Ueber-Brands

Dilhan C. Fernando

Dilhan Fernando is the CEO of Dilmah Ceylon Tea Company which carries part of his name. For when his father founded the company in 1988, he blended the first names of his two sons – Dilhan and Malik – to give it its name.

This anecdote reflects one of the romantic dimensions of the companies creation story. The ones we will focus on in our interview with Dilhan focuses on Dilmah as a pioneer. A pioneer when it comes to fighting for fairer trade practices, implementing sustainable operating processes, educating consumers and to being founded on the belief that purveying a superior product needs to go hand-in-hand with helping to create a better socio-economical and natural environment.

If you think that this all sounds like what we have come to expect from a progressive start-up but also to wonder if a company can truly deliver, then consider this:  This company and mission started to take shape in the mind of a Sri-Lankan tea taster – said Merrill Fernando – as early as the late fifties.  Merill’s dream was shaped by a burning desire to do away with what he experienced to be a colonial hold-over.  A tea-making value chain that left local workers with only a tiny fraction of the value created for Western tea houses and that left Western drinkers with bland blends and stale tasting teas.  In other words, this company was conceptualized and built by a local tea professional with insights into global trade, over decades – from the plantation up, so to speak.

Consumer Education is key to take the brand beyond being ‘a box of tea’ on the supermarket shelf.

But even with all the local insight, expertise and commitment, it has not been easy to compete with the big packaged-goods multi-nationals, to sell through mass retail and to obtain even a modest premium for a better, fairer, more sustainably produced product, as you will hear. This is where ways to connect more directly with consumers – including via hospitality, virtual tools and e-commerce – has enabled Dilmah to manifest the experience of enjoying its teas in new ways. Ways, that elevate the brand* and go beyond the ‘bag and boiling water’.

To us, it sounds like the continuous journey that is creating an Ueber-Brand – But judge for yourself and click to play below:

From the plantation to the shop and tea room, Dilmah captures more of the value chain for its constituents.

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FURTHER READING:

* Brand Elevation is also the title of our latest book, a how-to guide to giving a brand meaning, making it peerless and priceless. Click here to order your copy now.

For deep insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands like S’well read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.  “

Roam the very informative Dilmah Tea website and explore its rich content from how the tea is made to how to best enjoy it.  You can sign up for tea-totaling classes at the School of Tea, learn about Dilmah’s many initiatives to run operations sustainably help the people and environment of Sri Lanka.  You can even book a staycation in the plantations to make your tea experience up, close and personal.

Here is an article by The New York Times from 2010 and article by Fortune from 2007, which tell the Dilmah creation story and progress up through the time when Merrill started to hand over leadership of the companies to his sons.

And here is a 2020 article by Dilhan on the difficulty to fund a fair and sustainable distribution of wealth in the face of a crisis like COVID-19 laid on top of a discount-driven packaged food culture.

Brothers Dilhan and Malik with their father Merrill Fernando at their Dilmah home.

Sarah Kauss, Founder

For those who do not know about S’well (are there any such people left?) –  S’well sells re-usable and very chic water bottles, that became ‘de-rigeur’, shortly after Sarah Kauss started selling the now iconic 17oz, insulated bottles in 2010.

And how that happened is, of course, a story that interests us students of Brand Elevation*. Here is a brand that transform what should be a commodity –bottles – into an iconic fashion accessory at $40 a pop.  In fact, we can talk about S’well having kicked in gear a massive category elevation and value creation.  Reusable water bottles are estimated to have have generated over $8bn in worldwide sales in 2018 alone and still grow at a rate of 3-5% year-on-year.  It’s ‘guestimated’ that S’well has a $150 to 200 million dollar share in those sales.  But the privately owned company doesn’t share financials.  And today S’well is not only selling bottles but a broader portfolio of re-usable containers, as we will hear in the interview.

Sarah and I talk about the Why, What and How of creating the S’well brand and of  keeping it going and growing.  As we will discover, again, many of the ‘principles of Ueber-Branding’ are at work.

Click play below and  –  Enjoy!

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/swell-with-sarah-kauss-ep-30-v3.mp3

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FURTHER READING:

* Brand Elevation is also the title of our latest book, a how-to guide to giving a brand meaning, making it peerless and priceless. Click here to order your copy now.

For deep insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands like S’well read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.  ”

We recommend this fascinating account of “How Fancy Water Bottles Became An 21st Century Status Symbol” by Amanda Mull in The Atlantic.

Here is a link to the S’well website and some of the ‘About’ content we talk about in the interview.

Oliver Brunwschiler, Lead Link at Freitag

In the land of bags, ‘Freitag’ stands for ‘messenger’, ‘made from recycled truck tarp’, ‘designed by the bros’, ‘hand-crafted in Switzerland’ and … “slightly fucked up,” as ‘Lead Link’ Oliver Brunschwiler tells us .  And he is not only talking about the bags, as it turns out.

As you would expect from a Swiss company, things look and feel very neat and organized when you visit the offices and factory in Zurich (take a visual tour with us here).  The raw ingredients are ‘trash,’ certainly, but those used tarps are neatly sorted, washed, cut and eventually carefully crafted into bags, packs, wallets and such. There are markings on the ground where things are supposed to go on the shop- and office floors and little handbooks are hanging next to the trash can or sitting on desks explaining everything from how to recycle paper plates to what to do with an idea for a new product or what “the 36 principles of building the brand’ are – using graphic schemata, where possible.

And then there are aspects that seem to push back against all this rationality and organization.  There is no traditional hierarchy but a more egalitarian, ‘holacratic organization’ where everyone defines and declares their roles instead. This is how Oliver is the ‘Lead Link’ (among other roles) rather than a CEO. “We tied, and that traditional concept just did not work out for us,” he says.  Oliver also talks about “organized mess” and “carefully arranged slack” as key operating principles and things being “slightly fucked-up, just like the bags” as a core aspect of the organization and brand culture”.

In this interview you will hear how

.. and so much more.  Click play below and  – Enjoy!

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/freitag-with-oliver-brunschwiler-ep-27.mp3

The holacratic organization in front of the Freitag F-abrik

FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands like Freitag read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.  For how to develop an Ueber-Brand yourself, read our guide “Brand Elevation – Lessons in Ueber-Branding.”

Here is a link to a visual report on our visit to the Freitag offices, plant and shop in Zurich. A link to how holacracy works … at least at Freitag. And a link to the Freitag website mentioned by Oliver.

Alison Cayne, is the founder of Haven’s Kitchen, a brand that helps the urban hustler whip-up delicious meals while being that ideal colleague, partner, parent, balanced self and host. The business includes a cooking school, an experiential event space, a cafe, a book and podcast as well as a line of of ready-made sauces sold at grocery stores.

‘A precarious start-up conglomerate that gets hit hard in this time of crisis,’ one might think.  But Haven’s Kitchen is doing better than most – and some of it is thanks to Alison being a natural Ueber-Brand-Builder, we think.

Take a listen as she shares how she navigates through this crisis, setting her organization, business and brand up to not only survive but thrive, where possible. And she does so in her own humble, ethical but efficient and entrepreneurial way. – What an inspiration!

Note: JP produced this podcast for a ‘Business in Times of COVID-19’ series by The Conference Board. And for an interview with Alison focusing on Haven’s Kitchen Ueber-Branding strategy, scroll down further.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/business_and_brand_building_in_times_of_covid-19_part_3.mp3

Below is our interview with Alison from times pre-COVID times – which means a few, short four months earlier.

In it, you can hear her talk about the strong foundations when it comes to brand mission, culture and business strategies that enable Haven’s Kitchen to do well while navigating the crisis at hand.  — We think.

Alison Cayne, Founder

Haven’s Kitchen is a Cooking School, Café, Shop, Event Space… and Headquarters to a budding packaged foods label in Chelsea, NYC.

But founder Alison Cayne says it is really about being a place for gathering and gaining confidence by learning how to cook good food, simply – A life skill that has come in handy to the mother of five.

You are forgiven to think “another one of those ‘wholesome food’ start-ups.” But this venture was started in 2011 when the average urbanite was just warming up to the idea that cooking from scratch using local ingredients was a good thing for the body, soul and environment… if only they knew how to do it.

And what about those prepared sauces Haven’s Kitchen is bringing to a ‘supermarket near you’?  They are a product of deeply understanding your target audience.  In fact, of living the life of your ‘Ueber-Target‘* and working with them every day.  They are little magic potions that can the edge of the constant hustle to life a successful, balanced, beautiful, healthy life – at least for the time of a good meal. And they show Alison does not believe that direct delivery is here to replace the grocery store anytime soon, when it comes to fresh foods.

As you will hear, this is not one of those ‘rags to unicorn’ stories.  This business actually started to make money from year two.  Rather, it is a story of a woman with insight, a clear vision, the discipline to follow-through on a strategy and … who masters ‘the hustle’.

Enjoy!

Click below to listen to the interview: 

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/alison-cayne-at-havens-kitchen-ep-25.mp3

Haven’s Kitchen in NYC, Inside and Out

FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.

* Here are questions brands can ask to recognize and leverage their design target – or ‘Ueber-Target’ as we call the best of them.

Here are links to the Haven’s Kitchen website and Alison’s popular podcast Radio Show and Podcast ‘In The Sauce’.  And, here an article that describes Alison… living her Ueber-Target life … Well, the article more humbly talks about her as ‘superwoman’ ;-).

And finally a link to Alison Cayne’s Cookbook, which is a bit different – and not only because the authors states that she doesn’t like to follow recipes.  Note that the photos for the book were taken at Alison’s home.  And note some of the reactions of her fan-readers on Amazon.  That’s what it sounds like when you inspire your target audience – beyond the meal.

Alison Cayne, Founder

Haven’s Kitchen is a Cooking School, Café, Shop, Event Space… and Headquarters to a budding packaged foods label in Chelsea, NYC.

But founder Alison Cayne says it is really about being a place for gathering and gaining confidence by learning how to cook good food, simply – A life skill that has come in handy to the mother of five.

You are forgiven to think “another one of those ‘wholesome food’ start-ups.” But this venture was started in 2011 when the average urbanite was just warming up to the idea that cooking from scratch using local ingredients was a good thing for the body, soul and environment… if only they knew how to do it.

And what about those prepared sauces Haven’s Kitchen is bringing to a ‘supermarket near you’?  They are a product of deeply understanding your target audience.  In fact, of living the life of your ‘Ueber-Target‘* and working with them every day.  They are little magic potions that can the edge of the constant hustle to life a successful, balanced, beautiful, healthy life – at least for the time of a good meal. And they show Alison does not believe that direct delivery is here to replace the grocery store anytime soon, when it comes to fresh foods.

As you will hear, this is not one of those ‘rags to unicorn’ stories.  This business actually started to make money from year two.  Rather, it is a story of a woman with insight, a clear vision, the discipline to follow-through on a strategy and … who masters ‘the hustle’.

Enjoy!

Click below to listen to the interview: 

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/alison-cayne-at-havens-kitchen-ep-25.mp3

Haven’s Kitchen in NYC, Inside and Out

FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.

* Here are questions brands can ask to recognize and leverage their design target – or ‘Ueber-Target’ as we call the best of them.

Here are links to the Haven’s Kitchen website and Alison’s popular podcast Radio Show and Podcast ‘In The Sauce’.  And, here an article that describes Alison… living her Ueber-Target life … Well, the article more humbly talks about her as ‘superwoman’ ;-).

And finally a link to Alison Cayne’s Cookbook, which is a bit different – and not only because the authors states that she doesn’t like to follow recipes.  Note that the photos for the book were taken at Alison’s home.  And note some of the reactions of her fan-readers on Amazon.  That’s what it sounds like when you inspire your target audience – beyond the meal.

Felix Ahlers – CEO of FRoSTA AG

German frozen foods brand FRoSTA …

and all of that without being required to do so.  – Quite the opposite. It is FRoSTA that lobbies for laws that would provide more transparency on ingredients and methods across the industry.

“Wow – This must be one of those premium-priced, artisinal Honest Food brands that makes Big Food industries’ life miserable”, you might think.  But – wrong again.  FR0STA is part of the traditional food industry establishment.

As Felix Ahlers, CEO and Chairman of FRoSTA AG told us, his grandfather founded the business in the 50ies as a deep sea fishing company.  His father grew it to become a leading player in frozen foods in Germany, helped by several acquisitions starting in the 70ies.  By the time Felix joined the company in 1999, FRoSTA operated across several European markets, relying on ‘food technology and -chemistry’ to help scale production and keep costs down in the cut-throat supermarket environment. Looking behind the scene did not offer a pretty picture. As Felix says: “Our employees, who knew how our food was made, chose not to eat it.”

Loving food and having trained as a chef, Felix had a different idea of how to remain relevant and competitive as a food brand when he assumed a leadership role and led his team to radically revise what and how FRoSTA sourced and how it prepared its meals. “Following the “Reinheitsgebot (purity law)*” and “how grandma would prepare it” became the guiding principle from 2003 and across the assortment – which meant abandoning about half the assortment which could not be made compliant.

In other words FR0STA became a ‘Honest Food’ brand long before that became hip.  It did not ‘start-up’ from scratch with venture capital support, but ‘hard converted’ a traditional, industrial business.  It did so without compromise.  …   And FRoSTA paid a heavy price for its principled, purpose-driven move, as you will hear (hint: they almost went bankrupt).

Looking back and in the long run, however, the brand might just turn out to be one of the rare success stories in evolving an industrial food business in response to changing consumer needs and wants, as the bad news about brands like Heinz, Kraft, or Kellogg’s keeps adding up.

We think that FRoSTA has many of the core ingredients – higher Mission, a brand Myth and its unique ‘Truth’ –  that are the foundation to creating an ‘Ueber-Brand.’  A brand that carries meaning beyond the material, that is peerless and priceless.   It ‘just’ needs some more fine-tuning in bringing its story to life and connecting with it’s design target**.  Recognizing and talking to these influencers-cum-muse early-on might also have helped buffer some of the impact of the brand transition.  — Don’t you think? — Listen and Enjoy!

Click below to listen to the interview: 

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/frosta-with-felix-ahlers-ep-24.mp3FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.

** Here are some questions brands should ask to recognize and leverage their design target – or ‘Ueber-Target’ as we call the best of them.

If you want us to help you elevate your own brand, then write to us at [email protected].

Here are links to the FRoSTA corporate site and its online store.  And, here is a rare article in English on Felix and the Frosta turn-around story from CEO Magazine. It’s easy to find bad new about the traditional prepared food brands nowadays. Whether it is about their brands or their business.  Here is just one example.

* Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the “Reinheitsgebot“, a beer purity law that the Bavarian authorities enacted in 1516 as brewers started to ‘taint’ beers with flavors and colors and FRoSTA’s modern, frozen food interpretation of it (only available in German).

For a more in-detail look at FRoSTA’s stringent ethical, environmental and nutritional commitments and specific actions taken, check out this part of their site:  https://www.frosta-ag.com/en/responsibility/

Finally, Wageningen University pulled together a rather complete case study on FR0STA and the European Frozen Food market in 2011 if you really, really want to go into the details.

Fresh fish, real butter, house-made pasta – Food prepared the FRoSTA way

Platform businesses like Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, Facebook, Google or Uber are all the rage among investors, right now. And they are feared by the traditionally structured pipeline businesses they steal business from, fast.

“What is a traditional business to do?” Erich is wondering aloud in our discussion on the future of platforms and brands (click below to join the discussion).  Everyone ‘takes an Uber,’ (at least in big US metro cities) shops on Amazon  (at least in the Western World) and ‘Googles the answer’ (at least outside China) nowadays.  Does that mean traditional brands are the walking dead, waiting to be washed away by a platform to eat up their business?

The fact that many of the platform businesses are far from profitable and/or their brands far from being loved points to opportunities to compete. Let’s look at at platforms as a brand: Do you really like or respect or otherwise appreciate Amazon, Facebook or Uber – beyond their omnipresence, unlimited offerings and (thus) convenience? Many don’t. In fact, more and more use these platforms with increasing unease.

That might be because most of these businesses have focused on getting the magic flywheel – ‘network effects’ – to start spinning for them, luring in as many platform participants on the producer (eg. driver, seller) and customer (eg. passenger, buyer) sides as they can – at ‘any cost.’ – Or, as we start to realize, with the money many are eager to invest into the ‘unicorn’ dream and on the backs of under-paid ‘platform participants’ like drivers, small manufacturers or warehouse workers.

While gaining users and familiarity fast, the brand reputations of the winners in these races for quasi-monopolistic dominance are not great. — Even though they could and should be, I think.

Platforms are all about participation and should be about positive relationships – a desirable ingredient for strong brand equity. Airbnb demonstrates the potential behind relationships in the platform model well.  Due to its business model – strangers agreeing that one will let the other sleep in their home – it was forced to leverage the positive powers of to create trust (the reciprocal rating system helps).  Airbnb added a higher purpose to the transaction which created a meaningful experience rather than just a value exchange.  It is summarized in their tagline ‘Belong Anywhere.’

But then, Airbnb was almost forced to think about the powerful, platform-inherent brand building potential behind participation early (as we discussed with the former head of Airbnb Community, here).  –  Uber and Facebook clearly have not (yet).  And traditional pipeline businesses getting into the platform game like John Deere (yes, the tractor maker) seem to miss the opportunity, as well.

John Deere is in transition mode from pipeline to platform business.  It is absorbing increasing amounts of data from farmers and their operations through the machinery it sells to them and monetizing it in profitable ways.  But is also increasingly facing criticism from their farming community for using data without sharing the bounty, all the while while forcing them – through tracking and even disabling machinery – to only use John Deere-authorized services.

All that to say that platforms are highly fertile territory from both a business and branding building perspective.  Dominating platforms emerge covering more and more sectors.  But they are not invincible, showing weaknesses in their financials as well as brand building alike. Click Play below to hear Erich and I discus the threats and opportunities for traditional businesses as they deal with platforms and their branding in more detail: 

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/jpk-and-erich-joachimsthaler-on-platform-brands-ep-28.mp3

This Podcast was originally published by Vivaldi Group on June 6 2019

FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands like Airbnb read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.

And here is an article JP wrote on ‘Platforms as Brands’ for the Asian Management Insights magazine published by Singapore Management University.

If you want us to help you elevate your own brand, then write to us at [email protected].

Tom Szaky, CEO and co-founder of TerraCycle

Tom Szaky tells us that him and fellow student Jon Beyer scratched together a few thousand dollars from friends, family and from winning some business plan competitions to buy a continuous-flow composting system from its inventor in 2002.  The idea was to use worms to process the organic waste from the dining halls at their university – Princeton – and beyond into fertilizer.  They called the company TerraCycle and Tom sketched what he described to us as “a stylized worm eating itself” to serve as a logo. Not having the funds for materials and a packaging line, they re-labeled and re-filled empty soda plastic bottles to sell their ‘Waste-to-Waste’ liquid fertilizer in supermarkets.

Soon they were in the news for paying schools for organizing ‘Bottle Brigades’ to collect the PET trash, for fighting with Scotts Miracle-Gro Company over claims and artwork but also for not only gaining permission by Coca Cola, Pepsico and others to officially use their bottles but actually being asked by them to help organize more ways to recycle the packaging trash they caused. This way of earning media attention and generating industry demand is prototypical of how Tom and TerraCycle generate awareness and adherence to this day. This is how you might have heard about the ‘Drink Pouch Brigades’, seen pencil cases, totes or back-packs made of Capri Sun pouches or Chip Ahoi bags with Tom pictured as their designer wearing a blazer made of Doritos bags. Or maybe you played ‘Trash Tycoon’ on Facebook’ or saw ‘Garbage Moguls’ on the National Geographics channel?  You might see a pattern not only in how the TerraCycle brand attracts attention but also creates a brand myth.

And companies certainly started to pay attention. Packaged goods manufacturers like Kraft and Stony Field Farms and retailers including Walgreens and Target were eager to connect and offload millions of bailed juice pouches to Terra Cycle.  Somewhere along the way – ca. 2007 – Jon left to join a private equity firm and Tom made a pivot to focus the company on up-cycling and re-cycling the seemingly unstoppable avalanche of waste our throw-away society generates rather than the ‘Worm Poop’.  He also chose to no longer own the operations and associated capital but rather own the material- and data flows, the intellectual property associated with them and the hands-on promotion of the platform.

TerraCycle Global HQ in Trenton, NJ

Since then Terra Cycle has been very visible at the forefront of developing platforms to collect and recycle all kinds of consumption waste.  One example is cigarette butts.  Humans throw away some 5 trillion of them a year (and estimated 1.7 billion pounds).  Butts do not bio-degrade but rather leach out toxic chemicals – just one can contaminate over 7 liters of water enough to kill aquatic life in it – and decompose over a 2-10 year period into plastic micro-trash that slowly finds its way into wildlife…. and our food and water stream.  Terra Cycle reportedly spent six months developing a separation process that allows the butts to be recycled into compost (paper and tobacco) and plastic products like benches or shipping pallets.  Other examples: Collecting and up-cycling US Old Postal Service bags, converting used milk jars to flower pots, or fishing plastic from the oceans and recycling them into shampoo bottles are a few more of a growing list of projects Terra Cycle has kicked off around the world.

Tom has preserved a controlling stake in the company which is said to generate about $10-20 million in revenue, a low single digit profit margin but a high double digit growth rate.  The company points out that it is barely scratching the surface of the total market opportunity (TerraCycle is estimated to process far less than 5% of the potential waste material stock it targets in the US).

Head and Shoulders advertises its TerraCycle ocean plastic bottle

The occasional critic – and there seem surprisingly few – say that rather than help prevent waste in the first place, TerraCycle absolves manufactures, retailers and consumers alike of their waste sins in exchange for buying the TerraCycle seal for their packaging or throwing their trash into one of the collection boxes the company sells.  They argue that the company’s mission of “Eliminating the Idea of Waste” is too focused on collecting money and a tiny fraction of our garbage in exchange for removing the inconvenient “idea that we are being wasteful.”

In our interview, Tom agrees that “recycling only addresses the symptoms but not the root cause” … and goes on to talk about a latest project he just announced at the World Economic Forum and which might just get at that root of the problem: TerraCycle launched ‘Loop’ a program of re-fillable product containers that are delivered to households, ‘milkman-style’ …

In the interview, we also talk about:

And now, click (below) and enjoy the interview: 

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/tom-szaky-at-terra-cycle-ep-27.mp3

New Zealand kid yogurt brand ‘suckies‘ promotes TerraCycling collection of its pouches

FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of purpose-driven brands like TerraCycle read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.

If you want us to help you elevate your own brand, then write to us at [email protected].

Here is a link to the TerraCycle and Loop Store websites and some of those accounts of the Garbage Mogul and the ‘garbage as hero’, butts for cash and similar stories that help create attention and add some myth to the material (or rather trash). And here is an early video in which Tom deploys his marketing mastery, explaining to us how worm poop and the re-use of PET bottles starts to ‘eliminate the idea of waste’.

As always, we also want to provide some critical third party perspective.  This was harder than expected.  But here is a critical assessment by The Guardian that also talks about TerraCycle (scroll down towards the middle of the article).

Finally, here is a detailed review of what is known about the Loop program, as of print.

Douglas Atkin, Brand as Cult and Community Expert

Douglas Atkin became interested in how some brands attract a cult-like following long before social media and digital brands became all the rage. He wrote a book about ‘The Culting of Brands’ in 2005.  — So it came as no surprise that he told the founders of Airbnb that he would rather research what drives commitment among the brand’s loyal hosts and guests than do some strategy development exercise when they asked him for it in 2012.  They liked the idea.  In fact, they made him their Global Head of Community a few weeks into the journey. This journey led to the brand’s definition of a purpose – “Belong Anywhere” – its translation into a communication campaign, a visual identity and, most importantly to Douglas, into a unique way Airbnb host, guest and employees could think about their relationship with each other and act on it.

Among many things, Douglas will share in this interview:

Enjoy (CLICK PLAY BUTTON) 

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/airbnb-with-douglas-atkin-ep-23.mp3

FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of brands like Ben & Jerry’s read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.

If you want us to help you elevate your own brand, then write to us at [email protected].

Here is a link to the Airbnb site, its blog and the Airbnb Experiences, mentioned in the interview.  I found the blog surprisingly ‘corporate’ vs ‘community’ feeling, I have to say.

Douglas’ book ‘The Culting of Brands‘ is a classic.  Find a recent series of articles he wrote on Medium about “How Airbnb found its Purpose – and why it’s a good one.”  Here is the perspective from co-founder Brian Chesky on what Airbnb stands for.  Surprisingly, it was not easy to find this statement.  I found it buried in the middle of their blog.

Of course, not everyone agrees and is happy with the impact Airbnb has on the world. Here is a critical opinion by Gaby Hinsliff on how “Airbnb […] is hollowing out our cities” that appeared in The Guardian, UK.  She writes: “The romantic, if sometimes risky, fantasy of swapping lives with a local for a few nights and seeing the city through their eyes is being replaced with a more corporate, impersonal experience. Sign here for the keys; check out promptly in time for the next guest to arrive. Too bad that what could have been a young couple’s starter flat is now just another asset to be sweated, and one that probably stands empty half the time.”

Airbnb’s perspective on its corporate citizenship is reflected on a dedicated site at https://www.airbnbcitizen.com.

You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Android, Stitcher, etc. as well as to our blog (top right) to receive weekly new post notifications. 

A page from the Airbnb Experiences blog

Ben & Jerry’s Dave Rapaport

Attaching a higher purpose to your product in your Promotions seems like the ‘flavor du jour,’ the latest ‘P’ in the Marketing Mix. We see Audi promote equal pay and Pepsi reconciliation, while Lush calls out police spying and Gillette ‘toxic masculinity.’  I admit, I have chosen these recent advertisements because they have so tremendously backfired that most readers will be aware of them and because they illustrate what happens when the so-called brand purpose turns out to be puffery… at best (references below). It’s like Mark Zuckerberg declaring that Facebook is all about community building.  ‘But only if they can sell our private data for profit’ many will think.

The priority of profit seems to be the quick litmus test, the winnowing that separates the corn from the chaff.  Is a company willing to forgo profit maximization to live up to its promise of a higher purpose? Is it willing to stick the neck out when declaring a certain position goes beyond popular conveniently non-committal ‘virtue signalling’? Is the company actually practicing what it preaches when nobody watches? Internally and consistently?  This is where Audi is found out to be paying its women managers less than men and for not having any on their board and seen retreating quickly and choosing some other idea to advertise.

So is ‘putting some Higher Purpose into your Promotion’ a bad idea – despite being so popular with marketers now? Is that because, ultimately, Purpose and Profit don’t mix well – in fact are opposing forces?

The short answer is ‘Yes and No.’  The longer one comes through this interview with Dave Rapaport, Global Social Mission Officer at Ben & Jerry’s, a brand that seems to have succeeded at promoting ‘Peace, Love and Ice Cream’ over the past forty years quite credibly but also quite profitably – at least that’s what its owner Unilever reports of its subsidiary (since 2000).  Among other things, Dave talks about how

… but, where are all the other brands when you need them?

Enjoy (CLICK PLAY BUTTON) 

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ben-n-jerrys-with-dave-rappaport-ep-21.mp3

FURTHER READING:

For more insights into what drives the success of brands like Ben & Jerry’s read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands,” and other posts on this blog-cast.

If you want us to help you elevate your own brand, then write to us at [email protected].

Here is a link to the Ben & Jerry’s values on their website and the ‘Pecan Resist’ limited edition flavor Dave is referring to in the interview.

Here is a benchmark against which Ben & Jerry’s efforts can be measured: Jamie Peck opines in The Guardian that “Brands are not your friends… They don’t care about social justice.  They exist solely to sell you crap you probably don’t need.”  She is reacting to some much discussed and mostly liked ads Heineken aired in 2017, reflecting “shifting in societal attitudes” for which Heineken should get no credit, she thinks, but instead be shamed for jumping from girls in bikinis onto the social band wagon.   Is Ben & Jerry’s approach fundamentally different?  – We would argue that yes.  Social Engagement is a core part of the brand’s DNA.  That brand has consistently, for decades put their money and actions where their proclaimed mission leads them. That is what makes it an ‘Ueber-Brand’ in our book.

On the oher hand, here are some embedded links to the debate over the Audi, Pepsi, Fresh ads and our post on Gillette (and CPG’s) foray into social activism.

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