Doctor, Heal Thy Brand

By Robert Passikoff, PhD, Founder and President, Brand Keys, Inc. A recent study from the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine found that most three to five year olds who taste-tested a variety of foods preferred the ones that came in a McDonald's wrapper. Even though the foods were exactly the same. And that included non-McDonald-like foods like carrots and celery too.

Dr. David Katz, the Director of the Center, declared, “this study demonstrates simply and elegantly that advertising literally brainwashes young children into a baseless preference for certain food products."

Transparent as this trial data may be, the children’s preference is hardly “baseless”. Clearly this is a gentleman who knows much about clinical trials and nutrition but very little about of the transparency aspects of branding data, and even less regarding the genesis of the word. And you can’t get much clearer than the original definition of “brand”. It stood for a real brand. On cattle.

The irony is that it was intended to “differentiate” one ranch’s cattle from another. That cattle may be cattle may seem a transparent finding, but the cattle buyers in Kansas City and St. Louis knew that one ranch fed, watered, and cared for their stock better than another and that ultimately they traveled to market in a better condition. So the buyers actively looked for that stock’s brand, and preferring what they saw, were often willing to pay 20 percent more for one brand’s cattle versus others. Ultimately they (the cattle) all got turned into steaks. Or in McDonald’s case, hamburger, but that’s at the other end of the consumption continuum.

Anyway, the fact that young children today are highly influenced by branding, is about as transparent a finding as is possible today. And while the fact that advertising and branding has the ability to engage and differentiate may have surprised the folks at the Prevention Research Center, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to marketing and advertising and communication practitioners. Nor should the fact that the McDonald’s logo actually means something to children (and adults as well) and adds some flavor, differentiation, and, yes, even clarity, to the perception of the product. They don’t say, “perception is reality,” for nothing.

A number of years ago a Brand Keys study of the power of logos – modern marketing’s version of the cowboy’s brand – found that the McDonalds “golden arches” logo – on its own and absent of any elegant brainwashing – made nearly a 20 percent contribution to engagement, loyalty, and sales. Other brand logos (and their percentage of effective differentiation and engagement) included Apple [33 percent], Polo [26 percent], Nike [25 percent], Starbucks [24 percent], La Coste [23 percent] and MasterCard [20 percent]. Others did not fare so well. Taco Bell’s logo only made a six percent contribution, as did United Airlines.

And whether you call it a brand or logo or icon or avatar, if it’s a swoosh on your feet, fruit on your desk, or wrapping around your burger, it should be clear that the visual manifestation of a brand should materially influence public perception – even if that “public” is only three to five years old. If you’ve done it correctly, of course. There was a time when things did go better with Coke.

But to call this “brainwashing” is clearly misleading. The powerful effects of today’s media ecology where, to quote Marshall McLuhan, “various media end up arranged so that they help each other, won't cancel each other out, and buttress one another,” cannot be denied. Technological change and the proliferation of more and more and more communication touch points increase the complexity of the modern marketplace even for both children and doctors. And, if you are talking about “transparency,” you can’t get much clearer about the fact that increasing levels of visual and brand literacy among younger (and younger) children are all aspects of marketing and communication that must be factored into the brand effects equation. And that’s true whether you are wrapping hamburgers, selling chocolate frosted sugar bomb cereals, or selling cars, HDTV sets, or even medical equipment.

What should have been transparent to the doctors at Yale is the incontrovertible fact that today children are born hot-wired into the Internet and are cocooned by marketing and advertising, some intentional and some peripheral. And the reality is that virtually every brand has some level of promotion of one sort or another aimed at one segment or another, including children. And, the question of healthy eating habits notwithstanding, if you factor in another reality that giving kids a taste for high-fat/high-salt foods and snacks early in life helps to set their taste preferences and expectations, you have a brand association situation that’s crystal clear and worthy of Pavlov.

Why beat up McDonalds because they’ve done their branding consistently and effectively? The result? Nine out of 10 children know Ronald McDonald. Among kids worldwide only Santa Claus is better known — because he gives away toys, one of which might actually be a McDonald’s Barbie (no kidding, but that’s less an issue of brand transparency and more an issue of co-branding). The only real surprise is that Dr. Katz seems surprised and/or outraged at the transparency of the results in his study.

But here’s something that might brighten Dr. Katz’s day. Not everyone is doing as well as McDonald’s. In another Brand Keys study of 1847 brands in 75 product and service categories, only 21 percent of the products and services showed any real levels of transparent brand differentiation, and that’s down nearly 10 percent from 2003 when we did the original benchmark wave. Consumers are aware of the other brands, of course, but the brands are neither known for anything in particular, nor did they generate high levels of differentiated consumer preference.

So, with lack of differentiation alive and growing among US brands, I close with a final, transparent thought: successful branding imbues a product with special values, and is (or should be) the goal of any product or service that aspires to be a brand. Otherwise you’re a category placeholder, or worse, a commodity.

Maybe Yale’s Prevention Research Center should have tried wrapping the foods in paper labeled “ACME”.