Ant Hill Marketing

Okay, GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corporation) hasn’t been wholly owned by General Motors for years, so I understand that the headline is a little bit misleading. But when you have a brand, your audience’s perception is a big part of that equation. And when GM sold their ownership share of the financial arm in 2006, there was no name change. By keeping “General Motors” in their name, it stands to reason that people would get confused.  And until recently, GMAC probably benefited from having that affiliation. But no more…

Since GM went belly-up – and let’s not forget the recent troubles banks are having – GMAC took a strategic move, and re-positioned  their brand. I know I am a little bit biased, but good for them for putting those TARP funds to good use.

During this banking crisis, GMAC made a decision to become a “trusted partner” with their customers. They drew a line in the sand, and are making the lofty claim that they are “a bank that will always be open, accountable, and honest.” Yes, honest!

It is certainly refreshing to hear a bank make these kinds of promises. Ally has already launched  a very fun marketing campaign that very clearly states they won’t “hide behind fine print” or “hold out” on you because “it’s the right thing to do.”

There is nothing wrong with setting the bar high. And I applaud Ally for having the courage to actually do right by their customers. If they can follow through with meeting their brand promise then they have an opportunity to really stand out in the banking brand landscape. After doing an unscientific brand survey on twitter, response to the service and new brand position has been favorable, especially when it comes to their promise about rates.

There have been some bumps in the road too, as seen on customer Ryan Finnie’s blog, where a rate switch caused him to question the brand by using their very own advertising. Or on the Suns Financial Diary blog, where their user experience with signing up for an account didn’t quite pan out to the friendly partnership they had hoped.

But regardless of these bumps, there is definitely something encouraging in both of these examples. Ally bank contacted each, and listened, if not to resolve the problem, but to help make all their customers’ banking experience better. And to me, that is definitely not banking as usual. The bank brand is still young, it will be interesting to see how they carry the brand forward.

In the words of Target: Our mission is to be the preferred shopping destination by delivering outstanding value and an exceptional guest experience by consistently fulfilling our Expect More. Pay Less. brand promise. No doubt in my mind: they do deliver on this promise. Shopping the store this weekend for two advertised items, neither were in stock at the store we visited. Did they let us walk away unsatisfied? No way. A cashier went so far as to shut down her register to go check on the item we wanted; not finding it, she used her hand-held to find another store that had it in stock. And at the second store, a sales associate hiked from his register to a back-store aisle and then hiked back to his station and spent 10 minutes on the phone for us finding a second item we wanted at another store and making sure it was held for us. Granted, we had to do a bit of unanticipated driving around, but these two employees went way out of their way to make sure we came away satisfied with our Target shopping experience. It’s one thing for a store to say it will deliver on its brand; it’s another for each employee we encountered to do it willingly and happily. That’s brand done right. High five to Target.

Companies spend a considerable amount of time and energy differentiating their products and services from their competition. But often times they fail to follow through with the imagery they choose to represent themselves.

Take these images from two successful brands:

iMac product shot. Photo courtesy of Apple.

Apple: The style is modern. The tone is cutting edge and clean. Obviously a computer for the rest of us.

adidas Soccer Ad

adidas: Style and tone combine to show the passion, individuality and action of sport.

Picture perfect.

We’ve all heard the adage “A picture is worth 1000 words.” Its true. The style, tone and subject of imagery all say something about a brand. And if you want the most out of an image – that “something” needs to support what your brand stands for. Not to mention that there is nothing more embarrassing for a brand manager (or a designer) than having your ad show up with the same stock photo as your competitor.

Granted that original art doesn’t come cheap, even for large companies, especially when measured as just one line item when developing one piece of collateral. But, when you consider its value to the overall image of a brand, its an investment for the long run. Original artwork also gives you the ultimate control over the message behind the image and adds to the uniqueness of a brand. The right image and visual language of a photo will communicate, engage and identify with your audience in ways that words can’t.

So I ask you dear reader, how have you made the case for original art? And what do you do when you can’t?

Time to make the donuts.

As if it weren’t already difficult to select the perfect donut at the shop, Dunkin Donuts launched an online campaign, engaging customers to create the next, best donut. Sweet. While the concept isn’t necessarily original (taken from many a marketing playbook like developing the next M&M color, the next HaagenDaz flavor, etc.), it is engaging and like a single donut, makes you want more. With the dangle of $12K for the winning donut, it’s all but assured that Dunkin will get many a creation.

This type of effort helps highlight why engaging your brand with both your internal and external audiences is so vital.  Engaging both employees and customers energizes and invigorates both the brand and the people around you. It gets people excited. It helps build evangelists who continue to support your brand. Dunkin Donuts has more than 460,000 fans on its Facebook page and more than 11,000 followers on Twitter.  They also have YouTube channel.  And minus a few downfalls with this effort – website isn’t mobile friendly – it is fun. This promotional effort is part of a $100 million national campaign developed by Hill, Holliday in Boston, American Runs on Dunkin. Time will tell how many donut creations they receive but the endearment and trust they build with customers is worth much more than the next donut creation.  Unless of course it’s filled with chocolate kreme.

New versus old packaging.

How about a little brand to go with that morning juice? Tropicana felt the squeeze (well their parent PepsiCo did) after launching a new brand look to juice packaging only to call “do-over” after customers and other industry experts cried foul.  Forget that the design was generic and that it was hard to really “see” on the store shelf (I admit I walked right by them), what about being true to the brand?  Tropicana has positioned itself around ”fresh” –  the iconic image of an orange, of picking the orange off the tree and getting that taste right into the consumer’s mouth.  The orange with a straw tells it all.  Was PepsiCo jumping on the “bargain” bandwagon by strategically trying to genericize the packaging? Probably not.  But it does seem like the bigger picture of the brand position was lost.  While the execs at PepsiCo may have spent millions to develop the new and now pulled package design, at least they shouldn’t cry over spilled juice.  The Tropicana brand has stood the test of time and it’s still fresh.