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These days it seems hard to tell things apart; stores tend to have optimized designed based on traffic flow, the same thing is true with e-commerce and web sites. Even if a company creates something new and differentiated in the product space, someone comes along a copies it.

Trying to gain a competitive advantage through differentiation is the goal of most brands, but in many cases, pretty hard to achieve. Brand consultants and specialists spend their lives trying to imagine and develop ways brands can be different, without any tangible differences, most resort to communication as the way to stand out. The trouble here, is that in an increasingly transparent world, brands are being judged by their actions, not by their words.

For this reason, it's really important to search under stones for anything that can make your brand different. Sometimes this means going back through history and understanding why you came into being, other times its staring at you in the face.

Coca-Cola is one company with a guarded secret formula for the most popular soft drink on earth. This is a sort of back story mystique that adds a unique point of difference to the brand. It's never used in communication, but you are gently reminded through subtle PR that this thing exists.

The other brand with a secret formula is KFC, who yesterday decided to make some news with it. The simple story that they are relocating the formula became a well orchestrated news event. It served as an opportunity to remind us that in a fast food world of sameness, there's actually something unique about KFC.



As brands struggle to keep up and by relevant, they sometimes forget what got them there in the first place.

These stories, secrets and journeys are invaluable to the brand and it makes sense to once in a while remind people of them.


Posted by Ed Cotton Often business is all about doing more with what you have. Imagine you are a fast food giant, you have all those fixed costs and overhead and if there not being utilized, that's an issue. This problem is exactly what's on the mind of the senior executives of Yum brands. Across the United States with the KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut brands, the company has in excess of 18,000 restaurants.

Yum believe that we are not using them enough. Specifically, we're not going to Taco Bell or KFC for breakfast and there are no dessert options at either store and then there's Pizza Hut which is doing minimal business at lunch time.

This is a big problem for these brands, but they've brought it upon themselves; Taco Bell is so linked to late, late night that it would be impossible to think of the brand as a breakfast destination, unless it happens to be at 3am. In addition, consumers tend to get locked into ritual, the morning trip to KFC for a chicken and egg sandwich, after the trip to Starbucks, doesn't quite work.

Anyway, the company thought it was important enough to raise at a Deutsche Bank conference in Paris this June and this is clearly going to be a stategic focus for the company moving forward.

If anyone has any smart ideas about Mexican or Southern inspired breakfast or dessert options, please let Yum know.


Posted by Ed Cotton