Beg to Differ

Pizza Hut drops the pizza… again

June 19, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen Leave a Comment

Beg to Differ notices that Pizza Hut – the iconic American sit-down-fast-food restaurant and purveyors of pizza pies around the world – have been tinkering with their brand again. And the result? Sorry guys. This one’s been in the oven way too long. That smell could be your brand equity burning.

(image above from the blog Brand New)

“The Hut” branding – half baked or over-done?

Well here we are one short year after the silly and risky-to-brand-trust-levels publicity stunt pretending to rebrand in the UK under the name “Pasta Hut”, cost ( mixed reaction here from Brand Republic Magazine) then revealing that was just a way of drawing attention to their non-pizza offerings (tee hee). But it seems the Hut-people are at it again, in the USA this time. And what do you know? They found another way to drop the pizza (in all senses of the term).

Their glorious Big Idea:

On their new chain-wide pizza boxes and on a growing number of stores, Pizza Hut is introducing an alternate logo and name: “The Hut”, which for the moment is intended to co-exist with the Pizza Hut brand.

The rationale? Here’s what “the Hut” has to say:

And yes, we’re also introducing another vocabulary word with Pizza Hut, which is’The Hut.’ That ties in nicely with (today’s) texting generation. We wanted to make sure that Pizza Hut and ‘The Hut’ become common vernacular for our brand. Pizza Hut CMO Brian Niccol in BrandWeek

Ah, got it. Tryng to create “common vernacular” – a term which incidentally, is also a big hit with “today’s texting generation.”

Now I’m not sure what Jabba & co. make of this – or if the idea actually came from the SpaceBalls character “Pizza the Hut“, but I’m thinking it’s a really bad idea. It’s one thing to try to introduce a new nick-name (and this one isn’t totally implausible). But it’s quite another to spring the nickname on people in such a way that you create brand confusion and cause people to question your commitment to core product.

And I’m not alone:

It’s a mystery to me why just a year after the whole Pasta Hut rebrand the company would now start a whole new renaming mission by introducing The Hut. Having spent 12 months being either Pizza Hut or Pasta Hut, the business seems to be testing out a third name. Wed, 17 Jun 2009 | By Ruth Mortimer | Marketing Week UK

My take: My recommendation would be to start slow and go organic. Use “The Hut” in a tagline. As in: “Pizza Hut – Get Pizza and More at the Hut”. Then IF IT STICKS start using it more and more until eventually you can claim a name change about by popular demand.

More reaction (from abroad):

Thanks to Brand New for the tip-off and design blog idsgn for analysis and the before / after image above.

Am I being too harsh? Comment away!

Garlic kings & pretty things – don’t laugh, they sell Shawarma

June 17, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen Leave a Comment

garlicking horiz

It’s hard to believe that a niche product category like Shawarma would become the subject of a heated competition for the affection, pharmacy eyeballs, prescription and garlic-craving tastebuds of a city. But in my home town of Ottawa, there must be gold in them-there-pitas.

A few years back, authour Daniel Pink came to Ottawa lead a seminar. At the time, he was just an average former-White-House-speechwriter-flogging-a-soon-to-be-Bestseller (Free
Agent Nation – a great read), and not yet not a revered member of North America’s business publishing elite. And he was hungry. So after the presentation, a few of the locals and I
took Mr. Pink out for a late-night bite to eat at Maroush Shawarma on Elgin Street.

Now Maroush isn’t your average, tame ethnic fast food outlet. Maroush has its own theme music – a raucous Lebanese pop song – and a devoted following of late-night partygoers who tend to dance on the countertops (strongly encouraged by the owner).

This led to a discussion of how a brand in a crowded, highly competetive market can distinguish itself – even if it involves in-your-face (and occasionally really tacky) gimmicks. The Garlic King in the St. Patrick's Day Parade - yes you read that right. The finest in Lebanese-Irish cuisine.

The Garlic King is another example. Here’s a photo of his specially tricked-out van which seems to appear everywhere there is a crowd. This photo is from Ottawa’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. Lebanese-Irish cuisine anyone?

Scoff all you want. These kinds of “Honest Ed’s” brands end up becoming landmarks in the local scene. Why? Because they DIFFER.

So ask yourself: can you do better? How are you going to DIFFER in your market?

BONUS: if you have 5 minutes and 49 seconds, this amateur documentary isn’t a bad introduction to the Ottawa Shawarma scene:

No, Twitter brand: what are YOU doing?

June 12, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 2 Comments

Okay, dosage confession time. As an emerging Twitter devotee, page (@denvan) I’ve been “drinking the Kool-Aid” of the Twitter brand for too long to really be objective about their brand strategy. I’m a tribe member now, viagra 100mg and I’ve learned the buzzwords, tools, and idiosyncrasies of this social media monster. But as a brand strategy geek, I also hear rumblings of trouble in the Twitterverse that I can’t ignore…

As I encounter more and more fellow “tweeps” (a word about insider language later) and have the same old “what the heck is Twitter GOOD for” conversation, the more I begin to wonder about different aspects of the Twitter brand package – are the elements holding together? Do they make sense? Could this be why we learned yesterday that Twitter’s growth is flat-lining and more than 50% of Twitter accounts are dead? Perhaps.

But let’s start with the good stuff.

What I love about Twitter Branding:

Basically, the thing I like about Twitter is the thing that may kill it in the end: it’s rough around the edges.

Twitter gained my instant affection by making absolutely NO attempt to be slick or professional – in design, messaging, or corporate positioning. The graphics are simple and inviting in a cartoonish-but-zen-elegant way that gives the site class tempered with a sense of humour. Nothing arty farty-highbrow or in-your-face revolutionary here.

Scroll down to the bottom of any twitter.com page and click on About Us and you get the feeling that this thing started in somebody’s garage in 2006, and that they’re hoping to stay there. The main login page is a study in simplicity with only 183 characters in the main body copy (note to Twitter: I could help you get this down to 140. I’m getting REALLY good at that!).

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Aw shucks. Ain’t that nice?

The whole brand package seems to promise new users a few key things: 1) small (i.e. unintimidating – easy to grasp), 2) fun (breezy tone, quick hits of cool content perhaps) 3) free (not going to take my credit card and sucker-punch me later with weirdo fees), 4) easy (get started – and hooked – fast), 5) social (geared toward social, not “serious” conversations)… and 6) disposable (geard toward a quick pay-off for a small amount of effort).

Which brings us to the potential dark side (spoiler alert: the light sabers are about to change colour!).

The potential problem(s) with Twitter Branding

The problem with sustaining this promise can be expressed in one word: Oprah. Okay, maybe two: Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. All right, three: Oprah, Ashton, and the coming of Summer patio season to the Northern Hemisphere (now THAT’s a social network!!). The first two are problems of scale, that is, reasons for rapid viral growth, while the third is one of the non-brand factors that should lead any sane person to want to get away from the computer or Blackberry (he writes at 5:01 p.m. on a gorgeous Friday evening).

The big question for the Twitter brand is this: can it scale to meet the hype?

In early 2009, Twitter went from cool-kid buzzword to mass market sensation with over 5 million additional new visitors in March – up from 4.3M in February to 9.3M in March. And the growth continued strong into April with the addition of the Great One (Oprah not Gretzky) and the 1 Millionth follower for Kutcher – with the attendant .

And the pressures are only increasing with big serious events like the election in Iran and the attacks in Mumbai, and the pundits trumpeting the game-changing nature of the medium.

And with all that hype, came… a great big collective “HUH?!?” from the new users attracted to the platform.

Because, you see, the Twitter brand is havign trouble emerging from the basement it dug for itself. Its initial brand promises are being met with the problems of massive growth:

Promises Twitter might be breaking

1. Small: sorry Twitter. MILLIONS of users. Repeat that. MILLIONS.

2. Fun: despite the breezy graphics and light tone, Twitter is not fun until you connect with at least one other active human. But for the average newbie, Twitter.com doesn’t do a very good job of helping you understand how to make that first connection (or whay
you’d want to)…

3. Free: for now, but with the weight of so much stuff comes the time cost that mid-market adopters are more likely to factor into the equation. Business users in particular are skeptical that this isn’t just another time-waster for employees, and Twitter doesn’t help itself – starting with the name “Twitter” which is incredibly catchy and viral, but also implies empty, and possibly annoying background chatter.

4. Easy: I like and compulsively use Twitter, but even I barely ever use Twitter.com. TweetDeck and other tools are absolute necessities for anyone serious about the medium. Twitter itself may be Open API-ing itself into obsolescence unless it starts taking the user experience – and more to the point – the IMPRESSION of control that a new user needs – more seriously.

5. Social: This and all the other examples on the site imply that Twitter is just for F2F (Friend-To-Friend) communications. Sample value messages are about delving into the trivial parts of people’s lives, which, as most people find pretty quickly, is not the main content that forms the bulk of Twitter traffic. I’m finding that the most successful Tweeters mix maybe 10-20% personal with maybe 60-70% subject matter expertise and useful cross references, and the rest being current events, trivia, etc. Twitter has outgrown “What are you doing” and has crossed into the realm of “Why are we doing what we’re doing?” and “What does it mean to me?”

6. Disposable: here’s the crux of it for me. By playing up “fun” “easy” and “social” aspects, Twitter’s current brand strategy is focused on “fast-twitch” brand drivers, and missing the most important aspect of the Twitter service: that it takes time, effort, and commitment to really get anything out of the medium. New users see the firehose coming at them, and it’s no surprise they’d be tempted to go elsewhere for a drink.

So how does Twitter tune its brand package to 1) help the newbies get it and get involved, 2) make the case about the serious work values the medium can fulfill, without 3) losing the core values and emotional ties that made the brand attractive in the first place?

Or is it all just a deeper level of brilliance than this poor brand geek can grasp – after all, they’ve got the millions of devoted (and not-so-devoted) users, so something must be working.

That’s a question I throw back to you dear reader. Comment away.

Your word of the day: Crowdsourcing

June 9, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 7 Comments

Maybe I’m a bit slow, more about but I just came across the term “crowdsourcing” – the process of solving business problems using social media (not to be confused with another term I recently picked up: “FLASHMOB” – the process of creating absurd but strangely compelling YouTube videos with your friends).

The image above is from my experiment with one of the early commercial applications of the concept. 99Designs.com allows businesses to design their logo / business card / Web site by posting a prize, a creative brief, and holding an online contest.

In this case, I’ve challenged designers to tackle a logo for the BEGtoDIFFER brand. The results are mixed, but while there are no obvious winners in the pack yet, the results are really creative and certainly better than a lot of professional designers I’ve worked with for a lot more money. But is it an ethical way to secure creative content? I have two minds about it: 1) the client mind: great! Bring it on, and 2) the agency / freelancer mind: whoa, that’s undercutting and devaluing the industry!

As if to underline the difficulty of the issue, one interesting sideline came up in the process that illustrates both the risks and some of the issues involved in this process. One entry, quite a strong one, which contained a sheep similar to the one in the graphic on this page, struck me as oddly familiar, and upon some reading, sure enough, it is very similar to the sheep icon used by a 1.5 Billion dollar British ad agency: http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com. That’s not to say there was any plagiarism involved – far from it. It’s just to say that the onus is still on the owner of the “marque” to ensure that the final product isn’t going to get you into any trouble.

As a further cross-current, I found to my surprise – that the “research” arm of BBH, called BBH Labs recently commissioned its own crowdsourced logo from another site called crowdspring.com. Well, can you imagine the indignation from the “serious” design community when a big firm offers *only* $1500 for a logo…

Some industry commentary:

Reflection from BBH Labs on their own blog:

So how about you? What do you think?

I’m looking for comments on both the ethics of crowdsourcing professional services and on the logo options I’ve got in the hopper right now.

More coffee with a conscience – Bridgehead opens 10th location

June 8, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 8 Comments

Signage and store design nicely blend warm colours with very contemporary elements. The stores fit equally well into old stone heritage buildings or brand new condo buildings (as here).

Right across the street from Starbucks, cialis 40mg and about 500 metres from the 1st Bridgehead in the Westboro area of Ottawa (and a short walk from my house), dosage my favourite coffee brand has opened a shiny new 10th location. And boy am I excited.

Two days before they opened, rx I managed to get a tour from store manager Mia and Tracey Clarke – one of the co-owners of the chain – but I had to keep my bike helmet on since it was still a hard-hat zone. Then, on Friday morning before the store opened, I was able to score the first cup of coffee.

Okay, so I’m a geek, and the chain is run by friends, but as a brand guy I’ve been eagerly following this local success story nearly from the beginning.

Coffeeshop manager Mia Eriksson and Bridgehead chain owner and my local brand hero Tracey Clarke (yes that's a box of subway tiles she's slogging).

Top ten brand lessons to learn from Bridgehead:

1. Great product consistently delivered – yes it’s fairly traded, organic, and shade grown, but Bridgehead puts great care into the quality, variety, and freshness of the product. The rest of my top ten list would matter not a bit if the beverages, treats, and lunch items weren’t top notch. They are.

Oh, and on the innovation front, BH managed to scoop Starbucks on the custom coffee front. Just as the Seattle mega-java purveyors were buying the Clover company BH was able to get a small number of the uber sexy Clover Machines before Starbucks stopped selling to cometitors.As a result, Ottawa coffee lovers will get to taste Clover coffee years before Starbucks ever brings the technology to its Canadian stores. Wired.com reviews the Clover.

2. Great cause(s) – Tracey Clarke got into the coffee business after visiting Central America in the 80’s and realizing that the local people were producing incredible coffee, but they couldn’t get any of it because of a) export monopolies, b) prohibitive prices, and c) shamefully low prices for their beans. She and a partner bought the original Bridgehead brand from a well-meaning charity that was way over its head trying to run even one retail store, then turned it around, and in a few short years has become the quality coffee brand in Ottawa.

3. Local brand – I’m an Ottawa boy. They are an Ottawa-based chain; the money stays in town. All good.

4. Committed to walkable urban neighbourhoods – despite the obvious pull from suburban areas, there are no drive-thru windows at any Bridgehead (yet). The chain has continued to place its new locations in traditional main-street areas throughout Ottawa, and as a founder of the Welling ton West BIA, I can tell you they have been very supportive and active in street-level retail initatives and issues.

5. Really nice people – the founders are level-headed, approachable folks, and their approach has attracted strong staff in the stores. Employees tend to be older, better educated, and “hipper” than in the other shops around town.

Here's me at the new Bridgehead withthe first cup of coffee served to an outsider and the all-important first Internet ticket.

6. Great spaces – real attention to the usability of space. Nice blend of lounging, working, and conversation spaces, Bridgehead has been refining the blend with each new store they build, creating a noticeably more “human” place than the average Starbucks or Second Cup.

7. Family friendly – because of the demographics of many of their host neighbourhoods (and fact that most of the management have young children), they’ve proven much more open to non-coffee drinkers in the stroller set, plus toddlers and school-aged children. Creates a lot of noise at times, but on the weekends, my kids love to visit.

8. Business-friendly – after some wrestling over the prevalence of laptop “campers” in some early stores, Bridgehead has struck a nice balance between open areas and places to plug in, and free wireless with a one-hour limit.

9. Strong retail branding – their online and social-networking presence could use some definite work, but in terms of creating a brand experience outside and inside their stores, they are hard to beat. This is due to the active involvement of the founders in every aspect of store design, so it will inevitably become increasingly challenging to sustain as they grow further without more formal “policy” work. But the fundamentals are very strong.

10. NO ADVERTISING(!) – this may sound strange on a “branding” blog, but remember this site is about brand strategy, not advertising, so I don’t make my money from media buys or column inches purchased. Bridgehead has managed to accomplish all of the above without spending a penny on traditional advertising. Again, this may have to change as they grow, but by reaching out through social-justice oriented circles, supporting like-minded causes, lots of “in-kind” community contributions, and to reitierate, being incredibly smart about their product and retail fundamentals, they have succeeded by DIFFERING not by TELLING people they were different.