Brand: Citi (Citigroup)
Execution: TV and Print
Link: Not Yet Available
Target: Citibank Customers
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
This is a new campaign called Citi – Very Rewarding.” Citi promotes its rewards program with Citi – Very Rewarding which features two eccentric East European-sounding characters, Roman and Victor showing the many ways they can earn Citi rewards points. In the six TV spots and three print executions, the pair show how easy it is to earn Citi rewards point by doing everything from basic banking to paying their Citimortgage to using the Citi Premier Pass Credit card. The spots are directed by Jared Hess, best known as the director of Napolean Dynamite and Nacho Libre.

What Works:
The brand strategy is obvious here – Citi wants to let everyone know that they can earn points for basic banking activities as easily as for using Citi Premier Pass credit cards. Given this strategy, Fallon has done a solid job of creating a quirky campaign that is interesting enough to grab our attention. They chose a hot director, Jared Hess and parodied a popular movie (Borat) to come up with a campaign that communicates and should have good recall.

What Doesn’t:
Citigroup has made a strategic error with this campaign. There is nothing wrong with letting people know that you’re introducing new features and benefits to one of your core consumer programs (Citi Rewards). By spending $100 million or more to do this, however, Citi is changing their brand positioning, and not for the better. With the previous Fallon campaign, “Live Richly”, Citi accomplished a minor miracle in banking brand positioning. They had managed to position their bank by defining their core user as someone who cared about more than money and Citi as the bank that enabled people to worry about living rather than money.

Fallon spokesperson Rosemary Abendroth tells us that Citi will indeed have a new branding campaign but that it will be “some time” until we see it. For the time being, the Citi brand will be moved forward with product promotion like the entertaining identity theft campaign and this new effort.

By displacing rather than supplementing the “Live Richly” campaign, however, Citibank is essentially swapping a branding campaign based on the type of user who might be attracted to Citibank (the consumer who understands that life is not just about money) for a “features and benefits” brand positioning. The “Live Richly” brand positioning was clear and defendable. By using television and huge spend levels, Citi is creating new brand positioning with these product spots whether they like it or not.

And like their consumers, Citibank will almost certainly see a quick reward for this behavior. Citibank will almost certainly impress its own consumers and competitive users with the richness of its rewards program which now rewards basic banking. This will undoubtedly boost quarterly profits and send chills down the spines of Wall Street analysts during this critical holiday season when people’s credit card purchasing soars.

Unfortunately, Citi is playing the brand positioning game like a novice chess player, not even looking a single move ahead. When Citi was the bank that understands that its not about money, no other bank could compete to own that position. With Citi now being the bank that offers the richest rewards for banking activity, any bank can compete. In fact to own Citi’s new brand positioning, all Bank of America or JP Morgan Chase would have to do would be to offer richer rewards. Does that sound like an arms race in the making to you?

Tactically we also feel that Citi made a mistake by using Fallon to execute this campaign. It’s a little like asking Matisse to paint your aluminum siding. Fallon’s creative horsepower will be far better used on a campaign that is truly strategic – the upcoming successor to the ‘live richly’ theme. Here they are wasted on this tactical effort which could have been better accomplished with a direct mail brochure.

Branding Bottom Line:
We eagerly await the next $100mm campaign from Citi announcing free toasters with direct deposit.

Issue: The brand impact of corporate reputation
Commentary by: David

Stories about Wal-Mart increasingly reflect one common element: municipalities, cities and regulators teaming up to thwart the Bentonville giant on different fronts while Target and other competitors slide through unchallenged. Two recent cases of this concern Wal-Mart’s attempts to get a retail banking certification in Utah and its ongoing difficulties in opening new stores in urban areas. In the first case, Wal-Mart is seeking to gain a charter that Target already owns, in the second we see story after story of Wal-Mart expansion being blocked while rivals traipse through unchallenged.

We are stating the obvious when we say that Wal-Mart’s bad reputation is keeping the company from pursuing its strategic goals and hurting the stock price, but we think the problem is deeper. Wal-Mart has failed to understand the core brand promise and in doing so has systematically undermined the equity of its brand by repeatedly violating the trust of its consumers. Now consumers around the nation and their agents are punishing Wal-Mart and this punishment hurts consumers as well as Wal-Mart.

What is this ‘brand promise’ and how does it affect corporate reputation? The brand promise is simple, but it has significant implications. A brand offers a value proposition. It promises the consumer that it will maintain this value proposition over time, and that the brand will enhance the consumer’s experience and reward the trust during the lifetime of the consumer relationship.

Wal-Mart executed extremely well against part of this promise. It did a great job of eliminating the ‘rural premium’ – the extra price for goods that people in less-populated regions of the U.S. used to pay.

But the brand promise has a second part and Wal-Mart missed it entirely. The brand promise is also about trust – gaining and keeping the trust of the consumer. It is impossible for a brand to maintain consumer trust when it is working against the interest of its consumers. This is where corporate reputation comes in.

This advertising blog cannot judge the reality of stories that Wal-Mart employed ruthless business tactics to put local suppliers out of business (initially working with a local florist, for example, then becoming the largest customer and driving out the other business then finally sourcing elsewhere to elimate the supplier and Wal-Mart’s local competition), or the claims that Wal-Mart has treated employees poorly. It is clear that Wal-Mart is no Starbucks when it comes to employees (recently announcing that it will increase part-timers as a percentage of its workforce), as it tries to get more out of its labor force and reduce health care costs.

So while Wal-Mart’s brand offers excellent selection and low prices it also seems to hurt the community and harm the social infrastructure of the communities it serves. At best this is terrible PR management, at worst it is bad business and bad branding. But clearly this situation emerges from Wal-Mart’s lack of understanding of the brand promise. Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott has tried to speak directly to consumers with what he calls the ‘unfiltered truth’ at WalMartFacts.com. But Scott is not thinking like a brand manager and the actions he is taking show little sensitivity for the brand relationship that Wal-Mart should be building with consumers.

Which is a shame, because the retail banking license could be a major boon for consumers in the long-run. While community banks could suffer if Wal-Mart tries to create a middle-class megabank, the lower-income Wal-Mart customer is dramatically underbanked. Many of these people do not have checking accounts and pay dramatic fees to cash checks (more on this here). Wal-Mart could and should serve these people better than the predatory lenders who take their money now.

Beyond this, Wal-Mart is making other moves which may benefit consumers and the environment. Their packaging reduction initiative promises to initiate a green revolution among retailers and suppliers. And by cutting prescription drug prices (albeit for a limited number of drugs at the moment) and opening cheap, efficient health clinics in stores they may do more for the state of health care in America than Washington has in the past decade.

But Wal-Mart efforts may founder because in their single-minded focus on lowering prices, they have forgotten to take care of their corporate reputation and uphold the brand promise to their consumers. Which is bad brand karma for everyone.

Brand: Kibbles ‘n Bits (Del Monte)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Families with Dogs
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A German Shepherd stands in a bathroom, front paws up on the sink, looking into a mirror and gargling as a human would.  A pre-teen girl in pajamas approaches the bathroom door suspiciously.  We see the dog again, gargling and rinsing.  The girl opens the bathroom door.  “Duke?” she says incredulously.  The dog makes a Scooby Doo-like ‘hmmm?’ sound and turns its head towards her.  The spot cuts to a product shot of Kibbles ‘n Bits Brushing Bites and a voiceover says,    “There’s a better way to get rid of dog breath.  Introducing Kibbles ‘n Bits brushing bites.  It’s the only dog food with these special bits that cleans his teeth and freshens his breath.  New Kibbles ‘ n Bits Brushing Bites. More taste, more joy.”  The spot ends with the tagline “Kibbles ‘n Bits, Kibbles ‘n Bits,” as a dog pushes a bowl around with his nose, then licks the camera.

What Works:
This spot is an interesting rebuttal of the maxim, “traditional advertising is dead.”  It uses time tested (some would say time-worn) methods to produce a memorable, likeable spot.  In fact, IAG research rated this commercial as September 2006′s most-liked ad, with a favorability index of 156.

What works here?  The ad starts out with a simple attention-getter – a dog doing something that a human would normally do.  The old trick here is using animal actors, but it is somewhat more forgiveable for a pet food brand.  By anthropomorphizing the dog, Del Monte plays to one of our oldest curiosities: what sets us apart from our pets.

Next, there is a clear exposition of the problem the brand will solve (this is a simple problem-solution spot).  Dogs have bad breath and all pet owners know this.  Then we get both a solution and a very good product shot with the introduction of Kibbles ‘n Bits Brushing Bites.  There is also an end benefit shot of Duke licking the girl’s face later in the spot.  The tagline at the end is meant to reinforce the brand.

What Doesn’t:
This spot was the most-liked ad of September 2007 but it was not on the list of most-recalled commercials.  This points to the problem with using cute things like children and animals in advertising.  They tend to overwhelm the commercial message in our memory.  This advertising blog believes this spot works, but Kibbles ‘n Bits needs to try harder to create a unique hook between the cute animal, product benefit and the brand.

Connecting to this issue of recall is brand positioning that is category generic.  Kibble ‘n Bits may be introducing a new product, but ‘fresher breath’ is not an ownable benefit.  Del Monte is leaving the brand vulnerable to competitive poaching by promoting this valuable but generic benefit without creating distinctive user imagery or a stronger proprietary advantage.

Branding Bottom Line:
Can we put those Brushing Bites into breakfast cereal?

Brand: Vonage
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Rate-Shopping Men
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
This campaign features several spots showing women making bad decisions which are briefly forestalled by Vonage.  The newest spot spoofs a teenage horror film where a woman hears reports of chainsaw killer “Larry the Lumberjack” when her lights suddenly go out and her door opens.  She hears breathing from the basement and announces, “I’m gonna come down.”  Then she is hit on the back of the head by a Vonage box.  She picks it up and hears the Vonage announcer say, “Talk all you want, just $24.99 a month.”  “Sweet,” she says as the orange Vonage Van speeds off and  she proceeds into the basement where we hear the chainsaw revving as the killer awaits.  The voiceover says “Vonage, one smart decision among many, many stupid ones,” to the song “Woo Hoo” by the 5.6.7.8′s.  The spot ends with the Vonage logo with contact information.  A previous spot in this campaign is “Dolphins” which follows the same format except that the woman is a blonde on the beach who sees dorsal fins circling ominously and says, “Honey, look dolphins” and is briefly interrupted by the Vonage box knocking her to the ground.

What Works:
Vonage took a page from the Yahoo! playbook and licensed a distinctive piece of music (Woo Hoo from the album “Bomb the Twist” by the 5.6.7.8′s) for this spot.  This advertising blog thinks this was a good choice because the links between music and memory in advertising are well established.  Before we are barraged with comments on this particular song we agree that it may be annoying to some, but memorable nonetheless.

The pacing and execution of these spots is also good.  The humor will appeal strongly to some viewers.

What Doesn’t:
We understand that Vonage and Arnold are aiming for campy, light-hearted humor.  However we think that the choice of subjects is ill-advised and the resulting brand positioning is weak.

The key decision Vonage makes with this spot is to revive the old stereotype of the dumb blonde (expanded to brunettes with the latest spot) to show that Vonage is such a smart choice that even a stupid person can recognize it.   This is one stereotype that is better left for dead and we don’t think Vonage made a very smart choice to use it as the basis of a campaign which needs to appeal to men and women alike.

Vonage is also very light on the support and description in this campaign.  While the VOIP company is undoubtedly gaining brand awareness, it is not at all clear to us that Vonage should assume that consumers know what VOIP is or are comfortable foresaking their traditional phones without further assurance.  Vonage should be looking towards Verizon and Cingular which go to great pains to stress their reliability and support rather than Old Navy when creating advertising.

The Vonage “people do dumb things” campaign has shocking received an Effie award.  We recognize that Vonage must have some sales data to show that people are buying more and more Vonage phones and becoming more comfortable with VOIP.   But we very much doubt that these new spots could be responsible for this underlying trend which seems more driven by word-of-mouth and a significant price advantage over traditional phone service than these questionable spots.

Branding Bottom Line:
Vonage re-creates the B-movie.  We stick to our landline.

Brand: Cingular
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Parents of Teens
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David
Description:
The spot covers what sounds like a typical fight between a teenage girl and her mother over getting a cellphone. The tone is angry, but the words are unexpected:

Mom – I have not had it up to here with you young lady.
Girl – Why do you insist on treating me like an adult?
Mom – Because you insist on acting like one. Now you’re getting this new phone.
Girl – It’s so small. I really like it. Why is it always what I want?
Mom – Well do you have any idea how much money this is not going to cost me?
Girl – I love you.
Mom – I know you really mean that.
Girl – You never hated me and you never will.
Mom – You are the most grateful little …

The voiceover interrupts with “Cingular’s changing the conversation about cellphones. Introducing the newest GO phone. Pick your plan or pay as you go. Get all you need to make everybody happy. Cingular”

What Works:
The simple narrative technique of reversing the expected dialogue between mom and teenage daughter has the dramatic effect of making this spot engaging and memorable. This works because Cingular and BBDO have nailed the parent-child cellphone argument down to the facial expressions and body language spot on. At first this looks and feels just like the routine struggle for dominance that teenagers and parents the world over would recognize. Only when the words begin to filter past our advertising censor does the unexpected message startle us. Just at the point where we are fully engaged, we get the product message. The brand positioning is strong here: Cingular gives you products that make your life with teenagers easier to manage. This advertising blog strongly supports the end-benefit orientation of this pitch. Since parents are the gatekeepers of the teen phone it is important to recognize that a phone which makes the negotiation process between teen and parent easier is the end benefit for the parent.

What Doesn’t:
It is possible that the very conventional backdrop of this ad might keep some consumers from tuning in at all. This is the risk with running an ad which relies entirely on the audio track to reveal its brilliance, but we think it works here.

Branding Bottom Line:
We’re ready to do a teenager swap and live in the Cingular household.

Issue: Target Warns Studios not to give movie downloads a price advantage
Commentary by: David

This advertising blog has been a big fan of most of the advertising and brand positioning work from Target Stores over the past two years. The Minneapolis retailer has great marketing instincts and a keen sense of how to bring moderately priced home products with a sense of style and expert design to U.S. consumers (along with the industrial-sized packs of Bounty and multi-gallon jugs of detergent that we expect from a mass merchandiser).

Today the Wall Street Journal reported that target had warned movie studios about discounting to online players. The ‘sharply worded letter from Target President Gregg Steinhafel’ said that Target had heard that some studios were planning to make new-release movies available to online services for less than they were selling the DVD versions to target.

This revelation comes on the heels of similar warnings to studios from Wal-Mart.

We thought Target knew better, however.

A great brand always acts in the best interests of its consumers, even if that means sending them elsewhere for some things. Why? Because the brand relationship is based on trust, and once that trust is violated it is incredibly difficult to regain. Target President Gregg Steinhafel was thinking about the topline when he wrote this letter. He was concerned about losing revenue as consumers begin to migrate from direct DVD sales to online purchase. He should have been thinking about the bottom line, instead. The bottom line is the strong margins and same-store revenue growth that Target enjoys because consumers trust that Target is looking out for their best interest.

It is absurd to think that movies downloaded online should cost either retailers or consumers the same as DVDs. Why? Not only is the product cost lower (with no DVD and no jewel case or DVD box surrounding the DVD) but movies downloaded over the Internet don’t come with all of the extras that DVDs do. In addition the quality is currently below DVD quality, the files are enormous and the download times very slow.

What online video downloads need now is lower prices and patient consumers as the technology evolves. They don’t pose a short-term threat to retailers because few people have either bandwidth or the disk space to keep a library of films on a hard drive. And until the films are available at DVD quality (or HD quality), this format will have limited appeal to videophiles.

All of which means that Target, Wal-Mart and others have plenty of time to prepare for the inevitable. For between video-on-demand and downloadable movies it is certain that the physical sale of DVDs will not be a longterm business for any mass merchandiser.

Target has many more important things to offer consumers. One thing is its unique vision of the future of the American household, designed by folks like Robert Graves. Another is trust. Mr. Steinhafel’s ill-advised strongarm tactics will take their place with the HP investigation of board members on the list of things that high-ranking corporate executives who should have known better did to hurt their brands this year.