What vexes many people about the Occupy movement is that it has not articulated a specific set of grievances or proposals. To a large extent, this is because many Occupy participants feel that a single voice hewing closely to a small number of talking points would misrepresent a movement that has gathered together people with a variety of perspectives and opinions. This is implicit in the movement’s tagline, “We are the 99%.”

Yet, this tagline has also had the effect of focusing coverage and perceptions of the movement on one message, that of income inequality. Comparing the 1 to the 99 puts inequality front and center, well above any other ideas or messages. Dylan Byers at Politico.com tracked a quintupling of mentions of this phrase in print, broadcast and Web media from the start of the occupation to the end of October.

Inequality, though, is more about disaffection than secession. Inequality stings because it smacks of unfairness, an idea that we have identified and highlighted in our US MONITOR research since 2008. While Adbusters and many of the other activist organizations that gave birth to Occupy are vehemently anti-consumerist, most if not all of the frustration and anger that Occupy is arousing is about being locked out of the system not about overthrowing the system.

What Occupy is expressing is the wish people have to be able to afford their fair share of things. Certainly, some participants are extremely anti-consumerist. Most, though, just want what they’ve earned, so that they can enjoy the lifestyles to which they aspire. This has long been true of social movements in America. They are more about access to consumerism and capitalist rewards than a rejection of them.

For example, the civil rights movement was about access and the opportunity for African-Americans to participate in what mainstream society had to offer. Similarly, this is why Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington of Clash of Civilizations fame characterized the student protestors of the early 1960s as the “new Puritans.” He understood that what they wanted and what they were protesting for was a country that lived up to its ideals not the overthrow of the ideals of this country. There are always those with more extreme opinions, but they are always a small minority. For Occupy, this is perhaps best exemplified in the profile of Ray Kachel in a recent issue of The New Yorker, a participant in the Zucotti Park occupation who was radicalized by unemployment.

For brands, this means that the overarching thrust of Occupy is not about rejecting marketing; it is about being able to afford the middle-class lifestyles people feel they deserve. People want jobs. They want a fair shot. They want equal opportunities. They believe that extreme inequality is un-American. But they still believe in America and the American Dream. Fairness is the answer that Occupy seeks, and that is what brands must take to heart and be mindful of as frustration and anger continue to pour out of the distressed, disaffected middle-class.

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Eddie Bauer has been struggling to repay its debt. And the fact that consumers slowed down spending on anything but necessities can’t have helped. In fact, the falloff came as Eddie Bauer was attempting to pull off what would have been a multi-year turnaround. “Eddie Bauer is a good company with a great brand and a bad balance sheet,” said Neil Fiske, the company’s CEO, though the retailer also said stores, catalog business and Web sites would continue operating, and that they will honor all customer gift cards, returns, and their points program.

According to our 2009 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, Eddie Bauer was just edged out of 1st place by J. Crew, another iconic clothing brand, whose ascension was largely aided and abetted by the patronage of Michele Obama, with L.L. Bean a distant #3.

On the marketing side of things, Eddie Bauer recently celebrated a new line called “First Ascent,” outfitting two mountaineers as they took on a climb of Mount Everest. On the financial side of things, there are plans in place to sell the company for $202 million to CCMP Capital Advisors.

A judge still needs to approve the sale, and other potential bidders still could emerge. But based on engagement and customer loyalty levels, whoever ends up buying the brand is pretty sure to end up on top of the world.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Robert Passikoff, President, Brand Keys

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Google enjoys a near 90% share of the UK and 72% share of the US search markets thanks to a loyal user base which returns to it time and again for their online information. Despite this dominance, you can see why Microsoft thinks it has a chance with Bing. For all its current loyalty and brand equity, Google does have an Achilles heel and it could prove relatively easy to erode that loyalty and grab share. Let me explain.

One of the most over-used phrases in the marketing lexicon is ‘brand loyalty‘. There are many reasons for a return purchase, and only a few of them relate to a consumer’s relationship with the brand.

Take all the pompous marketers from banks and mobile-phone networks that seem to dominate the rosters of most marketing conferences. Almost all of them mistake a consumer who is locked into their brand through significant switching costs with one who is enraptured by the brand and therefore unlikely to stray.

Switching costs are the painful, time-consuming steps required to change brands when you are unhappy with the service you are receiving. These costs usually account for a far higher proportion of repeat purchases than the higher-level, stronger brand loyalty for which they are often mistaken. It is like asking your parents on their silver wedding anniversary for the secret of their long and happy marriage and being told that a divorce would have been too messy. It is loyalty, of a sort; but not the best or strongest kind.

Which brings me back to Google.

The reason we visit the site is because we believe it to be the fastest and finest search engine on the planet. That’s a wonderful position of perceived superiority, but hardly the high-level symbolic brand associations that typify most strong brands. While it might be possible to make a better cola than Coke, no one is worried about this in Atlanta, because it would be impossible to be more Coca-Cola than Coca-Cola. The brand has an unassailable symbolic advantage. Not so with Google – it is a brand built on the perception of superior product performance. If Microsoft could manage to shake this perception, would you be tempted to switch sites? Maybe just to check?

And what would stop you? Google has no switching costs. It might be a $100bn franchise, but the brand is only ever six keystrokes away from losing its consumers, should a better search engine arrive on the horizon.

So, the $100bn question is whether Bing is actually better than Google. If only there was a blind test that could assess the engines side-by-side in an objective manner. Handily, a site has just been launched at blindsearch.fejus.com that enables us to do just that. It compares search results from Google, Bing and Yahoo! and will only reveal which is which after you vote for the most effective search results. Delightfully, the results I saw suggested that it’s the third option – Yahoo! – that offers the best results.

Perhaps Bing is not the answer. But it has started the process of questioning Google’s apparent superiority. Now we will get to find out just how strong the Google brand really is.

30 Seconds On…BlindSearch

• Blind-Search was created by Microsoft employee Michael Kordahi. He says the initiative has nothing to do with the company, but is simply him ‘having fun in his spare time’.
• According to Tim Anderson’s ITWriting blog, the results of the 8518 votes for which search engine has provided the most effective results stood at:  Google 45%; Bing 33%; and Yahoo! 22%.
• Early in the experiment, however, BlindSearch was forced to remove the tallies for each search engine as a result of people ‘gaming the system’.
• BlindSearch’s creator admits it has ‘many flaws’ at this early stage. Kordahi says the main issue is the lack of localization, so all searches are currently going through the US as US searches. The search engines’ additional benefits – image thumbnails, refine queries and suggest-ions – are missing from the site, which may skew results.
• Kordahi’s has another side-line – thetweetshirt.com, which sells Twitter T-shirts.

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Just when Jaguar thought things could not get any worse for the brand, the results of the annual JD Power & Associates 2009 Vehicle Dependability Study were revealed.

It is based on the reliability of three-year-old US vehicles, but is widely accepted as the world’s most influential study on automotive dependability and build quality.

Much to many people’s surprise, Jaguar finished top. For its marketers, the news could not be any more challenging.

It has been something of a tradition for Lexus to claim the number-one berth in the study. So imagine the shock this year when Toyota’s luxury brand fell to third place while Jaguar rose from 10th in 2008 to top spot.

While this is a significant achievement for the engineers at Jaguar, it lays down a notoriously difficult gauntlet for the company’s marketers.

Its cars may now officially be the most reliable in the world, but this is not the way it is often viewed. Feel free to test out this contention by turning to a colleague and asking them to name the world’s most reliable car. I would guess that they are not going to say Jaguar in 1000 years. Now, observe the look on their face when you inform them that the correct answer is, in fact, Jaguar. That look is the difference between product reality and brand perception.

If this were an article for Engineering Week – and let us pause to thank the great god of marketing that it is not – I would suggest that Jaguar’s proven product reliability will quickly over-come its reputation and usher in a new era of magnificent sales success. Alas, the consumer-oriented world that marketers inhabit is so much more complex than that. Unlike the neat objective rankings of the JD Power survey, everything in the consumer’s world is viewed through the thick and translucent lens of subjectivity.

Strong brand equity can help twist perception in your favor. But decades of negative stories and consumer testimonials about Jaguar’s unreliability mean that no matter how many times it runs ads proclaiming its newly proven dependability, many consumers will still dismiss the brand from their consideration set for its perceived under-performance in this area.

Some brands never manage to overcome their perceptual baggage, despite hard product evidence to the contrary. Take Guinness, for example – you may be surprised to learn that despite its heavy, filling reputation, a pint of the black stuff actually has fewer calories than Heineken, Stella Artois or even a pint of skimmed milk. Not surprisingly, Guinness owners Diageo have made several attempts to communicate this to consumers but with no success whatsoever. Turn back to your colleague (who is still looking bemused about Jaguar) and ask them which has more calories, skimmed milk or Guinness. You’ll get that look again.

Jaguar’s real work is still to be done. Getting a wonky car to perform reliably is no small feat, but removing the associations of wonkiness from the brand equity is in a different league.

In many cases, consumers possess inherited brand perceptions that are actually older than they are. Some consumers, for example, have had Jaguar’s reputation for unreliability passed down to them by their parents. That is why brands are so much more complex and enduring than the products that contribute to their equity. It is also the reason why a good marketer is worth considerably more than a good engineer… but don’t tell Engineering Week I said that.

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Conventional wisdom says do two things at once: Buy up more trendy beverages, like waters, sports and energy drinks; and work really, really hard to reinvigorate the base brands.

So, Pepsi hires Peter Arnell (of Tropicana Disaster fame), fires its long-time ad agency and creates a manifesto that calls for marketing its wares at “the real me.” According to BusinessWeek, the challenge was to make Pepsi as culturally relevant as the iPod. Good luck with that, Peter.

The temptation of course is honest: Wouldn’t it be great if brown, sugary water could be as cool as the latest touch screen gadget? Gosh, it would be great. However, it’s not going to happen. So rather than sending marketing execs on “cool hunts” for design inspiration, here’s a more daunting trek: Take a look at what other brands have done, what Coke and Pepsi have to do – to each other. Grow share in a declining market.

It would be so great to imagine that there’s something to be done with either of these brands that could forge an entirely new category of experience – and therefore consumer behaviors – the way the iPod has. But the truth is they’d learn much more by taking a commuter flight to Winston-Salem, N.C. It’s so very transgressive to even suggest it, but the only people who have spent time trying to wrestle for share in declining markets are the tobacco brands.

Soft Drink Marketers Can Learn From Tobacco

When I did the research for Passion Brands, I was as shocked as anyone when Camel came up as a passion brand, i.e., a brand I feel so strongly about that when I recommend it to a friend and the friend doesn’t love it the way I do, there’s a question mark over the friendship, not the brand. Indeed, one of the great lessons of Camel is the vitality of its outlier personae: The folks there figured out how to telegraph its negative-negative side of the marketing matrix status (I’m not supposed to be smoking at all, and if I do smoke, I should smoke Marlboro like everyone else). It’s leveraging its social capital in a distinctly anti-social way.

It will be hard for the folks at Pepsi or Coke to imagine that the image they need to project isn’t one of social aspiration and cool “it” brand status – until they have to. But, if taxes start going on the sugary stuff, and distribution is curtailed further to make the point that this isn’t kid stuff, well, they may well have to come to grips with being in the marketing ghetto of pure share wars in a declining market. That’s when an entirely different series of tactics emerge – and that’s when this will get really interesting.

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