The UGG Store, Bicester Village December 26th 2010

If anybody really doubted the concept of brand power, then a trip through the ice and snow of South Oxfordshire to Bicester Village Outlet Mall on the morning after Christmas Day would provide the necessary evidence of its effect. In frankly dangerous and wintry conditions, tens of thousands had come following star brands like Prada, UGG and Ralph Lauren only to line up in sub-zero temperatures for up to 40 minutes to gain access to their chosen shopping shrines. So numerous were the lines that those boutiques with walk in access and no miserable looking security guard must clearly have a brand problem and with no apparent besieging multitude  their owners should call on the services of branding experts immediately.  The Value Engineers have a Holiday Hotline for just this purpose…..

http://www.thevalueengineers.com

Ed the heroic Brewmeister gets the beer through!

http://www.ipa.co.uk/Content/Santa-Saks-socks-a-seasonal-story

But if the place does explain the man, it also enriches him beacause place sells.…big time.

Place and branding have always gone hand in hand- an area’s reputation has probably always had an enriching halo effect on local people, products and services. Check out Sodom and Gommorah or the brand image of the Babylonians among the Egyptians!

A  Short Gazetteer of Brands :  feel free to add, modify or discard, Jeremy!

Arbroath smokies; Amalfi lemons; Bakewell tart; Cornish pasties; Dublin Bay prawns; Eccles cakes; Florentines; Gouda;  Hildon Water; Isigny creme fraiche; Jersey Royals; Kentucky Fried Chicken’; Lancashire hot pot; Melton Mowbray pork pies; Madras curry; New England clam chowder; Oleron oysters; Parma ham; Patagonia; Quiche Lorraine;  Roquefort; Sisteron lamb; Thai Green curry; Udon noodles; Viennoisserie; Vougeot; Wensleydale; Xeres (look it up!); Yorkshire Pudding; Zanzibar cloves

Catullus, the Roman love poet was the first great blogger of the love/ hate/love thing- in his case it was addressed to a young lady called Lesbia, who  may have been- for him -hors de combat anyway, but that’s another story.

For  marketeers, the equivalent of Lesbia  is habit.

My, do marketing folk  like a well established day-in, day-out piece of behaivour- an autopilot fix that we can’t do without,  and if most people are are doing it or want to do it, then it’s a short satisfying jog to big volume,  brand heaven. In this Nirvana will be found all the usual suspect high penetration, high frequency giants

But what if there is no habit established already?- ‘So what does a wheel do exactly?’ asked the caveman. It’s actually not so exciting to get an MP3player if you haven’t gone up a rudimentary learning curve in digital music and have no access to some MP3′s. There may be a wonderful new category opportunity just in front of you- but if only you can find the postioning moonletters to uncover the white space and a marketing idea to light the blue touch paper of consumer familiarity. Smnirnoff Ice was an overnight $ 1 billion  success that actually took 10 years.

On the other hand, what if existing behaivour is so ingrained it’s difficult to establish innovative variations even when you can show a benefit. So called low interest categories dominate here: toothpaste, canned foods, margarines and spreads. The marketplace is littered with the shipwrecks of interesting bids to  subvert a competitor with a subtle habit shift that didn’t quite succeed- herbs from the freezer, liquid coffee concentrate, or in the case of yogurt liqueurs didn’t come close to succeeding.

So Habit- I hate and I love you, but I gotta have you.

*’I hate and I love. Why do I do it, perchance you might ask?
I don’t know, but I feel it happening to me and I’m burning up.’