged later that Miaoke had been lip-synching and the real singer was another, slightly less photogenic, seven-year-old called Yang Peivi. Chen Qigang, musical director of the opening ceremony, explained to the world's media that Lin Miaoke was chosen ahead of Yang Peivi because she was nicer looking. In China, there is often a vague but accepted disparity between what is seen as genuine and what is real. Fake fireworks that look real can be better than actual gunpowder. It's acceptable to have a little girl singing with someone else's voice if it makes for better entertainment. Copies and fakery can be better than the real thing. That's important, given the influence China is about to have on branding over the next century. There are already four Chinese brands in Millward Brown Optimor's Top 50 Global Brands league table. Shame on you if you can't name at least two, given that all of them are already bigger brands than Mercedes, Nike or Starbucks. More will follow, and they are unlikely to emerge from the traditional Western points of brand origin - innovation and differentiation. Many of the new Chinese brands will emerge from less traditional sources of brand provenance - replication and similarity. We have already seen several examples of how imitation is the first page in the book of Chinese brand-building. The automotive producer Shuanghuan made headlines last year by producing new cars that looked uncannily like the BMW X5 and Mercedes' Smart car. Li Ning, for example, is probably the most noted example of the new generation of up-and-coming Chinese brands. What makes Li Ning special is its lack of difference from its two key international sportswear rivals, Nike and Adidas. While its logo might have been created from the company founder's initials, the curved identity that they form bears a striking resemblance to an upside-down version of Nike's 'swoosh' logo. Similarly, Li Ning's famous strapline, 'Anything is possible', is remarkably close to the Adidas slogan 'Impossible is nothing'. It would be too easy to look down our Western noses at Chinese brands that are apparently bent on replication rather than revolution. Give brands like Li Ning time, and their differentiation and creativity will emerge. In the bold, new brand universe of the 21st century, the future belongs to Chinese brands - even if they begin looking very similar to Western brands whose days of global domination could soon be consigned to history. 30 SECONDS ON ... LI NING - Li Ning was born in 1963 in China's Guangxi province. Li joined the country's first Olympic team for 32 years and returned from the 1984 Games with six gymnastics medals. - Li formed his brand in 1990. It has a 10.5% share of the Chinese branded sportswear market. It has 4300 retail stores in China and rolls out about 600 different styles of sports shoe every year. - To keep pace with Nike and Adidas, Li Ning has used budget sponsorship deals with the US table tennis team, the Sudanese track team and NBA star Shaquille O'Neal when he plays in China. - Li himself lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony, despite the fact that Adidas was the major sponsor. Because of the $80m sponsorship deal, when he lit the flame he was wearing an Adidas tracksuit, but most Chinese citizens assumed his brand was the major sponsor of the Games. Sponsored By: Brand Aid We're actually taking a break! Branding Strategy Insider will be back in a week. A warm thanks for your loyal readership and participation in this conversation about brands and branding. Best wishes, Derrick Daye 2) Define your brands “Whiff Factor” In the context of multi-sensory marketing, audio and visual stimuli combined account for 87% of a brand’s communication with the consumer. The next best option is to exploit the olfactory properties of your product. Touch and taste, the remaining two senses, apply to an even lesser degree to most brands and products. Think about what you already have included in your marketing plan and a scent marketing consultant will be able to explain (and execute) how you can use scent to enhance your: • Marketing collateral (business cards, stationary, brochures) If you have a product with a scent (think Starbucks) you may already cover some of those areas but in many cases there is much more left that you can do to maximize consumer impact through scent. If your product does not inherently have a scent a carefully designed signature scent may be a key differentiating opportunity in your category. I'll explore how to create a signature scent in step 3 here on BSI. Courtesy of Harald Vogt, Scent Marketing Institute Sponsored By: Brand Aid Frequently, the brand design is not embraced by the organization because the leadership team was not actively involved in the process at every step along the way. Typically, outside experts will design the brand based upon separate interviews with key stakeholders. This input does not allow for disagreement, debate, discussion or consensus building among the stakeholders. For this reason, The Blake Project offers what have proven to be highly successful and intensive brand positioning workshops for organizations. These are highly facilitated, very well prepared sessions in which all the key stakeholders (typically organization leaders and marketing executives) are “locked in a room” until they reach a consensus on all of the key elements of brand design: the target customer and the brand essence, promise and personality.
As part of the process and in tandem with brand research we ask key stakeholders (and ad agency personnel, front-line employees, salespeople, customer service reps and marketing researchers with first hand knowledge of you customer’s perceptions) in-depth questions about the brand and its market to serve as stimuli for the brand-positioning workshop. In addition to stimuli this questionnaire ensures that key personnel with a stake in your brand and those you wish to have input from (that may not be invited into the workshop) are involved in and rallied around the positioning process. The power of consensus in brand positioning cannot be over-emphasized. Consensus serves as the 'glue' in the coming weeks, months and years after the exercise is conducted. Without it brand focus can be lost. Sponsored By: Brand Aid Twenty plus years ago a widening disparity began to appear between the tangible net assets of a company and the actual price that would be paid to buy that company. This created a maelstrom of merger, acquisition and defence as companies scrambled to value their most precious assets - their brands. Interbrand emerged from this era as the industry leader in brand valuation and, since 1999, its joint publication with BusinessWeek of the top 100 global brands has solidified that position. Each Summer Interbrand tells us what the world's most valuable brands are and, unlike other marketing surveys, the managerial world listens. How does it do it? To cut a long story very short, Interbrand uses three sources of data to value a brand. First, the expected earnings the brand will generate for the next six years. Second, the percentage of earnings that can be attributed to the brand, as opposed to other decision-making factors such as location. Third, the relative strength of the brand. The higher the brand strength, the less risky the six-year earnings predictions and the more likely they are to materialise. Combining these figures produces remarkably precise calculations. Last year, for example, Interbrand informed us that Intel's brand was worth $30.9 bn, down 4% from 2006. As marketers, we are typically afraid of numbers, especially big ones that are derived using super-complex financial calculations. The reality, however, is that despite the apparent precision and current dominance of Interbrand's top 100, I would argue that much of it is actually a load of old tosh. The problem with the top 100 is that the majority of the brands on the list did not work directly with Interbrand. Whereas the expected future earnings of a brand can be extrapolated from annual reports and the estimates of merchant banks, the brand data in the survey is often based on a series of educated guesses by a bunch of Interbrand employees. Peel away the complex calculations and impressive PR and ultimately you have a bunch of accountants using a simplistic seven-point scale that some bloke came up with years ago to score brands on which they have no consumer data. Even worse, the top 100 may feature global brands, but their presence is often the result of a single global rating for brand strength that ignores the manifest variations that most brands experience from market to market. It is hardly likely that IBM has the same brand strength in China as it does in the US, nor that the brand has the same magnitude of influence on decision-making in both markets. Yet IBM was most likely awarded a singular global rating for its multinational, multi-dimensional brand equity. These flaws may help to explain some of the peculiarities in the current top 100. In 2007, was Coca-Cola really the world's most valuable brand? If you had a choice between owning the Microsoft brand or the world's top 12 luxury brands (including Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Porsche and Armani, to name a third of them), would you really be better off going with software? And can Interbrand seriously exclude Wal-Mart completely from its list on the technicality that 90% of its revenues come from the US? Wal-Mart, not a strong, global brand? Come on. In fairness, Interbrand does, very quietly, acknowledge the flaws in its method, but argues that finding accurate international metrics for brand strength is all but impossible to do without clients engaging its services. There is another method. Enter WPP’s Brand Z Top 100, an alternative brand valuation system that uses up-to-date international consumer data to value the world's leading brands. 30 SECONDS ON ... INTERBRAND'S TOP 100 GLOBAL BRANDS - Ford was the biggest loser in Interbrand's 2007 survey. Its value dropped from $11bn in 2006 to $8.9bn in 2007 - a 19% drop. - Coca-Cola was rated the most valuable brand at $65.3bn, followed by Microsoft in second place at $58.7bn. - The biggest winner was Google, which posted a 44% uplift in its value from $12.3bn in 2006 to $17.8bn. - Apple's value also rose from $9.1bn to $11bn on the back of the continued success of its iPhone. - The highest-ranked non-US brand was Finnish telecoms company Nokia, placed fifth in the table, with a value of $33.6bn. - The highest-placed UK brand was HSBC, which came 22nd in the table, with a valuation of $13.5bn. Source: Interbrand/BusinessWeek Sponsored By: Brand Aid You follow the same steps and address the same brand design components when repositioning a brand as you do when first designing the brand. But, brand repositioning is more difficult than initially positioning a brand because you must first help the customer “unlearn” the current brand positioning (easier said than done). Three actions can aid your success in this process: (1) carefully crafted communication, (2) new products, packaging, etc. that emphasize the new positioning and (3) associations with other brands (co-branding, co-marketing, ingredient branding, strategic alliances, etc.) that reinforce the new brand positioning. You should not rely upon an advertising agency, a brand consulting company, or your marketing department to craft your corporate or organizational brand’s design. This exercise is so critical to your organization’s success that your organization’s leadership team and its marketing/brand management leaders should develop it, preferably with the help and facilitation of an outside brand-positioning expert. We have more to share on Repositioning here and Brand Positioning here. Sponsored By: Brand Aid In the 90s we all got a bit carried away with the Internet. Marketers wondered when Internet marketing expenditure would exceed traditional forms of communication. One bestselling article in the Harvard Business Review concluded that the Internet would render brands obsolete. Well beyond a decade later and some marketers have relatively mundane expectations of the Internet. Perhaps because everyone has created a high-information, brand-centric website and many companies now sell their products online. But there is a growing role for the Internet that has far more serious implications for brands. Implications that cannot be ignored even by the most web-phobic of marketers. Consider two highly successful, but hugely divergent, brands. Moben Kitchens is one of the UK's biggest suppliers and fitters of kitchens. It has an impressive website which showcases some of the company's attractive kitchen designs and lists more than 200 of its outlets. Skinny Cow is a low-fat ice-cream bar. Originally launched in the US, the brand was introduced to the UK in January of 2004 by Richmond Foods. Skinny Cow's website,(UK version) shows off its three flavours and makes much of the fact that at less than 2% fat and 90 calories a bar, it is a genuine treat for those trying to lose weight. Frankly, neither website is stunning. But what is interesting is what happens when you leave the controlled environment of the intended brand page and run a Google search on the two brands. Skinny Cow's search reveals a plethora of gushing, thankful comments from consumers. Ruth rates the bars as 'better than sex' and has been recommending Skinny Cow to all her fellow Weightwatchers. Claire describes the snack as 'heaven on a stick (and not on my thighs)'. Terrie provides Skinny Cow lovers with a tip on how to create Skinny Cow desserts. Carole has written a poem to thank the Skinny Cow. Geraldine admits it is the first time she has ever written to a manufacturer to thank it for its product. Angela has read all the comments, but until she tried Skinny Cow, did not believe that a low-fat food could taste so good. Moben is a very different story. It would be hard to find another brand that is so bound up with despair. Mrs Wright was left with two small children and no kitchen for eight weeks. Mrs Fewings offers a single piece of advice: 'Do not touch Moben'. Neil has spent the past two weeks picketing his local Moben store in protest at the quality of his kitchen and Moben's inability to reply to his complaints. Mrs Grant is now into her sixth month waiting for her kitchen to be completed. Charles from Leicester, meanwhile, has reached 'breaking point' because of Moben. Marketers have always been keen to focus on the inputs to consumer decision-making they can control. All other influences are confined to that most derisory of black boxes - word of mouth. In truth, customer-to-customer communications outweigh anything an agency can come up with. A customer, just like you, speaking in a voice, like yours, for no other reason than to help another is a supremely affective and effective form of communication. The Internet does not create this voice, but it does amplify it. With the introduction and rise of social media its impact grows daily. For up-and-coming brands such as Skinny Cow with genuine differentiation, the medium offers an enormous opportunity to build a brand without the big budgets of the indolent marketer. For under-performing brands such as Moben, it spells eventual disaster. The Internet does not make brands obsolete, just the bad ones. 30 SECONDS ON ... BRANDS' USE OF THE INTERNET - The Q4 2007 Bellwether Report,the quarterly survey of marketing spend,
revealed that traditional media budgets were revised down for the first time in a year. In contrast Internet spending increased. - The same report indicated that companies now allocate 9% of their marketing spend to the web. - The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced in June that Internet advertising revenues reached $5.8 billion for the first quarter of 2008. The 2008 first quarter revenues are an 18.2 percent increase over the same period in 2007, and represent the second highest quarter ever recorded, after Q4 2007’s $5.9 billion. - Search is one of the main drivers of brands' use of new media channels. The IAB reported that Search marketing continues to dominate the online advertising space with a sustained growth of about 40% yearly since 2004. Sponsored By: Brand Aid There's a coveted place beyond brand preference. It's called brand insistence. You're there when your brand is perceived to be the only viable solution for the customer’s need. Put another way, the customer does not pursue substitutes if the brand is not available. The brand has established a consideration set of one. Achieving brand insistence requires overcoming 6 of 7 steps in the ladder of the mind. The consideration set continuum looks like this: • I would never choose to buy this brand Brand insistence is reserved for those brands that have been carefully designed to posses these characteristics: relevant differentiated benefits for their target customers, ability to build strong emotional connections, have a high degree of awareness, are perceived to deliver deep value for the price and are easily accessible. These drivers work together to move customers from 1. being aware of your brand 2. purchasing your brand 3. preferring your brand 4. being loyal to your brand to 5. insisting on your brand. Sponsored By: Brand Aid When 15-year-old Kenny Howard finished pinstriping his first bike in 1944, he knew he had found his calling. Pinstriping, the painting of decorative patterns onto automobiles, was a dying art, but by 1958 Kenny had single-handedly reinvented it. He moved on to pinstriping cars, and soon his striking designs had garnered a dedicated following across the US. Howard was an unpleasant and obstinate man, renowned for being 'as stubborn as a Dutchman'. He hated both the fame and the money that had started to follow him, and in an attempt to dodge both (and a rumoured manslaughter rap) he went underground in 1958. By the time he resurfaced 10 years later in Arizona, with a drinking problem and two kids, his designs had made him a cult figure. A xenophobe to the last, his dying words in 1992 were allegedly 'Heil Hitler'. Howard died a 20th-century footnote, but his most famous design, the 'Flying Eyeball', and his artistic signature, 'Von Dutch', were about to become a big part of the early 21st-century brandscape. Four years after his death, his daughters sold the Von Dutch name and by 2000, Danish entrepreneur Tonny Sorensen was chief executive of Von Dutch Originals. The perilous descent down the fashion cycle had begun. It started with those who hate fashion the most: a handful of LA bikers and motor-heads looking for something uncommercial and unaffected. Nothing stays secret in LA for long, however, and the magical iconography that Howard created half a century earlier was about to weave its magic all over again. First, the genuinely cool alpha-consumers co-opted the authentic look of the biker brand into their outfits. Then came the celebrities. In 2002, Justin Timberlake made headlines at the Grammys after-party while sporting a Von Dutch cap. Paris Hilton adopted the brand. Britney even got married, first time round, in Von Dutch. In 2003, sales rocketed. From nowhere, the brand turned over $33m (£17.6m). Chief executive Sorensen announced ambitious plans to extend the brand to cosmetics, shoes, sunglasses and haute couture. Production increased. Distribution expanded. Sales continued to grow. The brand began to die. Just when it needed to be focused and protected, the brand was stretched and diluted. 2004 was the year we learned that Von Dutch wasn't being run by marketers, just people who thought they were. Today, the bikers who once loved Von Dutch are long gone. The celebrities who flaunted it on MTV wouldn't be seen dead (without a million-dollar endorsement deal) wearing it. Instead, they've been replaced by eight-year-old girls, hairdressers from Grimsby and Slovakian tourists. We're at the end of the fashion cycle. Next come deep discounts, Oxfam and, finally, silence. Twenty years from now, Von Dutch will make a brief return as retro gear for daughters that are, as yet, just a proverbial glint in the eye. There's a difference between sales and marketing. It's the difference between having 10% of the market forever and 60% for 18 months. It's the difference between using your distribution, communication, design and pricing to attract as many customers as possible or using it to repel those who don't fit your target profile. It's the difference between your brand becoming a passing fad or an enduring icon. It's the reason Sorensen has seen his sales go south. And it's also the reason that the ghost of Howard, the great Von Dutch, is laughing his ass off ... 30 SECONDS ON ... VON DUTCH - In the late 1950s, customers drove from all over the US in the hope of having their car 'Dutched' by Kenny Howard. Car owners were never allowed to dictate the style of the pinstriping they required and were limited to specifying the amount of time they wanted to purchase from Dutch. The rest was up to him. Occasionally, when he was in a sour mood or if he had taken a dislike to a particular customer, he would vastly over-inflate his fee, usually to no avail. - Despite his popularity and potential riches, Dutch eschewed the celebrity lifestyle. 'I make a point of staying right at the edge of poverty,' he once declared. 'I don't mess around with unnecessary stuff, so I don't need much money.' - The backlash against Von Dutch is already on the internet. Black market T-shirts bearing the logos 'Von Douche' and 'Von Chav' are selling online. Sponsored By: Brand Aid "The most powerful element in advertising is the truth." Sponsored By: Brand Aid If you have been following Apple's share price over the past two weeks, you'll know that it's a stock with a story. Down as much as 5% one day and then back up 4% the next. For once, it's not the US economy that is causing the jitters on Wall Street. It's more simple, but much more troubling from an Apple perspective - everyone is worried about Steve. It started in June, when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs took the stage at its worldwide developers' conference. There to announce the new 3G iPhone, Jobs ended up making all the headlines. He looked pale and had clearly lost a great deal of weight. Most chief executives can afford to lose a few pounds, but Jobs is different. In 2003, he was successfully treated for a rare form of pancreatic cancer. It took Apple nine months to announce that Jobs was ill then, so, this time round, questions began to be asked about his health almost immediately. Apple claimed Jobs was suffering from a common bug, but the issue would not go away, especially when he did not appear for a second-quarter earnings call on 21 July. During the call, Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer was asked about Jobs' health. He replied enigmatically: 'Steve loves Apple. He serves as CEO at the pleasure of Apple's board. He has no plans to leave Apple. Steve's health is a private matter.' The issue erupted, not just among the techno audience but also the investment community. As one portfolio manager put it: 'He is the driving force behind Apple. Without Steve, the stock could easily be cut in half or more.' Blogs openly speculated on the health of Jobs and the prospects of Apple without him. The share price wobbled. Finally, on 24 July, Jobs intervened. Joe Nocera, an award-winning journalist for The New York Times, who had criticised Apple's handling of Jobs' illness, was surprised to get a call from the man himself. 'This is Steve Jobs. You think I'm an arrogant (expletive) who thinks he's above the law, and I think you're a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong,' he said. Jobs went on to describe his condition in full to Nocera, off the record. The journalist reported that Jobs' health problems were more than a 'common bug' but weren't life-threatening. Apple's boss did not have cancer. Jobs is a unique figure in terms of the Apple brand. He is more than the founder of the firm - he is its epitome. He presents all the new products. He signs off every major decision. He has no succession plan, and with good reason. The last time that Jobs empowered an executive at Apple, it was ex-PepsiCo marketer John Scully, whom he made Apple chief executive in 1983. Barely two years later, Scully had out-manouevred Jobs and got him fired from his own company. It took Jobs more than a decade to take charge again. Ever since, he has run his brand with the despotic style of a man who will not make the same mistake twice. Combine that with Apple's opaque corporate culture, and the way it has handled Jobs' illness starts to make more sense. With all its marketing savvy, surely Apple could have handled this better? It's a classic case of crisis management that could have closed down the whole topic in June. Instead, Apple has had an uncomfortable summer - and questions persist about the unhealthy degree to which Apple depends on Steve. 30 SECONDS ON ... POSSIBLE SUCCESSORS TO STEVE JOBS - Scott Forstall is the senior vice-president of iPhone software. Seen as the brains behind the iPhone, Forstall has worked with Jobs for a decade. The current favourite, he has the technical background and Jobs' trust. - Phil Schiller is the most senior marketer at Apple and has been part of its executive leadership team since Jobs' return to Apple in 1997. Perhaps the Apple executive most comfortable in the spotlight, he is famous for occasionally sharing the stage with Jobs during new product demonstrations. - Jonathan Ive is the principal designer at Apple, responsible for products such as the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. Ive, from Chingford in Essex, studied design at Newcastle Polytechnic before heading to Apple in 1992. He is seen by many fans as the true inheritor of the Apple brand. - It is widely thought Steve Jobs, 53, will stay. He is unlikely to consider a replacement in the next decade. Sponsored By: Brand Aid |
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