A Not So Scary Halloween

Consumers will be getting into the spirit of the holiday this year, and it won’t only be jack o’ lanterns and trick-or-treaters who’ll be smiling. Retailers will have a lot less to be afraid of because according our annual Halloween Survey, consumers intend to spend 15% more than last year – a really chilling year for retailers – or nearly $70.00 to celebrate.

This year Halloween falls on a Sunday, which means celebrations will start Friday night and run through the weekend. Sixty-three percent of the 6,000 respondents polled indicated that they were going to host or attend a party, and for 18 to 24 year olds the top-10 favored costumes-of-choice are:

1. Jersey Shore cast member
2. Lady Gaga
3. Avatar character
4. Snooki
5. President Obama
6. Iron Man
7. Buzz Lightyear/Woody
8. Pirate
9. Alice In Wonderland/Mad Hatter
10. Batman

Those not partying are going to celebrate the old-fashioned way: traditional, neighborhood trick-or-treating. If you want to keep the witches, pirates, princesses, and superheroes happy this year, the top-10 most-coveted candies are:

1. Hershey Chocolate Kisses
2. Snickers
3. Nerds/3 Musketeers
4. M&Ms
5. Gummies
6. Nestlé Crunch/MARS bar
7. Candy Corn/Twix
8. Reese’s Pieces
9. Tootsie Roll/Pops
10. Hot Tamales/Kit Kats

Based on this year’s survey results it’s fair to say that you don’t need to be a witch or warlock or have access to a crystal ball to divine that this is going to be a boo-tiful Halloween for retailers.

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Off On the Road to . . .

Brand Keys will be doing some traveling over the next couple of months. We just returned from the Motivation Show in Chicago. Amy Shea, our EVP Global Brand Development, will be talking about measuring the value of advertising at the Brand Finance Forum in London, and Robert Passikoff and Leigh Benatar (our EVP of Loyalty and Engagement) will be giving a Keynote at the Brand Summit in Dubai. Then we’re off to India. We’re working on the theory that a journey is best measured in knowledge than in miles, and counting on online travel sites to help facilitate trip planning.

We measure Online Travel Sites in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index and right now the traditional default sites rank as follows:

1. Expedia/Kayak
2. Cheap Tickets/Orbitz
3. Priceline/Travelocity/Hotwire
4. Fodors/Hotels.com

You don’t need a map to see that differentiation among the online travel sites isn’t vast. The reality is, though, that expectations for the category are pretty high and that sites that were able to take advantage of the gap between rational delivery and emotional delight would be able to count on engagement and loyalty to drive traffic rather than just depend upon habit and routine.

Differentiation has never come easily for brands that rely on traditional Q&A inquiry, satisfaction studies, or likelihood to recommend estimates. But leading-indicator loyalty assessments suggest online travel sites consider borrowing some values from social media. Despite a commodity-like delivery on the very rational primacy of service side of the equation, an online travel site could foster real emotional relationships with its clients and turn an “exchange” into a true “conversation.” If they did that, navigation to a more profitable latitude would be a far easier journey.

We predict greater explorations into the frontiers of social media for travel sites in the very near future. As Marcel Proust observed, “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” New values too.

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Brand Blowout

The down economy is being felt in all sorts of places, and one of those appears to be the feel of silky—and straight—hair. As the price tag attached to the Brazilian blowout becomes increasingly gag-worthy, women are looking for at-home ways to try to achieve that salon result in a DIY kind of way.

For the uninitiated—or those lucky few that fear neither rain, sleep nor humidity—the Brazilian blowout is a process women claim de-shackles them from their blow dryers, giving them back hours a week of precious time. This comes with a $300-$500 price-tag, however, and now also some possible risk, as reports spread of the presence of serious amounts of formaldehyde in the chemical process.

“Box” hair colors, readily available in drug stores, have long been the go-to source for women not willing to spend the money and time to create a new look through color. And now, L’Oreal and Garnier have both introduced box shine products that they hope will be snatched up by women who want that Keratin gloss of Brazilian fame, without cutting into their styling budget.

In our 2010 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, here’s how consumers ranked the top hair color brands:

Clairol/L'Oreal (tie)
Garnier
Revlon

So far, there have been less than stellar reviews for the gloss-in-a-box products: a sure sign of today’s social-media ecology, where consumers are talking to each other, not the brand. While it may turn them off the products, hair color brands will do well to recognize that this will not dull women’s desire for gleaming locks. Whoever does it right, at a good price, will offer the kind of value that will add a shine to any brand.

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Duplicating Brand Success

As seen in many categories out there, copier brands find themselves in a state of flux. To begin with, there is the more accurate description of what today’s copiers actually are—however, that remains a mouthful; “multi-functional product office copier” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. And that’s just the copier side of the business. Brands that built their company on the ability to replicate are now attempting to carve out unique turf when it comes to performing document management services for companies.

Xerox, one of those few brands whose name was in the enviable position of being used as a verb by those of us who can remember “xeroxing” our expense reports, is doing much more than copying these days, and wants to tell you about it. A recent ad, linking them to one of the sexiest motorcycle brands on earth, Ducati, is both funny and metaphorically sound, if a little far-fetched. Why a test-driver in a wind tunnel is also responsible for translating documents into Portuguese is not really the point, however. The point, and a well-made one, is that businesses should keep their eye on the prize—mainly, who they are and why their products are bought. In Ducati’s case, it’s kicking bikes that ignite consumers, not their exemplary translation skills.

We track Xerox in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, an annual ranking of hundreds of brands by how close they come to what consumers really want in the category in which they participate. This year, the MFP Copier brands ranked as follows:

Konica Minolta/ Canon (tie)
Xerox
Ricoh
Panasonic
HP
Sharp
Epson

As Xerox races to first, they could find a worse partner than Ducati to carry the message of speed. But this ad can serve as a reminder to all brands that process, while important, is not the kind of emotional driver that wins fans. Knowing what matters most to consumers is the strategy every brand needs to copy.

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Blog Action Day 2010

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Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers. We post about the same issue on the same day to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion around an important issue. This year, the theme is Water.

We track bottled water in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, so we weren’t surprised to find that in the last 10 years, US per-capita consumption of bottled water has doubled, and we now drink an average of 200 bottles per person each year.

What did surprise us was the fact that a third of all bottled water actually comes from the tap – the same free, safe drinking water available to most Americans. Companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle take municipal water, put it in a bottle, brand the heck out of it, and sell it back to consumers at a premium, premium price.

We weren’t surprised by that either. After all, understanding how brands can best position themselves to profitably engage consumers is what we specialize in.

But we were surprised to learn that it takes nearly 20 million barrels of oil to produce all those plastic bottles, and more than 75% of them will never be recycled. Raises doubt regarding the clean, natural, eco-friendly images put out by bottled water brands, doesn’t it?

So which bottled water brands are seen to be most “natural,” no matter their real source? Here are the top-10 most “natural” brands according to our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index:

1. San Pellegrino
2. Fuji
3. Aquafina
4. Volvic
5. Poland Spring
6. Evian
7. Perrier
8. Dannon
9. Deer Park
10. Arrowhead

But natural or not, water poses a problem beyond positioning and recycling. More people in the world have access to a cell phone than a toilet, which means that sewage spills into rivers and streams, contaminating available drinking water. An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day. On a worldwide basis nearly one person in eight – or 884 million people – lack access to safe water supplies. Three and a half million people die each year from water-related disease, and the water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

Corporations have come to appreciate the value of a real brand and its ability to communicate values beyond primacy of product. When it comes to water, perhaps consumers need to stop and appreciate the value of a commodity.

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Profitable Engagement

That’s the goal of the 4th Annual Motivation Show being held this week in Chicago. This year’s focus is connecting engagement, loyalty, and profitability. And if anybody knows about that branding triangle, it’s Brand Keys.

Engagement has been a tough metric for marketers to define, but the ultimate goal shouldn’t be that difficult to articulate. Engagement with the brand is – or should be – your ultimate objective, even if you use engagement with platforms and programs to get there. Nothing substitutes for it. Nothing else will guarantee brand survival and profitability. To those ends we’ll be presenting two themes at this year’s Motivation Show.

For the first, Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president, will be leading an interactive session about how to create loyalty. Today consumer decision-making and loyalty is more about emotion than it is about rational category attributes. Experts have suggested that the ratio in most categories is now 70:30. Yet, even with this knowledge, marketing programs seeking to build loyalty are too often based but on what consumers “say,” and not what they really feel – a practice no longer robust enough to guarantee engagement, loyalty, or profitability.

For the second, Amy Shea, Brand Keys EVP, Global Brand Development, will present “Eleven for 2011: Loyalty & Engagement Trends That Will Make a Difference.” It’s been said that prediction is difficult, especially about the future. But it’s a lot easier when you have access to leading-indicator loyalty and engagement metrics that provide a real handle on how to manage consumer expectations – and loyalty – for the coming year. Marketers who understand the 11 trends for 2011 covered in this session will have insights will allow them to successfully mange customer values and corporate profits.

We hope to see you in Chicago. As always, if you are unable to attend, drop us a note (amys@brandkeys.com or robertp@brandkeys.com) and we’ll be glad to arrange to take you through either presentation.

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Using Your Credit Card to Dine

It’s fair to say these days that most restaurants accept nearly every credit card brand out there. Some cards guarantee reservations for members, others promise preferred access, some offer discounts. And while restaurant patrons are familiar with – and probably have at least two of the major credit cards in their wallets – the search for differentiation and innovation among card brands continue.

But here’s a credit card innovation from a new source: Le Grande Epiciere de Paris. The advertising copy translates as follows: “Eating on the run? Here’s a credit card made up of a detachable mini spoon and fork, perfect for salads and yogurt. And once you have finished eating, the tea tablet becomes a refreshing towel soaked in perfumed water.” The credit card is available through Bon Marché, 38 rue de Sévres, 75007, Paris.

US credit cards have changed little over the past 50 years, Most are just a piece of plastic punched with ID numbers, labeled with security features, some with holographic images, and a magnetic strip. OK, there’s been dabbling with RFID, but innovation, such as it is, has generally resided in the extra-value services provided by the card carrier. But that’s just a credit card poker game. What’s provided by one card one day, is matched by another card the next, and innovation and delight turn into table stakes.

But happily, on an emotional level, consumers endow brands with values and benefits beyond the sum of their basic – even gold or platinum level – parts. According to our most recent Loyalty Leaders List, here’s how credit card brands rank when it comes to innovation:

1. American Express
2. Discover
3. Capital One
4. Visa
5. MasterCard

Will standard credit card programs and rewards satisfy consumers’ appetites for innovation? Not according to the category’s leading-indicator loyalty expectations. Even in a down economy, expectations for differentiating card aspects have increased by 22% over the past two years, which provides a real opportunity for brand who know what to cook up and how to meaningfully serve up innovation.

And these days if you want to keep your customers loyal, the last thing you want is for them to walk away from your brand hungering for something else!

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Extra loyalty, please

If your idea of feng shui is having your local pizzeria design the pepperoni in a circle on your pie, have we got good news for you: October is National Pizza Month!

There are more than 60,000 pizza parlors in the United States, and a significant number of them are the larger chains we track in our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. And while sales have trended down slightly, pizza is still a big favorite in the United States. Pizza consumers eat about 43 slices annually, adding up to a total of 3 billion pizzas consumed in a year. That works out to about 12 pounds of pizza or 100 acres of pizza a day, or enough pizza to cover the Roaring River Wilderness region in the Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon. Or enough to keep health clubs in business for at least another year.

Nearly a third of consumers ask for pepperoni as their extra pizza topping. In order of preference, that’s followed by

2. Mushrooms,
3. Extra cheese,
4. Sausage or meatballs,
5. Green peppers.

Last on the list are anchovies, which clearly is an acquired taste. But no matter which is your favorite, every chain must offer extras in order to be competitive. We turned to our Customer Loyalty engagement index to see which chain panned out best on that important driver of pizza loyalty. Here’s how they ranked:

1. Domino’s
2. Pizza Hut / Papa John’s
3. Little Caesar’s / Round Table
4. Godfather’s
5. Chuck E. Cheese

The bottom-line for pizza? Quality and taste is still the biggest loyalty driver for the category, but to really throw the right strategy, brands need to think about adding in some real, leading-indicator loyalty metrics to their marketing menus.

While we can all argue over thick crust or thin, there is no doubt that predictive category metrics are the recipe brands need most.

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