DEVELOP AN ICON

People don’t relate to products—they relate to brands. This is a good thing, provided you have a stronger brand than your competitors: but how do you get that stronger brand in the first place?

For strong brand read likable brand. If people feel warm toward the brand, they will in turn feel warm toward the product, which can only be a good thing for immediate sales and future loyalty. One effective way of building likability is to create a memorable icon, a symbol of your brand that will stick in people’s minds and be entertaining.

Dry batteries have been around for over 100 years now: the first ones weighed in at over three pounds, and were used to power telephones, but technology moved on rapidly and zinc-carbon batteries became ubiquitous. At the same time, prices dropped: zinc-carbon batteries were disposable, and were in fact disposed of regularly.

When alkaline batteries appeared, they were a great deal more expensive than zinc-carbon batteries (and still are), so the manufacturers, Duracell, needed a way of demonstrating that the batteries would be cost-effective. Their initial advertising campaign showed a set of electric toy animals that gradually stopped working as their batteries ran down, except of course for the one powered by Duracell copper-top alkaline batteries. This was the Duracell Bunny, a pink toy rabbit banging a drum.

The Duracell Bunny became iconic. People responded well to the “cuddly toy” aspect because of its playfulness, and the memorable advertisements: more importantly, the key benefit of the product came across extremely clearly. More recently, Duracell have been able to do away with the other toys and use only the bunny—it has been seen climbing mountains, canoeing, playing leapfrog, playing soccer, and free running. The advertising was so successful that Ever Ready brought out their own bunny to advertise Energizer, but for legal reasons these ads have not been shown in Europe or Australia.

Practice:

• Consider your unique selling proposition—what does your product have that others don’t?

• Try to create a playful icon.

• Use your icon in different contexts so that it remains fresh.