Parent companies ‘should let their brands do the talking’ insists Ten’s Howcroft
Network Ten’s executive general manager Russel Howcroft has accused companies of confusing the public by slapping their corporate name on advertising in a needless bid to take ownership of their brands.
He told a panel discussion that companies such as Unilever and Procter and Gamble should let their brands do the talking and keep the corporate identity in the background.
“I don’t buy a Unilever and yet these days they do like to brand their advertising,” Howcroft said. “It’s like the parent wants to own the child and yet I am buying the children, not the parent.”
His comments came during a discussion on ‘brand purpose’ at a seminar organised by the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA).
Howcroft also accused brands of being self-obsessed and “forgetting the transaction”.
Continuing the analogy with parents, Howcroft said: “There is this desire as a parent to claim ownership over your successful children, and as we all know, it’s much better if you’re a great parent to stay in the background and let your kids fly with their own brand and their own voice.
“Why are they trying to claim ownership? Even with Proctor and Gamble, there’s this temptation (to put their name on advertising) and that’s where it can get confusing. You can have different brands with different target audiences and different reasons to exist and they can sometimes be at odds with another brand which happens to have the same parent.”
He added that brands get caught up in the belief that it’s “all about them”.
“We are in an obsessive me, me, I, I era What they are doing is forgetting the transaction. The transaction is ‘I am here to give you the consumer a reason to buy, to entertain, to engage’,” Howcroft added.
“I don’t know that this obsession with self is really where the joy is for the consumer. I can see joy for the brand itself and that self-obsession, but not the consumer. It’s almost like they’re saying ‘thank you for buying me, together we can change the world’. I think we’re in lala land.”
Earlier, Telstra director of segment marketing Andy Bateman rejected that ‘brand purpose’ even existed, arguing there was only corporate purpose and brand strategy.
“I am puzzled by the trendiness of the brands constituency that has started to put those two words (brand and purpose) together,” he told the discussion. “There is no such thing as brand purpose. There is brand strategy.
“What I see a lot of is the drafting of corporate social responsibility strategy into a brand strategy and calling it brand purpose, which it is not.”
But he added that corporate purpose is “very very important”.
“We have seen it galvanise 40,000 people.” he said.
Bateman also rejected Howcroft’s view that “big brand work” can change the culture within an organisation and alter “how we view companies”.
Using Commonwealth Bank as an example, Howcroft suggested the bank’s CAN campaign changed internal behaviour and how staff deal with customers.
“Without advertising driving that it would have been very difficult to change behaviour,” he said.
Bateman responded: “I don’t think you can advertise your way to change. You need a corporate strategy that is about change and a whole set of behaviour enablers and a business model that gets you there.
“I think it’s a somewhat flawed argument to say that you can advertise the change and the people internally will change, if you don’t change anything else.”
Steve Jones
Parent companies adding their stamp is such dumb company politics.
Customers buy unique brands. Knowing that a brand is just a piece of a larger conglomerate reduces the inherent unique personality it’s trying to create.
This practice robs a brand to try and pay the parent. But no-one cares about the parent. In fact knowing the parent is pretty much a universal negative.
But hey, if there’s a bonus metric to increase awareness of the group brand – then chuck on the damn group logo!
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Is Telstra a brand or a company? Is Holden a brand or a company? Can anyone provide a logical distinction….rather than ‘both’ ?
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An ex ad guy meets an ex brand consulting guy on stage.
Sounds like a great discussion would have liked to have seen it.
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Totally agree.
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Agree entirely. As a consumer, my loyalty and connection is with, say, Dove, not Unilever. It’s madness.
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@Ads.
We’re discussing putting the group brand name as an endorsement on the consumer brand marketing. This is particularly prevalent in FMCG.
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Telstra is a brand and a company. It is both.
If you really wanted to define the terms as distinct, you might say the company is the operation whereas the brand is the customer interaction. So there will be occasions when it will be appropriate to use the word ‘company’ e.g. if referencing internal processes and others where it will be appropriate to use the word ‘brand’ e.g. if referencing its marketing campaigns.
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Couldn’t agree more.
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P&G and Unilever aren’t necessarily trying to make the connection with the customer. I’d guess they’re probably seeking to gain some brand attribution by highlighting their association with the product being marketed.
The brands Unilever and Dove, for example, are playing very different roles.
One is playing a sales driver role, the other is playing a market value driver role.
The product brand is there to create affinity with the target market and generate a sale.
The corporate brand is there to gain incremental value (awareness/perception) through association with the product brand over time.
If P&G appears on every of its products’ ads for the next 3 years, they will almost undoubtedly see an increase in their brand value. And that, I’d guess is what’s behind all this. It makes sense if they are leaning toward a branded house vs a house of brands strategy. From a consumer point of view, it makes no difference, but that’s not the point.
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The purpose of corporate branding on consumer brands is one of influencing investors. With more consumers either being investors through equity ownership or their investment in super funds and pension plans, it is important for listed companies to win the hearts of the consumer for sales and the heart of investors for share market support. When the two are often the same group of people, how much does it really hurt the communications Russel for the corporation to put their thumb print on their communications?