By Brian H Meredith
From the NZBusiness"Marketing Maestro" Archive
First
published May 2002
As New Zealand continues, mostly apace, to mature and join the real world (from which we, for better or worse, protected ourselves for so long) in so many aspects of life, there remain a few aspects of our maturation that remain brick walls for us.
For reasons that aren’t clear to me (but which may well include such frustrating kiwi character flaws as not wanting to learn from others, preferring to cock it up ourselves whilst trying to re-invent the wheel) we don’t seem to have cottoned on to the powerful marketing concepts of Brands & Branding.
We do seem to have grasped the need to differentiate ourselves and our products from the rest of the world – and there are a bunch of opportunities for us to do that. In food & beverage, for example, what awesome marketing power does the careful combining of a quality product with an already strongly established clean, green positioning that New Zealand increasingly enjoys offer? But we don’t seem to be learning how to do it.
Witness Kiwifruit. This is a well documented debacle and I won’t drag it all up again here. Except to say that whatever Zespri may claim about their current performance, the fact that we gave away an idea, a few seeds and an awesomely powerful brand name still takes my breath away. And anyway, no-one will ever convince me that Zespri isn’t a silly name.
And then, of course, there’s another silly name - Cervena. Having some personal business interests in the food & beverage sector, I can’t tell you how many times I or one of my team have had to explain to international visitors that Cervena is venison, only to hear the retort, “then why don’t you call it venison?”
Then, of course, there’s Brand New Zealand (or, “The New Zealand Way”). Talk about mucking up a fantastic concept in three, easy steps.
And now we come to the next great Branding idea that we seem destined to bugger up.
Heard yet of “toi iho” ? If not, you will soon, if all goes well (which it quite possibly will not).
“Toi iho” is a brand mark developed to enable the identification of products that are “Maori-made”.
It is a strong concept based on some strong & simple marketplace realities.
New Zealand’s visitor numbers are growing significantly each year. For the vast majority of international visitors, Maori people and culture are high up on their list of interests. In fact, it is true to say that for them, all things Maori are “way cool”. If you are in any doubt of this, just head to Rotorua and ask the Tamaki brothers!
So doesn’t it make commercial sense to develop a hallmark of Maori provenance and Maori quality?
Of course it does.
So why oh why would Creative New Zealand (who should never be involved in this kind of initiative anyway) get through a million bucks so far on the project, only to water the whole thing down with the addition of two other “marks” to the equation.
Haven’t heard about them. Well, they’re doozies! Here they are:
“Mainly Maori Made” (told you they were doozies) and “Maori Co-Production”
At this point, it is only fair to point out that I am wholly unaware of the background to this saga, so it is entirely possible that someone will send me screeds of waffle, bunkum & balderdash to explain the strategy and the thinking and all that stuff.
But the problem is that the customer won’t get the benefit of the Strategy document when they browse a New Zealand retail outlet, pause to lovingly fondle a kauri hand carved waka and admire it for its apparent authenticity (or, perhaps, it trademarked partial authenticity).
Still, maybe Creative New Zealand’s Brand gurus are, at this very moment, building on their reputation still further and hurtling off to Japan to help develop a new mark, “Mainly Sony” before jetting to Paris to advise on the launch of “Mostly Dior”. And I can’t wait to win Lotto so that I can go and buy my “Quite a bit of Ferrari”
The take out message from this rant is, I hope, a simple one. Brands are probably the most powerful marketing concept available to us, as a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-facetted nation, with which to build fresh, innovative, exciting and, most of all, commercially successful products & services. Products & Services that stand out from the rest.
And now is the time to really get our A into G because there are markets around the world that are already beginning to demand this of us. But we risk missing the boat unless we can take lessons from, for example, our wine industry.
There they understand strong brands. They have developed Superior and carefully differentiated product qualities (you’ll rarely mistake a New Zealand Chardonnay for anyone else’s). They articulate simple, compelling Propositions.
The equation is not a complex one.
Because, as every one of the world’s great Brands will attest, you can’t be a little bit pregnant.
So what’s the key to success?
Focus, single mindedness and an absence of multi-agendered committees and/or public bodies from the process.
Sounds like a manifesto for life to me.
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