Page 70 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

31 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.

The idea

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

100 GREAT MARKETING IDEAS • 61