The Marketing Doctor says:

Winner: Warren Buffett

Loser: WaMu

Folks, this week’s brand winner and brand loser:

The Winner:

Thank you Warren Buffett for reminding us what it means to be consistent as a brand.   

His purchase of Goldman Sachs preferred shares and valuable options confirms the reputation of a man who is calm when others panic.  The Goldman Sachs move is quintessential Buffett: seeing value where others don’t, and then acting quickly to make a deal.  

The Oracle of Omaha is considered one of the greatest stock pickers of all time.  Everything about his personal brand says this.  His net wealth, valued at some 62 billion dollars, is the direct consequence of his brand, which is all about investing in value rather than hype.  He still lives in the same house he bought in 1958 for $31,500, and his word is his bond —a rarity in legalistic America.  I came across this quote of Buffet’s from earlier this year and, frankly, I think it says it all:

You can sell it to Berkshire, and we'll put it in the Metropolitan Museum; it'll have a wing all by itself; it'll be there forever. Or you can sell it to some porn shop operator, and he'll take the painting and he'll make the boobs a little bigger and he'll stick it up in the window, and some other guy will come along in a raincoat, and he'll buy it.

Bottom line: hundreds of thousands of guys started before, with and after Warren Buffet, but there’s only one Buffet.  Why?  Because here’s one personal brand that has been consistent and growing since Buffet filed his first income tax return at 13 and deducted his bicycle as a business expense.

What can we learn about marketing and branding from Buffett and his most recent move?  Two things:

1)  Every brand has core features —the essence of what the brand is.  Buffett likes to say that he was born with a knack for “allocating capital.”  That would be one core brand characteristic.

But he also admits that this “knack” was developed by many people —from his parents, to his professors to his long-time business partner and sounding board, Charles Munger (who frequently shoots down Buffett’s ideas).  In fact, it is Munger who Buffett credits for teaching him early on how to couple his eagerness to buy a company at a low price with a belief in buying only quality, well-managed businesses.  

A successful brand “discovers” and refines its core features until they hum and are reflected perfectly in its actions and marketing.  Few, if any of us, have the Buffett knack with capital, but all of us have core features which can be discovered and refined until they hum.  

Test your brand, whether it is you, your company or your product.  Gauge its core characteristics in the marketplace (business or social) until you know exactly what these characteristics are.  

Listen to others as they help you define this brand —this is the marketplace talking back, and you’d better listen.  

And don’t be afraid to change course if it brings your brand closer to expressing its core —in the long run, things work smoothly when you have realized your brand’s core characteristics and are working with them rather than against them.

Warren Buffett and the Goldman Sachs move shows exactly what it’s like when a brand has built itself around its core characteristics and acts on them again and again over time.  It really is poetry in motion.

The Loser:

This time we had to wait until the end of the week for our loser: Washington Mutual, Inc..

That was when Federal Regulators (the FDIC) seized the bank in what is by far the biggest bank failure in history.  The FDIC have been very busy lately, by the way.  See my take on them and other bank branding issues from earlier this year.

The WaMu story is valuable for us marketers and branders.

Never grow a brand too fast is one lesson from WaMu.  The other lesson is a strictly marketing one.

Marketing at its best really does reflect the truth about a product or service.  Let the cynics roll their eyes.

WaMu’s advertisements never really hit the mark with the Target Market in my opinion.  Moreover, the ads didn’t come out of the company’s core characteristics.  They were just an image WaMu wanted to project —and as it turned out, this image was at odds with reality.  You remember: WaMu skewered the stodgy old bankers who charged big fees and were reluctant to lend —they made fun of the old way of doing banking.  But the truth was that WaMu’s management pocketed big bucks even as their company failed (just like the selfish bankers they skewered), and reckless lending practices (the new banking?) led to their company’s fall.

Now WaMu’s collapse is being called the symbol of the worst excesses of the mortgage boom by the Wall Street Journal.  In a way, you could argue that WaMu forgot that it was a bank (i.e, entrusted with deposits and built around making prudent loans, etc.).

As with most of the marketing losers of the past, WaMu put “image” marketing first and let rapid growth eclipse brand and marketing fundamentals.  

One clear takeaway from the WaMu debacle is this: any advertising you do should reflect what your company, brand or service is all about and, in doing so, reinforce for you what your brand essentials are and who your Target Market is.  No marketing that you do should ever come out of “left field.” Marketing must always be based on your brand's core features and be consistent across all media and wherever you find your Target Market. 

And remember, it’s always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.

TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -

A brand winner operates from its core characteristics; a brand loser forgets it even has core characteristics.