Unzip Your Brand

Episode II: The Wine Gods Speak

—Mark and Sandra merged into the slow parade of traffic around the large central plaza in downtown Sonoma, 40 miles north of San Francisco. The park-like square, site of the historic 1846 rebellion for California independence, now anchored a thriving surround of antique shops, restaurants, boutiques and B&B's. The two had stopped here for brunch, and now rejoined Highway 12 going north, deeper into the soft folds of Sonoma wine country—

Sandra: I told people at work we were going way up in Sonoma to drink raw wine out of a barrel. They said that didn't sound like the world's most romantic date.

Mark: Tell them adventure is the bud of romance. This is a total taste treat. We'll be sampling art in progress.

Sandra: Do we get bibs?

Mark: It's tasting, not sloshing. I bought three cases of the 2002 and they're letting us drop in on last year's harvest six months before it meets the bottle. Tasting from the barrel tells us where this year's vintage is going: the depth, the structure, and how the winemaker is pulling a hundred flavor notes together. Mere mortals kill for a chance like this.

Sandra: How much farther until we reach this place?

Mark: Twenty miles up Highway 12, then west toward the coast, then down a side road to a set of sunny hillsides that get a fair dose of ocean cool. If you're a grape named Pinot Noir, it's microclimate heaven.

Sandra: I can see it now: Burgundian chateau, gleaming marble tasting bar, exquisite gift shop, gourmet deli, sandstone patio with green canvas umbrellas, cheery staff, and gift shop ….

Mark: Close, but maybe something a bit more functional, hidden back in the vines, with thick stone walls, barrels, ancient wooden tasting table, barrels, very good stemware … and barrels.

Sandra: For a guy consumed with brands you have a strange affinity for out-of-the-way places.

Mark: Brands burn hottest at the edge. This winery is the spot for Sonoma Pinot Noir. Only 400 cases. Volume isn't the point.

Sandra: I thought brands were all about volume … distribution … ubiquity.

—Outside of town the highway passed a large, venerable spa which once defined the region with its elegant mineral baths, but which now geared its comforts to four-star dining and wine country rejuvenation. Ahead of them, the road opened to a resplendent mosaic of vineyards—

Mark: Commodities are all about volume, distribution and ubiquity. Brands are about depth of meaning.

Sandra: Depth of meaning? That's a lot to ask from a skimpy wine label.

Mark: With wine, the brand is in the bottle; the label is on the bottle. The key to building a great wine brand is to hire a great winemaker. Those people are like rock stars around here. They make the grapes sing. As it is, wineries could teach business a lot about brands, especially brand context.

Sandra: Brand context?

Mark: He who coins the context owns the game. Every brand should frame the product and the customer in a special context, and do everything it can to scale that context upward and outward. Wine does that. It's a fusion of product and customer in a context of living that continually grows itself, like an expanding universe. Instead of being a static "product," wine becomes a larger life force, with layers of meaning. That's what you want in a brand.

Sandra: Wine has layers of meaning … like Cabernet, Chardonnay, Zinfandel … ?

Mark: Layers of context, i.e., relevant richness. Wine is food, cooking, eating, taste, art, geography, climate, socializing, style, creation and procreation, man and soil, and harmony with nature. It's a fabric of life—of what life's all about.

Sandra: Wine is all those things?

Mark: Great brands are no different—in their own context. They define a personal, social and creative context through themselves, a realm of meaning that generates a unique operating space for customers. They're a lens—focused on a special way of living.

Sandra: That's a pretty big context.

Mark: Customers crave the biggest context they can get. Products die when they're nothing but shelf space for a hand-me-down "category." The best way to make your products fly off the shelf is to give wings to your customers. Those wings are brand context.

—The highway now coursed through the open Sonoma countryside, vineyard after vineyard running from the roadside up and over nearby hills, a new vista unfolding every mile. Mark did his best to keep his eyes on the road—

Sandra: So companies have to figure out a context for their products, and then convince customers to jump in? That seems like a tall order.

Mark: It is a tall order—no one said business was easy. But there's a shortcut.

Sandra: A shortcut?

Mark: Passion generates context, and brands are shared passion. Share your passion with customers and your brand context will define itself. Embedded in that passion is a vision of what that brand can do, and be, for customers. You want to cultivate that passion, tap into that embedded vision, and radiate both through the product. Product developers have this passion in spades. Around here, where the product developers are winemakers, it simply flows.

Sandra: But passion can be vague, or variable, or head in the wrong direction ….

Mark: You have to manage your passion with business sense. From a company perspective, brands are managed passion. You move your passion up the stack, to the point where it's a direct drive for customer value.

Sandra: Couldn't managers just sit in a room and dial up any new brand they want?

Mark: They could, and they do, but calculated brands are dead brands walking. Without the passion, they're all pitch. They're sitting ducks for a competitor with the real deal.

Sandra: Then why not just do a big ad campaign that gets people excited about the brand? Let some ad agency do all the work.

Mark: Two reasons. First, you can't outsource passion. Second, ads and brands come from different worlds. Ads motivate. Brands animate.

Sandra: Animate?

Mark: Brands work from the inside out. They spark from within. That's what sharing a passion is all about. It's a live, two-way connection. Brands are peer-to-peer. Grow the passion, grow the customer, grow the brand, grow the business. And the best thing is that at the strategic level, sharing your passion pays dividends.

Sandra: Pays dividends? How?

Mark: Companies tuned to their passion are in tune with themselves. There's no wasted motion. The same passion that fuels their brand fuels their operations, driving internal and external behavior with the same core values. The more passion, the less overhead, and the more things get done. They're on the same page because they're writing it together.

Sandra: So share the passion—that's what these rock star winemakers are all about? That's not a bad gig.

Mark: That's why wine tasting around here is so important. It brings customers closer to the wine, to the wineries, the winemakers, and the passion that drives them—and vice versa. The tasting counter is a true brand platform. It's a place where winemakers execute on passion and deliver on context.

—The highway now worked its way between low, vine-contoured ridges. Mark was enjoying the curves when a slow-moving tractor suddenly bounded onto the blacktop ahead of them, the huge rear tires streaming clouds of dust. Mark flicked the steering wheel, accelerated, and blew by it—

Sandra: That was nifty.

Mark: It wasn't just me. It was Manfred, Hans and Juergen who knew these things happen, and who made a car where they can happen artfully. Ergo, brand.

Sandra: —Relaxing a bit— Ergo, brand loyalty?

Mark: In this case, yes, but brand loyalty is seriously misunderstood. It's not some kind of Pied Piper aura that binds customers to a company. Real brand loyalty is the shared loyalty of the brand and the customer to a mutual set of values. The brand is a creative conduit for a deep-felt unity of cause. The loyalty is through the brand, not to the brand.

Sandra: But what about brand loyalty programs? Every company has one.

Mark: They have their place, but long term they have two major downsides. First, they can divert company resources from innovating on value, which is far more important to sustaining the business. Second, they perpetuate passive customers, who drag down innovation from the customer side.

Sandra: Passive customers? That's a new one.

Mark: They're customers who don't add value to the enterprise. They hang around for the perks and the pomp. They're loyal to the deal, not to you.

Sandra: But brand loyalty programs solve real business needs. Companies need more customers, and they need to keep the customers they have.

Mark: The best way to acquire customers is to create more customer value, i.e., innovate. The best way to keep your customers is to grow them as fast as you innovate, so they can reward the new value that you deliver. You should be getting the rewards, not customers.

Sandra: What if I'm a rock star winemaker?

Mark: If you're a winemaker, the closer you are to your customers, the more they can share your passion for your craft, the more willing they are to pay for it, and the better positioned you are to innovate in their direction. You exemplify a product, and they evoke a thousand contexts for that product. You run with the best ones for your business.

Sandra: That means I'm not just selling bottles of wine.

Mark: As a brand, you're extending the customer through new dimensions of taste. In a real sense, you're not in the wine business at all. You're in the taste business—a much more lucrative context.

Sandra: Where does all this context stuff leave the old-fashioned brands—the big-time icons?

Mark: It usually leaves them up a creek. Icons don't innovate. They isolate themselves from customers. And they ignore the glaring fact that brands are a team sport. You team with customers to build brand platforms that are premier customer platforms. That's why you want high-performance customers in an active, intelligent and engaged customer base.

Sandra: High-performance customers?

Mark: High-performance customers push products and brands to their limits. They're context makers and context breakers, and they're your premier innovation partners. Their pulse is your pulse. Invite them in. Hook up. Prototype. Experiment. Taste ….

Sandra: I've heard of high-performance employees … naturally, being one myself ….

Mark: High-performance customers are their outside analog. You channel their initiative to your brand context. And not just to the context—to the cause!

Sandra: To the cause? What cause? The worldwide fight against hunger?

Mark: To what the brand stands for. No cause, no brand. Great brands ride a rising curve of freedom, opportunity and expression. Deep inside their kernel they're predicated on a social good. From there they reach out. They move products to a higher plane, and move customers with them.

Sandra: That sounds like a movement.

Mark: That's what brands shoot for. A movement runs on its own power. It's all business, inclusive and self-sustaining. A thousand flags and no clutter. You don't fund it; you surf it. And it certainly works wonders in Wine Country.

Sandra: You mean like a lifestyle?

Mark: More like a life force. A lifestyle is what you have when your self-defining act is shopping. It's a life veneer packaged by someone else. A life force is elemental: you own it, you drive it.

Sandra: Making customers a part of your brand process can't be easy. You'll need all those meetings and focus groups ….

Mark: Forget meetings and focus groups. Companies need a BDK.

Sandra: A BDK …?

Mark: A Brand Development Kit. A set of tools to help customers leverage the brand. Software companies routinely issue SDK's—Software Development Kits—so that third parties can develop new applications that extend the core platform. That's why an operating system like Windows or Mac or Linux has thousands of applications written for it, far more than they could ever do themselves.

Sandra: Why would customers want to do that?

Mark: Hardcore benefit. The brand context is their context. They live it. The brand platform is their platform, too. They're on the same team.

Sandra: But brands aren't computer software ….

Mark: Brands are operating systems. They offer a universe of opportunities, ways to get things done, get ahead, embrace life. The BDK helps you tap into customer initiative and imagination at the ground level, as they leverage their platform into yours.

Sandra: What's in a BDK?

Mark: Just think of what wineries do ….

—They topped a rise and approached a winery entrance flanked by low stone walls. A stone monument with a bronze cluster of grapes stood to one side. Mark slowed and turned down the drive, between long rows of aged but stately vines, cane pruned—

Mark: Hey! We're here!

Sandra: Where?

To be continued . . .