Bora Falar de Branding #35 Entrevista com Philip Kotler

[Music] foreign [Music] mr cutler thank you very much for your attention thank you for your kindness and the first of all i would like to say thank you since 1995 i have the opportunity to see something around six seven presentations at a gm with salivi and i read all your books just to clarify i studied with your books i use your books at my mba classes and nowadays my son that goes to university is studying is learning with your books i want to just to start i want to say thank you for opening my mind show me new paths during my career and make me a better professional in my opinion in my humble opinion you are a living legend of marketing so it's for me it's a unique experience to stay here with you thank you very much well dario thank you for inviting me brazil is one of my most interesting and exciting countries to have anything to do with i was brought to brazil many times by my good and dearest friend jose saliva nato who himself has become a great author now he's trying to catch up with the number of books i've written yeah they're very funny they're very popular my big argument is he needs to put them in english too so more people will benefit yeah in any case uh i've been to the books and i talked in sao paulo brasilia forta uh fortaleza corte alegre uh about two or three other cities so i i'm not an expert on the country but i'm very impressed with the size and the uh the drama the drama yeah yeah yeah so let's start i will follow my script okay uh first of all it's the partner as everything changes a lot in our words so fast what's in your opinion what's the best definition for brands well let's remember that a brand was originally a name given to imprinting or burning a name on a on livestock so you wouldn't lose your your cow okay but uh it became more the idea of developing a name or design or a symbol that would say you're the seller of this particular product and it and and you're and no one else can confuse you with their brand your your brand is unique so that is what branding moved into okay and and we talked about branding a continuous management branding in your in your opinion is a responsibility just for a marketing department or for the whole company uh well uh actually it depends if a company is a large one like unilever with several brands maybe two or three hundred brands into the thousands sometimes is the house of brands the the biggest brands the most important ones are are are critical to the company not just to the marketing department i mean the whole company has to review and and have a tracking system are is our brand growing stronger or weaker uh does it need modernization and and resuscitation so the point i'm making is that for the big brands they're the the responsibility is company-wide for the small brands they're just are either starting off or they don't make that big of a difference and they are handled mostly by the marketing department uh and so on but branding is not the same as marketing uh let me because some people act as if you don't need the word marketing anymore because the company should be doing good branding and everything else is okay that would be a mistake because branding is about communicating the value of an offer okay marketing is about creating offers in other words everything has to start with marketing marketing is uh the job of finding out needs that are not being met and coming out with fine ideas on what people would be excited about about and in fact selling is not the hardest part it's coming up with the right idea that people want to line up for when they hear it now marketing is the job of communicating the meaning of something that that you're offering so they are both very important but i would say first the company should manage to master marketing and then master branding within marketing okay okay very strategic definition thank you mr cutler uh the business environment has become more and more digital anytime anywhere on the channel are popular in your opinion what's the role of the branding today in a digital area yes well first of all a company looking at any one of its brands or its only brand has to and and yeah and if it's sort of starting out it's i always has to ask the question are we branding for the world or are we branding for brazil are we branding for some specific class of people or segment within sao paulo you know so the point is always a target market is in mind when you are even choosing a name of a brand that is supposed to convey some resonance with a certain market so uh i'm assuming that uh the the very fact that companies are also getting to be more digital is is not only happening but if you don't let your company become digital if you're slow in learning how to go from a the old traditional marketing of salesforce and advertising and you don't use digital communications you're obsolete to begin with absolutely race between competitors who really get into a lot of things it's it's first of all it's artificial intelligence where it will work where uh it would be uh voice and facial recognition it would be uh virtual reality for example create a new product you can create it on the screen before it exists and put the work the uh the um customer through the experience of the product without having you having created it so there's a lot of technologies that are emerging that companies have to master okay in this context companies nowadays put a focus on the short term it's yes it's a survival so you put all your efforts in the shorthand but we learn from you and from other books that brands is a long-term construction is there any kind of conflict in the short term and the long term um i think that um a company would be smart to really think where it wants to be five years from now or even two or three years from now and then work backwards to get there where do i want to be in two or three years and then work backwards to the steps necessary to get there now there's some exceptional stories in this connection about long run versus short run always think of um uh of amazon amazon decided to be long run from the beginning even though it was just an online bookstore and therefore it didn't declare any profits it didn't want to make profits it wanted to make growth so it itself its very policies as a business was to spend everything to grow the business and and and not worry that they're not a profitable company now the reason this worked is because there were many people who believed in their mission and funded them and uh and so on and then i think companies like nike okay are a good example of long run thinking they know what their their job is their job is excellence in athleticism in sports excellence and that's not going to change and and they and that's what the branding does it it puts it carves an area that's their area they own it they own it there are imitators but nike owns is owns the best it is the archetype for excellence in in branding okay okay sorry long run okay the best way to run a company okay and i agree with you uh but sometimes the short term makes the company offer promotions or discountings or something that prejudice makes makes no sense for their longer problem so my phase of my question we live in the era of small companies new comforts in the area of interpretation developing a brand products is often a relevant investments how to do branding for small entrepreneurships for small entrepreneurs well if it's a very small startup at some point that has already decided on a physical product or a service they have to name that they there's two style they should name both the thing that's being offered and also the name of their company and it could be the same name or it could be their company's name offering brand x which is a separate name for that particular offering and uh and how do they get it do you know there are big consultancies in branding uh where smaller companies can call uh an expert branding company or you know basically they go to an advertising agency and they say uh we're starting off here we hope you're excited about what we are creating uh help us think through what we should call it and how to present it so so you need help because there are some people who really are good at branding and they're better than you so you better start with them okay in your book 3. 0 and now you use your other books here okay but in your book 3. 0 it will indicate the companies that has changed their mindsets and brands needed to understand how to position themselves correctly in these new countries environmental social governance sustainability diversities some kind of terms that are nowadays in all newspapers and the company's agenda what's the challenge for traditional brands to become sustainable brands yes a very big and good question let's imagine the traditional type of company which says my job is just to find a product that people need and i will give it a name and i will tell what it is very explicitly i would describe it the way the russians describe a certain product in russia they it's very formal and you know that's a press a recipe for failure because is what we call emotional resonates there's no emotional resonance so in my marketing stage marketing 1.

0 was about the very functional offering of something no emotion marketing 2. 0 says i'm really this person really can get better off with something i'm offering and i i want to show them who who they will be and what will happen that's fine to them if if they use our product so it's uh the recognition that uh buying is an emotional act in fact you know the mind is only about five percent rational and ninety-five percent emotional and emotional by the way that's true of business to business as well as business to consumer even when the boeing aircraft makes a decision on something there's a lot of scare and and fear and risk and so everything's emotional so then uh the company decides that it should uh go ahead and get to be better at what i call social responsibility now that was not in the old days uh you just made money uh and you knew there were social problems but you and then and you even knew you were contributing to them uh let's say you don't you go you're a coal miner and you you get the coal out but you made a mess of the land around the coal so that's means there are externalities that take place that you're not covering your cost is lower because you're not covering the full cost of the damage you did so nowadays more companies say i've got to uh show some responsibility in fact i'd like to show it concretely now what do they mean uh giving some charity money yeah you can do that that's nice to do but how about taking a cause let's say hunger just makes you so mad that anyone has to starve uh and maybe you're you're you're in the food business you don't have to be in the food business but whatever you're in you might say that's my cause or i'm upset that the water in the ocean is full of plastics now and it's going to hurt all of us and we won't have enough fish they'll be killed by by that so more companies know that this is the right thing to do but it's appealing also if you if you sound genuine now there's a thing we worry about called green washing it's called green when you're environmental you claim to be environmental you're not really so we've got to be careful so i advise companies to actually not reveal their values now this is important but a brand that wins does it not only means what i make but what i care about the brand is a message about my values to you the customer and and and it will win loyal customers because they too have the same values and you've got to find a way to be transparent open up who you really are as a company what you care about and you hope to get those customers who care about the same thing you said about the venues they said about the pilots purpose social responsibility it's very very nice very nice because it's a relevant questions here in brazil for example you gave an example of a miners coal miners and we have here in brazil for example uh a big problem with one giant mining company so this is much relevant for us in our discussion nowadays thank you thank you the quattro in your opinion is there a difference between branding for traditional companies and branding fabric and brand and branding for digital companies or as we say in brazil it's all together and mix it what's the base of my question during my class sometimes the the students say oh we just want to learn about digital brands and my my frequent answer is there is no difference in my opinion a concept for a brand is the same for all companies what you are going to use it is the second the second layer that is like a toolbox and for brick and mortar maybe you use some tools and for digital maybe you use another tubes sure i'm in full agreement with you that branding is a is a concept and a set of tools that are uh used by companies that are digital companies by traditional companies there's no difference it may look different perhaps because certain tools get more used when the product is a highly technical one that is has a lot of intangibility you can't really touch it and so on but it's still the same toolbox okay okay in your book 4. 0 i show you the third and now i will show you the fourth uh you talk about the power of social media and how companies need to develop any administration adequate their communication plan let's talk about some brands netflix airbnb zoom for example become global brands zoom for example in one year reach their 100 position like the inter brand rank for example in a short space of time is there anything in common with these brands is there something that you see that's particular for them well there's three or so brands you mentioned the thing is they it was the right time really that a point was reached in history where um people had to be home more because of covid and uh they were and even at home they were workers if their company let them work at home so they needed to have good digital facilities uh in their home and i might say that covet has totally increased the rate of adoption of the digital lifestyle absolutely uh people are getting their food by ordering a grocery to prepare it and scented or they'll pick it up and and you can't relive anymore without using face time and using uh whatsapp and all these other new technologies now um this is another thing that is shared by some of these companies and that is what is called the sharing economy um let's think of of uh airbnb where you can you don't want to pay the hotel the hotel's price but there are people who have an extra room to sleep and uh and and then there's also the uh the taxis have been replaced by by by people who own cars doing the tax thing for you so that's a big movement called do we need as many products to be made for us in order to have a good life can't we share some of the products uh why do you have to own a car you why not use a inexpensive taxi service whenever you need a ride or why not go to a car through zip and and pay for the for a one hour use of the car so i am very impressed with uh what's happening in in the idea that do i need my own lawnmower or can i use my neighbors and in fact i'll pay my neighbor so now all that is in the context of sustainability so another new mission of companies is not only to become digital but to become sustainable systems is in danger of um of warming the big problem is that with all the gases that go up every time an airplane flies it's polluting the air so should we be more conservative about do we have to fly instead of talk on on zoom as a company to our our people and our customers why do we have to go and meet them with all the work involved and so on so the the basic thing is a company companies that care are going to be um practicing sustainability and i'll give you one interesting example walmart has told certain suppliers that they won't be used anymore because their trucks are fuel inefficient namely the supplier sends a truck with merchandise for walmart to sell but the truck is is gasifying the air hurting the air so you buy better trucks and then i'll use you as a supplier so and and by the way that truck company then looks at the ones who supply send its supplies and it makes sure they're all sustainable in their practice that's a an important point they hope the whole chain the whole chain must be sustainable yes uh let's continue talking about social media okay in terms of social media companies are no longer box but they are cast off glass transparent in which society the general public observes everything and put they are i agree i like i don't like and no other how should brands position themselves in us in the social media area uh well dario it's because of the internet any customer interested in buying anything like an automobile can find out so much without a salesman coming to them in fact i worry about whether we'll need salesmen because i don't want someone to come to tell me what i already know from the internet in fact i don't want to even be influenced in my findings by their way of treating the findings so the point is that uh i i can know so much about a company even if more than they may want me to know in fact i'm reading the critics of that company i'm even reading the the stories of their competitors so i i know so much that i can make a good decision without much more uh assistance so why shouldn't the company say that's okay with me we make ourselves transparent we want you to to know for example a question that comes up often is if i buy this product from you and i'm unhappy about something and i need help will you respond can i can i are you the kind of company where i know who i can reach well this came up just recently with amazon many people said yes they're a great company and so on there's no way to reach them you can't reach jeff bezos either so the question is a company should be open and transparent because we'll find out maybe the wrong things about them by not them not being open will depend on sources that are not true of them so i agree that uh that we we want more transparency with those who sell us things okay let me show the other book that's with uh keller kotler and keller and i had the opportunity to report with mr calvin keller in your opinion what's the intersection between branding and storytelling a branding end bar belly oh yes good branding is more than a name if it's only a name it won't carry much weight it should be telling it should be the unfolding of a story it could be the exciting history of disney and and and it's this needs a name of course and disney is so powerful that i know it means family fun it's basically about family fun but if i know also what walt disney went through what his creative concepts were how he got there if i can build more and more background then the brand becomes richer and every brand has has that opportunity uh incidentally there's a thing i have have you heard of the color wheel something called a color wheel it looks like this okay there's a set of colors of 12 companies all well-known virgin heinz fracture and gamble and the point being made is each of those companies have managed to create an architect a archetype an architecture yes like in carl jung's work about a psychologist where it's there's some hero or type of person in other words you would say that um that apple and and its founder steve jobs that's about being a creator creativity is what you get as as a flavor from that rolex what you get is a is a watch that is rules all watches i mean you can take your wallet your rolex and leave it as a deposit when you ran out of money that that's worth five or ten thousand dollars just because you left your rolex so putting meaning on the brand is the job i'm talking about okay uh you started saying that you love brazil that you know a lot of i would say and of course you know brazil has brands that they are well positioned globally worldwide for example butane care that bought a building and the avaya flip flop for example any device for brands that wants to launch their themselves in the international market well it's a dream of every company to go more international but they must do it in steps so first you make sure that uh that the uh the product works in brazil and these two that you mentioned of course are very popular were very popular now do you immediately go to china with it did you go to the united states with it no seems to me you go to your neighbors i mean if flip flops works in brazil they can be adopted very easily by by your except you have to learn spanish instead of portuguese but by your uh south american neighbors and then uh you've got to plan the the right timing and course to go after because it's very tempting to get into the united states quickly as you can if if it has appeal there you got to find out what segments want to wear flip-flops and what else is already available that are a substitute for that uh do you want asia is a big undertaking and it's a big place but it doesn't seem that it's a natural place necessarily to go and even then which country china is the one that comes up in in the mind but i would say that if your brazilian uh proud company has really gone through expansion careful expansion in the neighborhood so to speak of other countries they're ready to know when where to go and when to go to the next big move they should make but just to just to to continue with this for example avayanas they have stores at paris they have stores that portugal and the others for example sometimes it's it's easier for us brazilian that's that that's talk in portuguese keep relationship with europe for example then trying to establish negotiation or communication with our neighbors that talk in spanish sometimes it's easier to talk with the europe well you'll know that if that's the case and that happens a lot yeah you know it yeah sure okay uh in your opinion we are coming to the end in your opinion is there a difference or synergy between brand management and reputation management uh you know they are pretty similar to each other i would like my company if i whatever it might be to definitely track my rep my my brand level and strength brand strength is it growing or stable or declining and i have tools there are very there are good questions uh to know if where my brand is going uh reputation is more about the whole company remember my brand may be just a part a part of the company or one of several brands so i do i want to make an investment in a company that measures reputation yes at some point i can imagine especially if some issues have come up where we've been attacked for certain things and we're misunderstood by the public and we don't know why and we want some company to help us really um go and this is this is a marketing project it's marketing research and to really find out uh what the composite opinion is and types of opinions about us and and so an investment in reputation uh measurement uh not regularly not data you know you're always on your brand but you're not always thinking about your reputation but from time to time you know you got to be using the internet as a listening post and you can actually hire a company that will watch for every mention that's made of you good and bad and classify it and give you a monthly report you know a lot of people are talking this way about you so maybe that's a good investment but it's not uh that's your reputation itself has to be uh checked out as a regular basis as your branding level uh just two questions uh i i put my name on the waiting list for marketing 5.

0 okay i put my list at the amazon waiting for your new book is this possible for you just tell us what's the technology for humanity what's the main concept behind the this new newest book yeah okay marketing uh let me just remember remind you that uh marketing 1. 0 was originally about just uh functional marketing uh and marketing 2. 0 is about emotional marketing marketing 3.

0 was about caring about more than just your company caring about the social problems marketing 4. 0 said marketing has changed in a revolutionary way we got to go from uh the old marketing to the digital marketing and we explained the social media and things like that so marketing 5. 0 which just came out takes a a broader look at the new technologies not just the technology of the computers and digital but the technology of machine learning where you gather so many um so much information and you put it into a machine and it finds insights about behavior yes and it's important to do but also i want you to be able to use chat boxes the idea that uh just like i don't know if you call your system alexa or or silva or whatever siri but you should have as a company someone they can they can click on and it will answer questions or will tell you give you directions chat boxes uh voices that will respond to a question and interpret it where do i find your best your closest store and so on and so forth and then there's a robotics uh there's many uh things you do by hand by labor that can be routinized can be turned to robotic exercises rule-based exercises and so on so 5.

0 gets you into the world of an assortment of new technologies that are going to you should ask for each technology is a this of any use to our company for example uh drones drones are now delivering some things i have seen some fantastic uses of drones does a drone make any sense in your business or or even an autonomous uh an autonomous uh vehicle uh a non-driver car um so you asked for each of the so 5.