My Sunday shop, statistically speaking

Last Sunday, I became the Main Grocery Buyer in our family for a day.

It's true that I spend a fair amount of my week with my head in the world of retail, but I have to admit that I rarely ever get the chance to experience a store as a happy-go-lucky, Sunday shopper.

Thinking about doing something is never quite the same as actually doing it, a point well-proven recently by a good friend who used his blog, Brand Habits, to dabble in the world of crowdsourcing with $150 of his own money – you can read about the highs and lows of that experience here.

And so it was that the whole experience was a real eye opener for me.

Quite literally, seeing as I spent most of the shopping trip feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that was being pumped to my brain by my eyes. So much so that my brain is still compulsively processing much of the data, and every so often I feel my hand reach out in front of me to grab what it thinks is a tub of Philadelphia cream cheese or some other sundry item from a shelf in my mind's eye.

But as much as I was pretty overwhelmed, I was equally amazed by the fact that I didn't return home with a single incorrect item (although I did forget a few things and/or ran out of time as my 18-month old son ran out of patience). However, as I scoured the shelves for what looked like stuff that usually turns up in our fridge and freezer, cupboards and drawers – without a shopping list, I should add – shapes and colours were the things that invariably guided me to the right item.

In fact, those semiotic design cues are the only reason that a shopper can make it through a supermarket in anything like a reasonable amount of time – and I give my full sympathy to any label readers out there for the amount of time it must take them.

As for my trip, I was in the store for 90 minutes.

In which time, I bought 98 items.

Which means, on average, I was putting into my trolley 1 item every 60 seconds.

No wonder I was feeling overwhelmed, that's quite a workout – mentally and physically – but one that would be impossible if it weren't for the role of design.

But that's not all.

In total, my shopping came to a total of $464.96.

That's over $5 for each and every minute I spent there.

Which strikes me quite a high amount for something that is meant to be built around a low service, value model. Imagine spending $5 a minute at a cinema or restaurant, experiences where service comes at a premium. (As an aside, feel free to check out this post I wrote about Paul McCrudden and his 6 Weeks project to read an interesting take on the value of the time you spend with brands.)

For me, those two statistics say it all.

On the one hand, the supermarket shopping experience is fast and furious, a flurry of split-second decisions as you charge up and down one towering aisle after another.

On the other, it's hardly a cheap way to spend your time with a brand that typically provides barely more than a large warehouse full of commodity-priced produce – I admit that is something of an over-simplification, but you get my drift.

As I write this, both Coles and Woolworths are locked in what looks like shaping up into a mammoth battle for our time and money after years of dominance by Woolworths. What's more, the launch of Thomas Dux by Woolworths and the store renewal program at Coles are both strong signals of what's to come.

After years of stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap, they are now becoming far more interested in how we spend our time, not just our money.

Incest is wrong, right?

It goes without saying that incest is ill-suited to the human race.

I don't just mean legally, morally or ethically, but more so on physical or biological grounds. The make-up of our DNA demands diversity, although this is also tempered by natural selection: successful characteristics become more popular over successive generations – a fine-tuning effect, if you like.

But diversity is key.

And in the words of those towering pillars of pop philosophy, Groove Armada, "If everybody looked the same, we'd get tired looking at each other".

So forgive me the slight exaggeration, but then why do so many brands look as though they've been designed by one of the inbred hillbillies from the 1972 film Deliverance? Why do they seem so intent of denying themselves the necessary advantages of diversity, opting instead to settle for more of the same?

In their book Funky Business, published in 1999, Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle wrote about what they termed the surplus society. In their words, "The surplus society has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality".

Sounds like the commercial version of inbreeding if you ask me. People who are so scared of being different that their anxious conservatism tries to eradicate our fundamental need for diversity.

In business as in life, it is the drive for similarity that is unnatural. And our need for diversity is no less a necessity for brands.

But in spite of this, a brisk stroll down a supermarket aisle quickly becomes a blur of swooshes and swirls as brands seemingly decide it's easier to copy than compete. In the profile piece that appeared in B&T a couple of weeks ago, I wrote that most of the Australian packaging industry think "it's acceptable to regurgitate the same old boring ideas, year in year out. Even the smart people I know...can't seem to help themselves". As unfortunate as that might be – and assuming the inevitable standouts – that statement's true. The same goes for a catalogue of corporate brands, from law firms to the world of finance.

We all know that incest is wrong. Don't let diversity die.

Every brand is an icon

Religion and the illegal drug trade have always had a lot to teach people about the merits of a telling a good story with focus and purpose to an audience whose specific needs they are targeting. As a result, both can lay claim to millions of loyal followers and a very high incidence of repeat purchase.

Too many brands nowadays take a more scattergun approach, hoping to reach anyone who'll listen with a message that contains something for everyone. And in the meantime, the definitive meaning of the brand itself is lost in the wash.

In particular, I am continually surprised by the number of brands who promote themselves as an "icon" without truly understanding the facets and implications of the term. Most brands claim icon status through sheer perseverance and heritage alone, but more often than not, their audience has simply grown as old as their brand. From personal experience, none of my grandparents found any solace in their old age, but instead they discovered every reason to rejoice in their youthful spirit. This is the crucial recognition that all brands must make in order to survive. Age has always just been a number, while a strong and youthful spirit is the driver of all life’s pursuits. Good brands never grow old. Unfortunately, too many brands die with their audience.

Brands face this battle against extinction on a daily basis and it is the very iconic nature of branding that enables customers to make instant purchase decisions without having to review a company’s entire corporate history to help make them. Technically speaking, every brand is an icon. Brands act as symbols to represent a larger entity and deeper meaning than simply the logo, a critical signpost for what you can expect and your invitation as a customer to participate. It is branding that makes it possible for you to purchase hundreds of products for your weekly supermarket shop in a matter of hours, or buy a car without having to inspect the factory itself and interview key personnel about production methods.

For any brand to be successful, it must by definition be iconic. However, too many brands start and end with the logo without investing deeper meaning in their brand. In countless taste tests for beer, people generally have difficulty picking between products until you serve the beer in branded glasses – and as it turns out, your favourite brand is sometimes not your favourite beer.

Apple means a lot to people. More importantly, the Apple brand means more than the specific technical features of the products themselves. The uplifting experience of breakthrough innovation and user-oriented technology is championed by employees and cherished by customers – even Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches were met with an exuberance and excitement more typically seen at political rallies and football matches.

If you were to take Virgin at face value, it clearly would not make sense to put your trust – and, in a variety of different ways, your life – in the hands of someone who is quite literally a virgin.

Similarly, Orange represented little more than a colour somewhere between red and yellow until Hutchison Whampoa injected it with the promise of demystifying the telecommunications market for consumers. The Orange brand symbolised not just a phone plan but more a philosophy that recognised customer needs and responded to them with a refreshingly candid approach to a complex and cluttered market. People liked the plans, but they liked the brand even more.

Apple, Virgin and Orange are all iconic brands. Not because they have discovered some holy grail of branding that lies beyond the reach of most marketing departments and their agencies, but simply because they have spent the time and energy creating a deeper meaning for their brand, their customers and employees.

What’s more, they are all brands that have invested in reinventing themselves over time – they have grown up without growing old.

Nudie achieved huge success with an entertaining story that meant so much more than communicating the real fruit content of its juice by blithely mirroring this with images of real fruit on its packaging. However, the big question for any successful brand like Nudie is always what they do next – sales figures signal a successful past, but they do not provide any guarantee of an equally successful future. And it seems that the copycat characteristics of the juice category that gave us a sea of spritzed oranges have now turned their attention to creating the comic book caricatures that have dragged Nudie back into the pack of pretenders.

One category facing this exact problem is wristwatches. Having enjoyed phenomenal success over the years, many watch brands have seen their premium cachet diluted by the fact that your watch is now far from the only personal accessory to showcase your luxury lifestyle in a split second. The unprecedented rise of the mobile phone as a statement of luxury (and not just a communications device) has drawn brands like Tag Heuer out of their shells and into the business of designing mobile phones as watches for the 21^st century. Car manufacturers picked up on exactly the same status cues when they started to invest more heavily in the branding and design of their car keys.

What a brand means is the single most important factor in its success. The most successful brands are built around a sustainable idea that transcends time and context. This is the basic premise for a brand’s equity and one of the key elements that enables businesses to value their brand both in financial terms and measures of commercial goodwill. Successful brands have to succeed financially if they are to deliver true and tangible value to the businesses that they represent, and too often in the past has the iconic nature of branding related purely to cult and boutique brands that never make it on the commercial stage.

A long and impressive heritage, a cult following, or a hero product is no longer enough to sustain a successful brand. What makes brands tick is the ongoing investment of time and energy that goes towards creating and codifying the meaningful expression of a unique point of view. As a result, inventing – and reinventing – the future is much more significant than reflecting on the past, something that has been impressively evidenced by the way in which Pacific Brands reinvigorated the once faded icon that was Bonds through their product development and communications.

To paraphrase George Orwell, all brands are iconic, but some are more iconic than others.