LOCKDOWN WINNERS & LOSERS
OK so this one isn’t about smaller brands, but as I said at the start, sometimes we can learn from the big boys. Sometimes it’s what not to do.
As a vocal opponent of the lockdowns we suffered, I was constantly stirred by the injustice of the ‘Winners and Losers of Lockdown’ - which we discussed a lot at the time with reference to our own clients, and big brands like Peloton, Zoom and Amazon.
(It’s worth bearing in mind that the ‘average billionaire’ increased their wealth 30% more or less as a direct result of the Covid measures, and the top ten wealthiest doubled their money. In the US, a new billionaire was created every day during this period, which represented the greatest shift in wealth to the seriously wealthy in history. Of course it was smaller businesses that took the brunt with millions closing through no fault of their own. In the US in addition, black-owned businesses suffered disproportionately badly during this period.)
Amazon was of course due early on to be one of the big winners. But they kept the fear in full flow just in case, as the only big brand advertiser relishing using fully-masked humans in all their advertising.
And what Jeff (“Your margin is my opportunity” Bezos) gained in market share from smaller competitors during the measures he was going to keep. But what about other beneficiaries of the effects of ‘unjust enrichment’ like Peloton. How would they fare once we were let out of Covid jail?
PELOTON POST COVID
Well in the case of Peloton, not very well it seems.
So what was their approach to brand management then?
YOUR BRAND IS NOT ABOUT YOU BUD
Sometimes my own profession leaves me completely baffled. Marketing is a mixture of science and art. Art is the spark of creativity that can lower the cost of doing the scientific part (creative work gets more cut-through and is therefore more efficient). And the science is using recognised brand management techniques taught within the big brand houses, and by outfits like the Ehrenburg-Bass Institute and on Mark Ritson’s Mini MBA.
The science involves meticulous, but well planned market research, laborious analysis, detailed planning and a scrupulous attention to detail and self-discipline. (When John Pepper then CEO of my alma mater Procter & Gamble was asked what the most important attributes of a great brand manager were he said: “Thoroughness and self-discipline”.)
The Peloton ‘re-brand’ is very reminiscent of the recent Bud Light debacle. Reading about these examples of brand management always makes me wonder: If these people were accountancy professionals for instance, what would their equivalent acts be? “I thought we’d compile our results without the numbers this year – here’s a picture I drew of our piles of money”? These marketers seem as shameless as that.
This was (former) Bud Light’s brand manager (VP of Marketing) Alissa Heinerscheid on ‘progressing’ Bud Light just before the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco.
'”And representation. Is it sort of the heart of evolution? You've got to see people who reflect you in the work .” (my emphasis)
“And we had this hangover. I mean, Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out of touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
“What I need to do to help this brand to evolve... this is my passion point.”
Rule 101 of brand marketing: Your brand is not you and your consumers aren’t you. And progressing your brand is not about finding customers who are more like you (a middle class ‘progressive’). I don’t think Alissa really liked Bud Light’s drinkers very much – even though they are large in number and probably perfectly respectable ‘good ‘ol boys’ in the main.
I might be excessively harsh on Alissa, but never mind her obviously progressive agenda and motivations. What about?
· Data they had on who was drinking Bud Light?
· Insights they had on their habits, attitudes and worldview?
· The fact that the brand was arguably ‘their brand’ and not hers?
· Creative that appealed to the new younger Bud Light target which was also loved by the existing one?
If you want to see what acting on the answers to most of the above questions looks like all you have to do is check out Bud Light’s masterful 1999 ‘Wassup’ ad. The humour and aimless camaraderie shines through in a way that is still funny and heart-warming today. Subtly inclusive for it’s time, it started a habit among my less reverent friends of ironically greeting each other with ‘Yo!’ Something we do to this day.
SO TO PELOTON
So apart from having survived being caught out running actually sexist ads in the age of Woke (‘The gift that gives back’ – buy your wife a Peloton and the gift will give back in the form of a wife fit as a butcher’s dog), and a soap star expiring on a visibly branded Peloton, what has happened at Peloton recently?
Well according to Marketing Week they are undergoing a ‘Re-brand’ having posted a £2.8bn loss in their last financial year, and with their stock price currently off it’s mid-lockdown 24/12/2020 high of $162 at a current $7.06.
So what’s going on? I have to admit reading about Peloton’s marketing, I end up feeling – as I did about Bud Light – “Where’s the marketing in their marketing?”
Oh Boy:
“After seeing revenue and profit plummet, Peloton is betting on a relaunch to turnaround the business, moving away from its bike brand positioning and pursuing a new visual identity to appeal to more customers.”
Again, it’s what peloton’s own marketing people say that seems to betray them:
This includes:
The company doesn’t want to be “perceived as an at home bike company” any more.
The brand has a new look and ‘more inclusive’ campaigns but: The brand isn’t betting on this as a long-term platform. “It’s more a moment in time to show where the company, the product and the community are today.”
“a lot of people think that we’re predominantly an at home bike company. Shifting away from that perception is going to be key here and in everything we do.”
So this begs similar questions to those that Bud Light brand management didn’t seem to ask. For 99.9% of the public. Peloton is ‘About the bike’. That’s a good thing. At least people associate it with something. So how is the brand going to retain this important piece of memory structure while deploying a long term strategy aimed at being remembered as something else – and it seems something more - all sorts of fitness equipment? We are none the wiser.
The shift is talked about as though it is something simple and mechanical. This is talk of re-positioning a brand as though it were a piece of furniture. Overnight you can move it across the room and in the morning it is over there. But you can’t. Brands exist only in the fleeting impressions consumers have (or more often don’t) in their minds. These impressions can only be changed by marketing that is reflective of those who bought to date - and time and money.
Just wanting to be somewhere else (in the delicate hands of anyone other than your current customers) doesn’t take you there as Allissa Heinerscheid found to her cost. First of all you need to know where you are going and why (vision and mission), secondly you need to know how – strategy. Thirdly – over a number of years – you have to consistently execute that strategy.
An overnight change of visual identity as executed by Peloton might not do it. Perhaps ‘Peloton man’ (see above for toxic masculinity) behaved so badly that white men had to be expunged from the brand as you can see from this new campaign image (I suppose one could do a pretty funny before and after spoof of Peloton campaigns on that basis. . .)
Fine. But who is Peloton man? (I strongly suspect Peloton is more of a man-thing.) Perhaps he is after all a little like the Peloton man who bought his wife a Peloton. If so, is there a danger he might just come home and on seeing their latest campaign take an automatic weapon to his exercise bike?