24/10/2011 www.brandfather.

gr The internal world of Brands

Interview with Constantinos Pantidos

Constantinos Pantidos is heading lovetofly (www.lovetofly.eu), the Brand agency which helps its clients refine the meaning their Brands offer to consumers. In this role, he has been involved in Brand strategy projects with leading companies. Can Brands give meaning to our lives? Human beings have always been searching for meaning. Without meaning, our lives are empty and can take undesirable routes. Obviously as consumers, we should not aspire to receive meaning from Brands. We get it from our families, friends, the relationship with other people, culture, art etc. Brands cannot replace these heavy providers of meaning, and when they do, it is a sign of alienation. However, Brands form a part of our everyday live ritualism. Through them we feel, sense, dream, live. Brands with a clear ideology upgrade our daily routine, satisfy our deeper needs, which inhabit our social unconscious. If we ask consumers which criteria they use to choose one Brand instead of another, they will most possibly mention price, design, taste or quality. However, if they could articulate it, feelings of return to the innocent childhood, of escaping everyday routine or heroism could be connected to the use of Brands such as Coca Cola, Starbucks and Nike. Our life would be a little more prosaic without Brands. Have we all not become witnesses today of a general trend of depreciation of institutions and values including Brands?

Yes indeed. However, in periods of dramatic and radical change, we return to the old stable values to get a feeling of balance. If we take Greece as an example, where we experience a violent reevaluation of our principles and beliefs, Brands with which we have grown up like Veropoulos, Sklavenitis, Papadopoulou biscuits, ION etc, form examples of such constants which these companies must capitalize on. The clear-sighted marketers know how to interpret consumer research and are aware of their Brands value and how to keep it always relevant, contrary to the product which can be copied, become unprofitable or left behind. They understand that every sustainable advantage comes from the Brand, not from the product. On the other hand, Brands which do not offer meaning to consumers have no reason to exist. Brands narrate while products are exchanged. One of the reasons why private labels gain market shares apart from the lower prices and the convenience they offer is that Brands, by placing the emphasis on promotions, neglect their character, beliefs and ideology and, as a result, the meaning they offer to the consumer is weakened. Can a character of a Brand change? The character of a Brand should not change. To be a Brand means that a sort of character has been developed. As it happens with human beings, the real character of a Brand cannot change. Only secondary traits can be smoothed out over time. The soul of true Brands always remains the same. This does not mean that the Brand remains attached to the past. On the contrary, when we have analyzed its genetic code, it is easy to adapt it to every situation. A lot of times, in the need to modernize a Brand, we add associations in vogue at a certain time without examining if they really match its character or not. Then the Brand needs a purification exercise in order to shine, offering clear and strong meaning to consumer again. How can a Brand become a love Brand? Brands pass through different stages. From a heroic starting phase, they pass through a period of wisdom and only some of them manage to become love Brands. Not all the big Brands are love Brands. They might have been imposed on the consumer through big advertising budgets, control of distribution channels or other synergies. Only the Brands which consistently satisfy a deeper psychological need and have value and beliefs that never betray can become love Brands. For a Brand to become a love Brand, its product or service, its packaging, its communication, its trade dress, its catalogues, the celebrities it endorses or who endorse it, even the way the calls are answered by its telephone operators must derive directly from its DNA instead of being adjusted in retrospect to fit its character. How easy is it to achieve coherence among the various Brand elements and at the same time be meaningful to the consumer? It is relatively easy on the condition that the Brand managers have decoded the character of the Brand. This can be an ad hoc exercise that accompanies the Brand for many years filtering each marketing action or idea. If, however, we have not distilled the Brands DNA in a Brand Book, it becomes almost impossible to build a meaningful Brand and, as a result, we find ourselves involved in promotional wars and a communication based on functional benefits from which it is difficult to exit. (photo: Dionisios Matiatos)