"Winning Ugly" Marketing Strategy

One of my home town baseball teams, the Chicago White Sox, was described during the 1983 season by Doug Rader, manager of the Texas Rangers, as "Winning Ugly".  He was trying to dismiss the White Sox style of play which emphasized a kind of scrappiness and bull headed determination rather than consistently good hitting or pitching.  

Although I am not, strictly speaking, a White Sox fan, (I live on the north side of the city) I have always appreciated the way this phrase, "winning ugly", evokes an approach to challenges that can undermine a competitive field.  When you are out-classed, out-gunned, and without a legitimate chance of beating the competition - there may still be a way to win.

Too often, whether in baseball or in business, the habitual winners forget what the game is about. In baseball, players may think it's all about their personal averages, their titles, their style, or their endorsement deals.  A team that is thinking that way can be undermined by a team that understands that there is only one score that matters at the end of the game - who has the most runs...even if the winner got those runs in a clumsy manner.

Habitual winners in business can start to believe that the reasons they win have more to do with the coolness of their brand, their brilliant packaging, the elegance of their sales pitch, their advertising or how many magazine covers their CEO appears on.  Companies that think like that can be undermined by a competitor who understands that the winner is whomever sells the most stuff at the highest price and the lowest cost.  It doesn't matter how elegant your annual report is, whether you have the best sales materials, or how well designed your logo is.  Those are all great things to have, and depending on what the target customers respond to, they may even help you sell more stuff at a higher price...but it is also possible for companies to "win ugly" as well.

The "winning ugly" strategy is based on a kind of honesty - both about the game being played, and about the player. " I may not have the best marketing but...", can actually build credibility for a company.

Two assumptions are at play in any selling opportunity.  The seller assumes that the most attractive pitch will win the day, while the buyer assumes that everyone will exaggerate their claims to win them over.  Strangely, instead of addressing a buyer's inherent skepticism by providing credibility, most sellers will continue to reinforce that skepticism with great marketing materials. But marketing that inflates your image can also diminish your credibility.

And credibility is everything to the buyer.  Are you as good as your marketing?  Can one trust a product, service or idea to deliver as much as it seems?

A client I worked with specialized in business process outsourcing for commercial lending.  They had an outstanding shop of accounting and data processors who had, through Six Sigma methodology, computer systems and just plain bull-headed determinism, managed to drive more costs out of the process of servicing loans than anyone else in their industry.  

They had terrible marketing materials.  Every once in a while, they thought about updating their brochures and web site to make it look more stylish, more like their competitors, more elegant. But their CEO intuitively understood:  not only did they not have the budget to create a beautiful web site and high concept brochures to look as good as their competitors - but the very fact that their marketing was "ugly" demonstrated to prospects and clients their core value as an outsourcer.  Anti-slickness was their sales differentiator.

Marketing isn't just about incredible creative, strong messages, or the right image.  Sometimes a marketing strategist should consider "winning ugly".

How to "hack" marketing

There's something interesting about IT and computer culture that most people in Marketing haven't picked up on...something that may very well hold the key to persuasion strategies, and ultimately to selling a product or service:  Hacking.

Good IT developers take as a given that there are two steps to getting what they want.   

Step one:  figure out how a system actually works.

Step two:  figure out how to use that system to make it do what you want it to do.

Those two steps seem rather obvious, until you realize that great IT developers are most often"hackers" in disguise.  That is, they instinctively look for weaknesses, loop holes or structures that allow them to "game the system".  When a developer learns how a system works, they are less interested in the appearance of an application, but rather the gears, principals, and underlying code that make it work in the first place.

In the old days, hackers were seen at best as anti-social - at worst as criminals.  But now, the richest and most powerful men and women in the world are hackers.  Bill Gates is, perhaps, one of the richest and most well known, but hackers are running everything from our financial system, world-wide logistics and shipping, media and military security, to on-line retail to phone systems. 

And hackers aren't just working computers.  Hedge funds made a lot of money by hacking financial systems to come up with new financial structures. Southwest Airlines hacked the commercial airline business by understanding what was really driving costs as well as customers - then using it to their advantage.  The best real estate developers hack neighborhoods to find value in a parcel of land that no one else sees.

Unbeknownst to most people, every discipline and every industry has "hackers" - and almost always, they are the ones running things.

However, it's usually not too difficult to spot a hacker if you can watch them solve a problem. Most people when solving a problem will start by asking, "What did we do before?"  a hacker will ask, "How does this system really work?", followed by, "What do we want to get away with?" Once a hacker understands how a system works, then they can use or manipulate the systems rules to solve their problem.

Let me illustrate with a classic marketing hack:

One of the oldest rules of advertising has been Repetition.  The more you repeat something, the more likely people will believe what you say and act upon it.  That's why we see the same ads over and over again - why the same words, the same images and the same benefits are shown repeatedly.  

Here's how it works:  As a survival mechanism, people forget far more than they remember. Part of how we survive is by constantly editing what is important information and what is not.  If we weren't able to do that, we wouldn't be able to discern between information that leads to survival - such as where the good food is or how to avoid the hungry lion and information that we don't need, such as how a grey pebble at your feet looks just like the grey pebble that you stepped on two seconds ago.

However, if you keep seeing that grey pebble over an over again, especially if that grey pebble is fundamentally different from the white pebbles you usually see, you will pay attention to it - and you may remember it as important.

By repeating, "grey pebble" over and over again, the brain starts to register "grey pebble" - and if enough significance is created, it will be rememberd - and even cause someone to act upon it.

A blunt tool that most marketers use is:

Say the same thing, the same way, over and over again until people get it.

Sometimes this can work - but sometimes it can mostly annoy people.  Rarely does it actually build a brand (see my last posting).

A sophisticated hack - one that takes into account how the brain actually works - is to talk about the same thing, in different ways, from different people/sources,  at different times until people conclude that it is important.

In order for a repetition to really mean something, there are a couple of things that should be in place:

1. It has to be different.  If your grey pebble looks like all the other grey pebbles I'm walking on, and nothing of interest happens whenever I step on one, there is no reason for me to remember one over the other.
2. Information needs to come from multiple sources in a credible way. In other words, if one person keeps babbling on about grey pebbles, it can only rise to a certain level of importance.  It may even drop in significance - as one wonders why this person is so obsessed about grey pebbles.  If several people you meet during your day talk about the grey pebble, if there is debate about the significants of grey pebbles, if there are even disagreements about what it means  - then it must be important and true.  It's more credible if it isn't "sold" to you.  It's more important and more believable if you engage in a "dialogue" about it.

Instead of following a formula, instead of looking at how something was done before, instead of just marketing, one may want to consider hacking the market - and in the process begin the "dialogue".

Are we confusing "Branding" with brand?

Over the last 100 years or so, a kind of religious faith has emerged in business: the cult of Branding. Adherents to this faith believe that a brilliant logo, a compelling slogan and just the right name will build growth, margin and customer loyalty.

But does the "Branding" create a brand? Or is it the company and its customers?

Do slogans and advertisements persuade a market - or do they confirm what the market already knows?

The Priests of the "Branding" faith, (also known as brand consultants, advertising execs. and Chief Marketing Officers) will frequently point to successful companies that posses powerful brands that are valued or even loved by millions of people all over the world. The "priests" will then promise that if you follow them - if you change the look and feel of your name and logo, if you use a certain color, or a certain design template, a slogan, a communications framework or a set of talking points - then you too can have a powerful brand.

And so, the faithful go to these priests of branding - they give them dollars and time, they allow the priests to prod and poke their employees and customers - and then they change their signs, their slogans, their bullet points, brochures, advertisements and business cards.

And then, the priests declare the greatness of the new branding, and this is confirmed by the focus group testimonials, and perhaps even by awards from other priests.

But...with all this great new branding...for all this change...what does a company actually gain?

• sometimes the share price climbs a bit, for many investors adhere to the branding faith...but that bump in price will diminish as soon as expectations are not matched by results.
• sometimes employees with branding faith will swell with pride at their new and improved logo...but that will diminish over time, and as the realities of their work set in.
• sometimes a customer or two, curious about all the new words and pictures, will inquire...but unless there's something substantive to back up the changes in words, the customers will lose interest.

So...does "Branding" provide the magic of a powerful brand?

Or...is there another way besides "Branding" to create that magic?

I suspect that modern business has become confused by "Branding" and has missed what a brand actually is, why it is important, and how a company goes about getting one in the first place. The high priests of "Branding" may be right that brand is good - but they might not be really helping companies get there.

Are we confusing "Branding" with brand?