Go Luck Yourself

40 ways to stack the odds in your brand's favour

Andy Nairn

• Publisher: Harriman House
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780857198891
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Luck is a four-letter-word in business circles. But the truth is that fortune plays a part in every success story – and every failure. In Go Luck Yourself, one of the world's leading brand strategists explains how a hunting trip led to the invention of VELCRO®. How a little mermaid inspired a famous campaign for Amazon. How a stolen rabbit spurred on Walt Disney. And more importantly, how you can stack the odds in your brand's favour.Andy Nairn draws on everything from architecture to zoology, as well as almost 30 years working with some of the most successful companies on the planet, to provide a series of thought-provoking strategies that will help anyone responsible for building a brand.He'll show you how to uncover your organisation's hidden treasures. How to spot opportunities in unexpected places. How to turn misfortune into good fortune. And how to practise being lucky, every day.Written in a very accessible and entertaining style, this is the book you need to improve your brand's fortunes, in these turbulent times.Now Go Luck Yourself…

Section 1: Appreciate What You’ve Got

Lucky Name

According to Mumsnet, about one in five British parents regret their choice of children’s names. Perhaps this is no wonder, given that baby names registered in the UK in recent years include Marvellous, Isis, Danger and Shy.

I reckon a similar ratio applies to marketers, although perhaps with less justification.

Many brand owners worry that their moniker isn’t quite right. Maybe it’s too long, too generic, too regional or just not catchy enough. Perhaps the advance of technology has rendered it archaic, or the foreign origins make it hard to pronounce. Alternatively, it’s not search-friendly or not cut out for social. Whatever the reason, some marketers look at their brand name with something approaching parental regret.

I think this angst is a result of the pressure that has been piled on the naming decision over the years. In particular, the pioneers of positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout, warned that naming was “the single most important marketing decision a company can make”. They then listed nine features of a great brand name, saying that it should be “short, simple, suggestive of the category, unique, alliterative, speakable, spellable, shocking and personalised”. To be fair, they didn’t require every name to pass all nine tests, but they did urge marketers to tick off as many boxes as they could. Measured against this yardstick, you can see why many brand managers feel inadequate.

I’m not denying that this decision is really important. I remember how much time my partners and I spent on our own choice, before landing on Lucky Generals. But all my experience tells me that a good business maketh the name, not the other way round. Put simply, it’s much more important to have a great product, which will then reflect well on the brand, than pin all your hopes on a clever play on words.

Unconvinced?

Consider the story of AskJeeves versus Google. The former is arguably a much better name for a search engine. It’s certainly more suggestive of the category and brings a sense of human, intuitive service, whereas the latter just sounds like a faceless algorithm. We all know what happened next though.

Then there’s MySpace and Facebook. The first is much more personal, inspirational and emotional – but it was left for dust by a clumsy reference to student yearbooks.

I could go on, but hopefully you get my point. If a good name is no guarantee of success, then a bad name shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as a burden either. As with so many examples in this book, it’s what you do with the hand you’re dealt, that ultimately determines your luck.

I was reminded of this a few years ago, when I was working on Loyd Grossman’s range of cooking sauces.

Brands that are named after celebrity founders are particularly tricky because their currency is so dependent on the fortunes of their namesakes. It’s why many stars take a subtler approach these days, providing backing behind the scenes rather than on the pack. But back then, we were still in the era of Paul Newman’s dressings, Linda McCartney’s meat-free range and George Foreman’s grills rather than Casamigos (George Clooney), Fenty (Rihanna) and Ivy Park (Beyoncé).

In Loyd’s case, putting his face and name on the label had been a very deliberate choice. He’d launched the range in 1995, at a time when he was the presenter of two big shows on British television: Masterchef and Through the Keyhole. Before that, he’d worked for many years as a highly respected food critic. So his endorsement originally brought both fame and credibility. This wasn’t just a celebrity selling his signature for a quick buck; he really cared about the product and played an active role in the development of new recipes. Over the next decade or so, the brand grew stronger and the range expanded from pasta sauces to encompass many more cuisines.

By 2009, though, sales were slowing. There were lots of reasons behind this, including increased competition from apparently similar (but actually inferior) rivals.

However, one factor was arguably that Loyd’s own profile was not what it had been. In recent years, he’d chosen to prioritise other interests outside of TV and journalism (including guitar duties in a rather nifty punk band called The New Forbidden). As a result, a new generation of home cooks was growing up without a full understanding of Loyd’s backstory.

Worse still, the main thing people did remember about Loyd was that he had a rather odd accent. Raised in Boston and then relocated to the UK, his mangled vowels sounded like an affectation, although they were completely genuine. It didn’t seem like a great claim to fame, so his marketing team inevitably began to wonder whether it was time to evolve the brand name to something subtler. ‘LG Sauces’ was mooted. I wasn’t sure. Not least because I didn’t fancy breaking the news to the man himself!

Cut to a rather awkward meeting with Loyd and his brand team. We pored over the data. We reviewed the competition in excruciating detail. We looked at the new products that were coming through. In short, we talked about everything apart from the one thing we needed to. The poor man must have thought we were behaving very oddly.

Eventually, I’d had enough and bravely took things into my own hands. By which I mean I passed a note to my partner Helen and asked her to do something. And guess what? When she gingerly mentioned the fact that the one thing people associated with Loyd was his voice, he laughed out loud. It turned out that this was not news to him at all because “even my childraaaaan make fuhhhhn of me awwwwl the tihhhhme”.

This was the breakthrough we needed. Instead of shying away from the supposed problem, we embraced it. We stuck with the name but developed a line to breathe new life into it:

“Sauces with a distinctive voice.”

We then created some funny advertising, featuring people doing impressions of Loyd as they cooked. Even Loyd got in on the act, with a brilliant, self-deprecating cameo of his own.

It wasn’t just entertainment for the sake of it. It was a powerful reminder of Loyd’s culinary credentials and the fact that his sauces were a cut above the rest. All served up with a generous helping of wit. A decade or so on, the brand is still going strong.

Which just goes to show, there’s really no such thing as a bad name, as long as you have a good imagination.

Go Luck Yourself

Convention says: A problematic name will wreck your chances of success.

Luck says: Your name is what you make of it.

So ask yourself: How might your brand name give you a more distinctive voice?

232...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• About The Author
• Introduction
• Section 1: Appreciate What You’ve Got
• Section 2: Look Out For Opportunities Everywhere
• Section 3: Turn Misfortune Into Good Fortune
• Section 4: Practise Being Lucky
• Conclusion
• References
• Publishing details