Brand vs. Product: Not a dichotomy after all?

Collaboration spéciale
Ed Castillo, phd US

When crafting a communications strategy, marketers and their agencies often clash over the relative importance of product details and brand imagery. A brand manager may be convinced that his product will appeal to the market because it does X, Y or Z (usually X, Y AND Z [!]), while the account planner may feel that product loyalty is basically an irrational impulse which feeds on established brand narratives and/or associations. “Brandtailing,” message mixes, earned/paid media synergies and several other approaches have sought to reconcile this brand vs. product debate.

The recent Mac TV campaign (you’ve seen ‘em; the ones with cool-guy/tool-guy representing Mac/PC) seem to resolve the debate by essentially being product-attribute messages that are so couched in brand imagery that the ads just feel like “brand ads.”

The message of each ad is fairly technical (e.g., with Macs you don’t need to use a ‘wizard’ or other software intermediary when using peripherals, or Macs have a magnet-secured power connection which keeps them from being thrown to the ground when someone trips on the cord, etc.). However, when these less-than-titillating bits of information are served up metaphorically, with an approachably clever personality and that clean, ‘designy’ aesthetic, it just feels Mac-like, and (at least for me) elicits some of the same feelings I associate with other, uncompromisingly ‘brand-heavy’ Mac ads.

This highlights the importance of “brand behavior” (a concept at the heart of the PHD approach to communications strategy). Given the way the Mac brand has behaved over the years (i.e., a heavy brand-building emphasis), when Apple speaks out about one of its product attributes, we feel that the attribute is simply an expected consequence of the brand personality (it’s like a celebrity’s re-entering rehab being written about in a gossip magazine; have we really learned something about the person, or have we just been presented with yet another reminder of what we’ve come to expect from the celeb?).

The upshot: If your brand behaves consistently — and with a meaningful narrative — even your unsexy-product-attribute messages can elicit visceral brand-associations.

“Of course you don’t need wizards with a Mac; Apple’s all about easy and intuitive use.”