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Patricia Duffy
General Manager Marketing,
MLC
It’s interesting to contemplate what makes a Superbrand today, when so many big and trusted brands have betrayed that trust. Any number of examples of dead or damaged brands come to mind.
Some brand names evoke crisis due to the initial arrogant and inappropriate responses of their chief executives to their crises. Yet a crisis, successfully managed, will not only be quickly forgotten but can in fact add to the power of the brand.
Against that backdrop, it seems to me that Superbrands have an obligation to behave in a certain way. When things go wrong, Superbrands don’t hide, they don’t dissemble, they aren’t arrogant, and they bear pain to rectify the events that led to the crisis in the first place. They recognise that their fate is in the hands of their customers and respond appropriately.
The essence of being a Superbrand - connecting with stakeholders in a way that is true to the brand - is more important than ever today, and may well be the single thing, more than any clever marketing strategy or big advertising budget, that ensures a brand’s survival as a Superbrand.
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Trevor Fearnley
AM Chairman and CEO,
Advertising Partners
Time is one of the key elements needed to be a Superbrand. The ten top-selling grocery brands in Australia are the same today as they were ten years ago. Many new brands have enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame, and then disappeared.
Dot.com companies thought they were Superbrands. After five minutes of fame they were gone. New brands such as Dick Smith Foods have shaken up the market. Will they be there in ten years’ time and be a Superbrand? Time will tell.
The Salvation Army has led the list of charity brands for the past forty years. Time has made The Salvos a Superbrand.
Past readers will know that I am a Shakespeare fan. “The inaudible and noiseless foot of time”, from All’s Well That Ends Well, sums up one of the key elements of a Superbrand rather well. Product managers will come and go. A Superbrand will survive them all. It has time on its side.
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Michael Graham
Managing Director,
LKS Landor
A Superbrand is a brand that fulfills the needs of every audience: superior returns for investors, a reason to buy and re-buy for customers and consumers, a reason to get out of bed for the people who work to make it and deliver it. Superbrands are an organising principle for people and organisations.
Superbrands capture the spirit of the times. They rise above categories and countries and they re-write conventions. They re-invent and re-define themselves and their industry. They earn consistently superior returns. They connect with us in a way that nurtures the future without denying the past. They show us the possibilities and teach us new things. They change the way that business is done.
True Superbrands are rare. In a changing world that is so often ordinary and commonplace they are irreplaceable, incomparable and timeless.
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Tim Parker
Managing Director,
Foote, Cone & Belding, Sydney
What makes a Superbrand? At FCB Sydney we have a strong sense that the characteristics of Superbrands, today’s and tomorrow’s, need to change in line with shifts in society.
Essentially, commitment in virtually any form is becoming anathema to the new generation of consumers. They are committed only to keeping their options open. Thus they relish choice and flexibility.
Perhaps, then, the day of the rigid brand manifesto (attempting to ensure loyalty through consistency) is passing. The likes of Virgin and Nike recognise this. The core attitude holds firm, but the expression of it, and even the categories in which it operates, vary considerably.
Perhaps Oscar Wilde was right. Consistency is indeed becoming the last, and very dangerous, refuge of the unimaginative. The challenge for us is to ensure we understand the truths of the changing marketplace and the most honest way our brands can meet the demands of more fickle customers.
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Gawen Rudder
Director,
Advertising Federation of Australia
Let me change the question to “Who makes a Superbrand”.
The “who” is definitely not the manufacturer, but neither is it the marketer. It isn’t the PR people, nor is it the bean counters who calculate the brand’s value and put it on the balance sheet. Neither is it the advertising people who like to think they create brands. And no, it’s not the ’sixties pop group either.
No, it is the consumer who makes a Superbrand. And just as easily as creating one, the consumer can rip the mantle off a Superbrand and turn it back into a mild-mannered Clark Kent of brands. He doesn’t even need kryptonite.
Most marketing concentrates on what people say about the brand. Good marketing concentrates on what people think about the brand. The best marketing concentrates on what the brand makes people think about themselves.
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Todd Sampson
National Strategy Director,
Leo Burnett
What makes a brand become a ‘Super’ Brand is an interesting question - it is like asking what makes a person a ‘Great’ person. From my experience, great brands tend to have the following things in common:
They are focused. They stand for something and are consistent in what they say and do. It is because of this integrity – we trust them.
They are charismatic. They get noticed and command attention from those around them. People like to be associated with these brands.
They are different and proud of it. People intuitively need to differentiate – it is our natural way of making sense of complexity. Brands that truly differentiate have a distinct advantage in that they have no real substitute in the mind of the consumer.
They are not afraid to change. In fact some of the world’s best brands are constantly innovating to stay relevant. They add tangible value to the company’s bottom line. Superbrands are assets that are constantly measured, protected and invested in.
If you can do those things right, I think you are well on your way to having a ‘Super’ brand.
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Simon Jones
Managing Director,
Blue Marlin Brand Design
What makes a Superbrand?
Every brand represents a promise to the consumer, a promise of a rational and/or emotional experience. What separates a Superbrand from other brands is that a Superbrand makes a promise the consumer really cares about - and a Superbrand always delivers on its promise. When a brand stops delivering a consistent experience, it loses its power, its loyalty, its premium.
Superbrands are not necessarily industry leaders, but they do share clarity, consistency and leadership as common traits. Leadership can mean much more than simply holding the Number One spot.
Consumers look to Superbrands for meaning and sense in an ever-changing world. Superbrands have come to represent a new level of commercial reality and self-expression, because they are in touch with our basic needs and concerns, and reflect this in a relevant way.
But no brand is indestructible. As society evolves, so must its brands. Today’s Superbrands now need to be much more than merely commercial entities: they want to be part of the future, to play a responsible role in society
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Mark Kelly
Marketing Director,
Murdoch Magazines
It seems to me that the most powerful concept attached to branding, and the only thing that really matters when creating a brand, is trust.
A brand is as strong as the trust we create, and if we create an outstandingly high degree of trust over an extended period then we have created a Superbrand.
This is not difficult, though it is painstaking. As protectors of the brand, marketers must nurture the brand by maintaining consumers’ trust, so that it flourishes. Drain the trust from the brand and you kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
I trust my supermarket because the fruit is fresh, I trust my airline because it makes me feel safe, I trust my wine shop because the advice and prices are personalised to me and I trust my butcher because my mum still goes there. Trust has many faces.
As we would with a friend, we must respect and protect our relationship of trust with our brands, both internally and within the hearts and minds of the consumers.
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Kevin Luscombe
AM Chairman,
Growth Solutions Group
Superbrands are sustainable ‘stand out’ brands with the strongest of consumer connections.
They have clarity of distinction, for reasons that are central to market needs, remain contemporary, and are ‘owned’ by the market with resulting conviction and advocacy.
Superbrands cut through the incessant noise of communications and retail confusion with simple, relevant, memorable promises; never fail to deliver on these; and never take their leading position or market satisfaction for granted.
They leverage their position with distributors and retailers, not the other way around. Their conversations with customers and consumers move to ‘shorthand’ and simple signals of continuing value.
Above all, they really do make sense of the term ‘brand equity’ and when all the sums are done, they stand at the top of the reasons for the net worth of a business. You should never need to be told that they are Superbrands.
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Matthew Stewart
Publisher,
B & T Weekly
What makes a Superbrand?
A Superbrand is a brand that has transcended the purely utilitarian needs of consumers, who will therefore generally pay a premium to be associated with it.
Superbrands have staying power; strong, defensible competitive barriers often based on consumer tribal needs such as status, safety, exclusiveness or anti-establishment feeling. And of course Superbrands generally have deep pockets to continually reinforce their unique and compelling brand value.
Superbrands develop strong emotional relationships with consumers; these may begin through the satisfaction of functional needs but then develop into bonds with almost human qualities.
This bond between consumer and Superbrand is developed over time through the adroit use of the marketing mix and by continually delivering on the brand promise, and the brand promise for a Superbrand is -“How will your bond with the Superbrand make you feel about yourself?”
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Tim Trumper
Managing Director,
Time Inc South Pacific
A Superbrand offers comfort in the purchase process. It’s a reassurance that the investment in the product or service makes sense, is sound, and that the consumer’s hard-earned money is well spent.
A Superbrand positions itself as a leader to command a premium over conventional products. At its pinnacle a Superbrand forges a relationship with the consumer that leads to a ‘no decision’ decision. By this I mean that the Superbrand resonates so strongly with the target audience that it becomes the ‘only’ real choice. The best-known brands continue to evolve to ensure they satisfy the demands of consumers by creating new offerings and maintaining premium positioning which protects the core values of the brand that engaged the initial emotional connection with the consumer.
Superbrands’ relationship with consumers is extremely powerful because the decision to purchase is already predetermined. As long as the product or service maintains its premium positioning, it will resonate in the consumer’s mind at the time of purchase. This means that the true global Superbrands remain as relevant to consumers whether they are in Cairo or Dubbo.
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Geoff Wild
AM Chairman,
WPP Australia
The first thing to know about brands is that what is important is the people who use them, who create, nurture and build them, not those who manufacture or service them.
Once this salient point is recognized it follows that there are many factors which will influence the health of a brand, not the least of which is the action of competitors. It is my hope that in the near future we will have intelligent mechanisms by which we can accurately assess the value of brands and their impact on the balance sheet of companies.
As a number of writers have so sagely observed, the only time you really know what a brand is worth is when it is sold – Simply not good enough!
It has been a pleasure to help adjudicate again on the making of ‘Superbrands’. What always strikes me about those brands which in turn emerge as ‘Superbrands’ is that they really do almost come alive, to become a part of our lives.
And long may they reign.
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