It’s a Jungle Out There!

Review by Mike Gange

Brand Warfare: 10 Reasons for Building the Killer Brand

by David F. D’Alessandro

McGraw-Hill, 24.95, 185 pages

In the early 1980's Orville Redenbacher took a commodity nobody thought twice about and made it a viable brand. He convinced consumers his popcorn was worth more than his competitor’s and this it had a distinct personality. Redenbacher understood the power of the brand to trump all rhyme and reason in the marketplace.

David F. D’Alessandro has learned real lessons in business from both simple folk like Redenbacher and from complex situations requiring diplomacy and tact. In Brand Warfare: 10 Reasons for Building the Killer Brand, he shares some of the practical lessons he has gained along the path that led him to become CEO of John Hancock Financial Services. D’Alessandro is credited with the company’s dramatic revival that led to it being named by the N.Y. Times as one of the brands of the 20^th century. When D’Alessandro relates how John Hancock went from 5,000 sales agents in 1991 to 66 000 agents in the year 2000, it is easy to understand why D’Alessandro is regarded as one of the business world’s most innovative marketers.

The rationale for this book, D’Alessandro says, is that brands are no longer restricted to the business world. Brand mania is sweeping the globe. The state of Vermont wants to protect its own brand, as does Tom Hanks and Coca Cola. But he says, nothing is as misunderstood as the question of how to use the brand. Some corporate giants, like Nike and Coke, have stumbled in their quest to keep their products in front of the consumers and the results have worked out poorly for the brand, the shareholders and the consumer.

Marketers use the nebulous term "brand" to mean ‘‘whatever’’ the consumer thinks about when he or she hears the company name or sees their image. This ‘‘whatever’’ includes labor practices, the company’’s environmental record, or well publicized customer complaints. In his 10 rules, D’Alessandro addresses some of the problems that occur as markets try to maintain their brand profile. He talks about the difficulty of establishing a great brand, the need to fight for advertising with a positive impact, how to get beyond a scandal and how ultimately the brand is the responsibility of the CEO AND everybody else in the company.

D’Alessandro’’s writing style is both folksy and savvy, straight business talk punctuated with anecdotes about successful rebounds and untimely pratfalls. In 1982, he writes, the Tylenol brand was seriously hurt when seven deaths were linked to cyanide inserted into the Extra Strength Tylenol Capsules. Johnson & Johnson’’s rapid recall of the product before returning to the marketplace with tamper proof packaging cost the company $100 million, he says, but helped the brand become so trusted that it retains a dominant 25% of the analgesics market.

Some of the pratfalls D’Alessandro has observed are reported here and like this one, are worth repeating. While promoting Old Crow whiskey for National Distributors, (before joining the John Hancock company) D’Alessandro invited life style editors from many print media to a huge event, where the whiskey flowed freely and the gimmicks were the order of the day. D’Alessandro even arranged for an animal handler to bring along a very well trained crow that sat on shoulders. It was so well trained it would only relieve itself if the trainer blew a whistle.

He writes, "Prominent among the crowd was a writer for Penthouse magazine, who showed up in a white suit with a Penthouse pet on each arm. The guy was quite taken with himself; at one point he decided he should be the one with the crow....We watched him strut around for a moment with the bird on his shoulder. I said "You know, I don’t care if we get an article in Penthouse." The trainer gave me a knowing smile, then blew his little whistle. It was a beautiful moment."

Trying to write only ten rules for a killer brand is a bit of a gimmick too. Obviously there is a lot more to protecting your brand in today’s competitive marketplace than D’Alessandro can say in just ten rules.

While D’Alessandro mentions other companies from time to time, he too frequently trumpets the successes of John Hancock until it become an annoying advertisement. Then again, why not, if its brand awareness that he is after.

Mike Gange teaches media literacy and journalism courses at Fredericton High School.