Today Gartner reported that Samsung has passed Nokia as the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones. Samsung seems to be doing everything right. Nokia held the crown as the largest mobile phone manufacturer for 14 years. Does this mean that Samsung will be the dominant company in the industry for as long? Looking to analogs from related industries, I would say no. A position of dominance invites competitors to dethrone the king. As Samsung’s goal has been to unseat Nokia, others will likely seek to dethrone Samsung. As the market changes structure and the barriers to entry fall, the position of king seems an increasingly uncomfortable place to be.

The PC Industry

The PC industry has gone through a number of changes over the past 30 years, driven by technological changes and widespread consumer adoption. The result has been that the industry has gone through phases of market disruption and concentration.

Having ushered in the modern PC with the help of Windows, IBM was the predominant manufacturer in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, Compaq emerged as a market leader due to aggressive marketing and consumer adoption. Dell had been aggressively deploying its direct sales model and lowering price points to steadily gain market share, so that by 2001 it became nominally the market leader. However, no single leader emerged with Dell and a newly merged HP-Compaq within a few points of each other. By the mid-2000s HP consolidated its position in the industry with a strong business and consumer presence and gained a substantial leadership position. However it appears that we are now on the cusp of the next transition with HP losing share and Lenovo aggressively growing following its acquisition of IBM’s laptop business. In a mature industry with a horizontal model, where the operating system, hardware, and applications are separate, the leadership amongst hardware manufacturers is proving impossible to sustain.

The Gaming Console Industry

Gaming consoles command a high degree of customer lock-in through proprietary operating systems and significant content investments by customers. Nintendo is credited with being the originator of the modern gaming machines in the 1980s, and their early success was closely linked to the popularity of the Mario Brothers game. However, Sony quickly began to challenge Nintendo in the 1990s, and for much of that period we see the two companies alternating market leadership depending on game popularity and new device launches. Microsoft entered the market with their Xbox in the early 2000s and steadily built market share.

Although Nintendo did leap in dominance for some years following the launch of the Wii, the market has resolved to a dead heat between the three manufacturers. In this vertically integrated business model players cannot seem to sustain market leadership for very long.

Reflections on Mobility

Nokia’s long run at market leadership was in an era when the industry was vertically integrated. Software and hardware were fused together. Although customers were not locked in with content, brand loyalty was strong and closely linked to the hardware manufacturer. Customers still buy the manufacturer’s products, but are increasingly locked in to the software platform and its ecosystem. Consumers purchase apps and content for their smartphones that may not transfer to other platforms. As Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO, stated: “we are now in a war of ecosystems.” In an environment like this, a single manufacturer will find it difficult to sustain market leadership for a long period of time.

With the exception of iOS, platforms benefit from several manufacturers building on their operating systems. Android’s success has been due to Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and Sony all building devices running the Android OS. Thus, there are two levels of competitive dynamics occurring simultaneously: competition among the platforms and competition among the manufacturers. In this type of environment, it is increasingly difficult to imagine retaining market share leadership for a sustained period of time.

But Samsung does not need the crown. Following the example of Nokia in addressing all price points with product is one clear way to retain leadership in volume share for a time, but this does not lead to a sustainably profitable business. Ultimately, maintaining the crown should be a lesser concern. Market leadership invites others to steal the business. Someone can always come in and do it cheaper to drive market share. Samsung can thrive being the second, third, fourth largest mover of handset units, as long as they are more importantly the leader in profit.

Samsung must continue to focus on innovation, product leadership, and profitability. Innovation in all areas of the business to meet customer needs naturally leads to product leadership. Product leadership reinforces your position in the battle of the ecosytems allowing you to capture greater profits.

- Mark Mulcahey, Senior Partner

We only had limited time during the session to answer audience questions, so in this post, I’d like to address some of the queries we were unable to answer.

Q: Is price leadership the only option to enter emerging markets [with] companies jumping onto a differentiation strategy [later on]? After all, emerging markets have an understanding that imported stuff [is] costlier.

No, quite the contrary, my co-panelist Bruce Brown mentioned, P&G’s SK-II product has been selling very well in the Asian market at a premium position. SK-II is differentiated by its high quality and its technological advantage. We learn from these examples that consumers do not simply and gradually trade-up from lower tier products into higher tier products, but consumers trade-off from one category to another category. That is, they might save on furniture, but spend more on skincare products. These complex demand patterns need to be understood in order to make the smartest entry decisions. Companies who merely chase market size and economic development statistics will find the overhyped middle class in emerging markets attractive. Those same companies may find the middle to be an empty middle. An entry strategy and price premium position allows brands to capture surpluses that can then fund brand differentiation. Hilton captures this surplus through managing two brands, the more upscale Conrad brand and the Hilton in Asia.

Q: Does the increasing purchasing power in emerging markets increase brand loyalty?

Increasing purchasing power in emerging markets does not increase brand loyalty. In fact, the increased availability of information as the market ‘emerges’ makes consumers more promiscuous. The consumers in these emerging markets are being bombarded with numerous products and services at every price point, and they are discerning and sophisticated. It is more important for brands to tap into the consumer’s emotions and really relate itself to the consumer’s daily life ecosystem in order to generate any sort of brand loyalty.

Q: How about B2B market entry strategy? Do these principles hold?

No, they don’t hold for B2B markets. My point was that the emerging middle consumer market is a large opportunity, but the hype in its favor is mostly driven by an economic rationale. Economists forecast the growth in the middle class to double from today’s very small fraction in ten years, growing from the current annual per-household disposable income of $4,000 (urban consumers only) in China. In comparison, the standard of living in developed countries today is about ten times that number; in the US, per-household disposable income is about $35,000. In favor is the number of people in the emerging markets. There could potentially be 400 million people in China in 10 years, or 167 million households — though their disposable incomes will still be around $8,000.

When it comes to economics, I concur with the Danish physicist Niels Bohr who said: predictions are difficult, especially about the future. So, I still caution about relying on economic numbers. First, they suggest to me that while the market sizes are large, disposable incomes will remain relatively small. That’s why I recommended that companies enter emerging markets with a dual strategy, at a more premium position with their Western brand and at the low-tier with an entry through collaborations and partnerships with local firms. This provides at least some form of participation in growth at the bottom of the pyramid.

These ideas, however, do not apply to B2B markets.

Q: Can these entry points be applied to other emerging markets such as Latin America?

Though the research might yield different consumer wants and desires in emerging markets in Latin America compared to Asia, the concept of entering at a premium and tapping into consumers’ wants and desires remains the same. I am very familiar with Latin America, and I believe similar consumption patterns do exist.

As I mentioned during the webinar, in Asia, we are not seeing consumers moving in a simple pattern from the bottom to the middle and then to the premium. Instead, they are willing to spend their income on certain top-of-the-line items, but will spend less on other products. It would be essential in all emerging markets, including Latin America, to see where consumers are trading off.

At the same time, there definitely are differences between the Asian and Latin American markets. For example, in Asian countries like China, the Western concept or ideal of “the middle class” does not exist, nor is belonging to it necessarily a desirable thing. However, in Latin America, the concept of the middle class does exist. There is an understanding among consumers about who belongs to the middle class and who does not. In Latin America, membership to the middle class is largely desirable and also aspirational.

As mentioned in the webinar, culture and context trumps everything. But the constant in all emerging markets is that you will never win by making an ‘average’ product for an ‘average’ consumer. Consumers in all markets want premium (or the perception of premium) products, not ‘average’ ones.

- Erich Joachimsthaler

Last week, Pepsi nationally launched its latest soft drink offering – Pepsi Next, a 60 calorie soda with 60% less sugar.

We think Pepsi Next could be in for a rough ride – the ‘mid-calorie’ cola is a tweener – neither full sugar nor diet – and consumers will have trouble figuring out how to categorize it.

Pepsi is looking to offer full-cola taste without the calories of full-sugar colas, while eliminating the negatives some associate with the word “diet.” The problem with this is Coke Zero; Coke Zero nailed this space when it came out in 2005 – a no-calorie cola that tastes very much like a regular cola, and isn’t perceived as a “diet” drink. And it has created a very strong market position in this space.

So, Pepsi Next starts out with its major competitor having a 7-year head start, with the added negative of containing calories AND artificial sweeteners. Further, the very functional “drink it to believe it” brand positioning feels inconsistent with the emotional heritage of Pepsi, and Coke Zero has been using this same essential message for years.

How could Pepsi Next have been executed differently? It could have been made calorie-free to go head to head with Coke Zero, providing consumers who prefer the Pepsi brand with a Pepsi alternative. Or as a slightly less sweet 60 calorie, unique type of cola with no artificial sweeteners, like the Honest Tea of colas. Both of these directions seem to be more viable options than the one chosen.

We’ll have to wait and see how successful Pepsi is with this launch, but we predict that before long, you’ll find Pepsi Next right next to Pepsi Edge … not on the shelves at all.

- Nick Hahn, Senior Partner

Some brands are making great strides with this approach: Nike Stores not only sell shoes, but also offer experiences and the ability to create your own. eBay opened a pop-up store in London last Christmas. And PepsiCo changed the landscape of vending when it unveiled a system by which consumers are able to gift drinks to friends via social media. Finding a truly successful store that only sells products—a retailer that is only online or even a vending machine that only sells soda—is rare these days.

To achieve the success of these giants, here are five imperatives to rethink your customer experience:

1. Design With Your Target in Mind
Traditionally, companies designed their customer experience to serve a broad market. Appealing to the masses and building scale used to be sufficient to win. No longer. Sears for example, has consistently lost share and relevance in the U.S. market because its experience is not clearly aimed at a specific segment and not defined by anything but its lack of differentiation and relevance.

By contrast, consider Abercrombie & Fitch. A&F creates an atmosphere teens want. It’s a club as much as it is a store—throbbing electronic music blasts and dim lighting shadows the merchandise. Sexy photographs of young models decorate the walls. They even spray the store with Fierce, a signature scent to create a full sensory experience. Any other shopping experience to these customers would be lame.

By defining a clear target and building an experience that is best for its particular target, A&F has increased its share price 130 percent during the last 12 months (more than double the performance of the S&P 500 over the same period). A&F’s customer experience is not designed for everyone—and that is precisely what makes it resonate so strongly with the younger generations.

The full article can be read on Portfolio.com

Professional sports have long used technology to monitor, analyze and improve their performance. In soccer, pro trainers use telemetric data to analyze the performance of the team using Adidas’s XP product. In the leisure sports segment, even the average runner has become part-bionic man, using a step counter tracking distance, speed, and how today’s compares to yesterday’s. And Adidas, again, is moving in on this market, with the MiCoach for the leisure segment, such as amateur football, and connecting it to the iPod, iPhone and other computers.

Nike, which has long held sway over both pro and amateur sports gear, has debuted its latest tech gadget, FuelBand. The product sold out even before its launch and is making a huge splash in the tech world. But with so many companies vying for this market, what is really new about FuelBand?

The answer is everything: Nike’s FuelBand tracks and calculates the user’s sports activities; gives advice on training plans; and helps them to reach their defined goals. With this product, Nike again proves that it is much closer to its customers than ever before: It creates multiple digital touchpoints with their consumers. The FuelBand connects to the Nike databases with an entire system created around it. Nike also has opened its API to push further developments towards a combined Fuelband-Music device. This is a radical “new” here.

For the everyday sports-people, this is a major shift as Nike generates a huge database through the motivation of its sportspeople. Analyzing these data will help Nike to enter a totally new terrain. Just like Apple did with the iTunes technology, Nike will intersect much deeper into customers’ everyday lives and create high relevance for them. Thereby the new technology can also be seen as a shift from professional sports and athletes to include everyday sportspeople.

At the same time, this new technology allows Nike to get even more in touch with its customers’ social lives. Users can connect with each other, compare their performances and statistics, and share their experiences so that Nike is now ushering in a totally new era in marketing, where there is no more need for classical advertising. Given this opportunity, Nike has already smartly dropped its ad spending by about 40% and shifted efforts to communicate directly with its customers to increase its total marketing spending.

However, digitization is not just the next marketing “trick.” It can be the next big growth step for sports brands – not just an adjacent business – but in a completely new market. The new technology will enable these brands to move the sporting industry into totally new business models. These companies are moving from a product manufacturer into service-and-IT companies, with a foot in the door of new industries.

A major challenge for Adidas and Nike will be to fill the gap between their core businesses and pushing their differentiating business models – Adidas with its high-quality tech products and Nike with its very successful marketing – further into the new market. Both companies will have to adapt parts of their competitors’ strategies to be successful and show the customer that it is not only about improving a professional athlete’s life, but also about bringing the insights of professional sports into our daily lives to improve our health and well-being. A key aspect will be the shift away from a device which is perceived to be annoying towards a device which is accepted as a normal part of customer’s everyday lives. The big question here is where can sport create high relevance in the context of people’s daily lives.

Nike, for instance, could even move even further into the health and well-being market. It could be more than your personal trainer on the sports playing field, but possibly your personal physiotherapist and doctor for health and performance. With this in mind, the innovation and growth strategy will become the future business engine for these companies.

The FuelBand is more than the latest and newest gadget. It is heralding the change from a marketing game to an entire new growth agenda.

- Hartmut Heinrich, Partner

Earlier this week, I attended the BRITE ’12 Conference at Columbia Business School where I heard speakers including professors from Columbia Business School, CMOs from top companies, and colleagues in the consulting world. During the two-day conference, three thoughts struck me the most.

Having an Explicit Purpose is the New Black
In this day and age, brands need to have a sense of purpose. It’s no longer enough for a product to be a good value and of good quality. Brands need to tap into a higher sense of purpose for real engagement with consumers. Companies need to evolve beyond great products to great products that have a social purpose. A perfect example of this is TOMS Shoes. It’s a for-profit company with a higher purpose. You do good and enjoy a great product, tapping into consumers’ desires, but also stroking higher needs.

This sense of purpose is important for brands on another level, as well. Not only are purpose-driven brands more engaging for consumers, but also purpose-driven brands resonate with employees. Companies with highly-engaged employees are consistently shown to deliver a better customer experience which leads to higher EPS.

I would go a step further though and keep in mind that when talking about purpose to remember while it is a necessary component for brands, it is not sufficient. You can create all the meaning you want with consumers, but still need to get traction with the basics – like distribution, salespeople. Virgin Cola did a great job of tapping into the purpose of the brand, but failed on the execution side and was ultimately doomed.

Use Social Media as a Source of Competitive Advantage
Of course, you can’t talk about branding without mentioning social media. Big media companies are losing power, because consumers are becoming media companies, opening up new streams of information 24/7. This opens opportunities to take what is created and curate what is important about and to the brand. Brands can build up the loyalty of consumers by being an aggregator of content.

Also, all this social and mobile media is creating lots of data and opening another opportunity to use that data to really understand what’s going on in the market. The CMO from American Express explained that it’s really important to listen to consumers and said they use their datasets as a competitive advantage. With social media providing plenty of data for marketers, companies that will succeed in the future will be the ones that navigate this data-scape to gain a competitive advantage.

A Brand is not a Brand is not a Brand
Winning in products is different from winning in services. For service brands, there are many more touchpoints and considerations. I may enjoy Haagen Dazs ice cream; but my only touchpoint is during my consumption. Meanwhile, if I fly on Delta, I am constantly in contact – from buying a ticket on their website, to when I check in at the airport, to the actual flight itself and beyond. Each of those experiences is an opportunity to fail my expectations.

Services also tend to be more emotionally driven. After consuming a Haagen Dazs, I may get emotional satisfaction, but it lasts an hour at maximum. It’s a short experience. A flight, though, is a full day affair that can affect me for the rest of the trip. A bad check-in experience can ruin my flight, and I might stew on it the entire time I’m away …. or at least I check into my hotel for another round of experiences with my hotel brand.

Lastly, brands need to deliver consistency and it’s harder to be consistent in delivering experiences and services than creating an ice cream that’s mostly automated by machines with a much smaller margin of inconsistency.

The biggest takeaway of all, though? Brands need to create trust. And while we have a lot of new tools at our disposal, including social media, the key is to never lose sight of the importance of the human element in building trust and relationships with consumers.

Zappos does this brilliantly by not only leveraging technology to recommend products, but also consistently delights its customers with extraordinary human interactions. A perfect example is their use of Twitter, which doesn’t feel like a corporate company, but a chatty, casual interaction with a friend. Trust is a valuable thing and when Zappos was hacked in early January 2012, they took immediate steps to alert their customers and set up a system for inquiries. A potential brand-tarnishing disaster was averted because the brand promise of Zappos was never in question.

Before a brand gets to such a crisis, they need to ask themselves if they are in a position where their customers trust them enough to stick with them. Every brand needs to ask the defining question to their consumers: Do you trust me?

- Jorge Aguilar, Associate Partner

Facebook unveiled the new Facebook Timeline for brands yesterday among pomp and circumstance, much of it warranted. With Facebook Timeline, brands finally have a way to bring their business to social media rather than just adding social media to their businesses, opening the door to real and meaningful interactions with consumers.

The key things that make this possible are 1) a new format that incorporates design thinking, 2) the ability for brands to customize their pages to fit their message, and most importantly, 3) ability for brands to make their pages personalized and relevant to consumers.

1) Facebook Timeline incorporates design thinking into its new format. It is no secret that visualization is now the driving force behind social media. This is evidenced by the meteoric rise of Pinterest, Instagram and other outlets that let people express their lives, their passions, and their pursuits, in a highly visual and creative way.

Facebook Timeline capitalizes on this trend by allowing the brand to display stunning images “at the doorstep” to draw consumers in, and then ply them with more content and visuals as they peruse the page. The old, thumbnail size pictures, underscored with lines of text are gone, and posts with photos now actually showcase the photo and allow consumers to consume and interact in a much more intuitive and visual way.

2) Facebook Timeline allows brands to customize their pages so that the page reflects and showcases the brand, helping to drive differentiation.  Since some brands have switched over to the Facebook Timeline and some have not, you can see the perfect example of the difference by checking out the Facebook pages of Coca-Cola versus Diet Coke.

The Coca-Cola page has great branded imagery at top and easy to see info about the brand and what it is doing on Facebook. It also has easy to understand “like” info, and links to what the brand thinks is important to consumers.

This level of customization, while it may not seem like much, is critical for the brand to be able to express its personality and point of view. This expression is what will drive consumer loyalty for one brand or another, and allows the brand to carve out its own special niche within the consumers’ lives.

Meanwhile, on the Diet Coke Page, the entire image is focused on getting the like and showcases very little about the brand. You have to scroll down to see likes and other things that demonstrate brand credibility (and presented in non-consumer friendly way – i.e. 1,680,242 likes vs. 1.7M likes) and consumers are forced to leave Facebook to get any additional info, leaving the experience feeling forced and empty.

Diet Coke wasn’t able to customize the page to fit their brand, so they opted to have all relevant content outside of Facebook. This destroys the entire point of having a Facebook page because the brand loses the rich customer context that marketers dream about.

3) But most importantly, Facebook Timeline allows brands to connect to consumers, and the people that are important to them. Facebook Timeline allows you to see brand posts side-by-side with posts from your friends about the brand, without the clutter of pages of posts from strangers and people outside your circle of influence. The new Facebook Timeline helps bring the brand to life in a way that the old Facebook format could never do. With a glance, consumers can see what the brand is talking about and how that relates to how their friends are talking about the brand as well, making the message and story being communicated instantly more accessible and relevant

There are comments from the brand, comments from friends about the brand, a timeline to let consumers tap into the history of the brand, and even a way for the brand to communicate directly with each consumer, building advocacy through transparency and trust in a way that wasn’t possible before.

What needs to be kept in mind is that the new Facebook Timeline, as well as other social mediums like Pinterest, Twitter, and even old-fashioned blogs, is only as important as your brand’s actual interactions with customers. While new technology is letting brands tap even deeper into consumers’ lives, giving a rare opportunity to turn everyday consumers in to brand advocates, how your brand ultimately delivers value to the consumer through your products and services will always ultimately be how your brand is judged.

- Raja Gupta, Engagement Manager

Last week, Vivaldi Partners Group CEO Erich Joachimsthaler spoke with Harvard Business Review editor Angelia Herrin and Innosight’s Scott Anthony and  P&G’s Bruce Brown in a Singapore Sessions webinar.

The group discussed “What is the right entry point for emerging markets: targeting customers at the bottom or the middle of the pyramid?” You can read Erich’s thoughts from before the webinar here.

In the webinar, the participants talk about where to enter in the pyramid and even how to define “middle class” in emerging markets. The full webinar can be viewed here:

http://stream.krm.com/Mediasite5/Viewer/?peid=93d3406c3a9a409d8a3cd7c07a2f7be5

Much has been said about the historic shift from the developed West toward the fast-growing middle class of the emerging markets, particularly China and India. Numerous companies turned their attention to Asia in the belief that the vast numbers of consumers and their rising spending power would translate into enormous market opportunities. It is easy to see why, especially when in the West, the rise of the middle class in the 1960s unlocked hugely profitable market opportunities.

There are significant differences however, between the West and the East when it comes to realizing the potential opportunities afforded by the rising emerging markets middle class. Traditional Western market strategies — such as establishing a position and securing one’s place in the market — do not necessarily work where tens of millions of new customers enter every year, exhibiting little brand loyalty. Competition is ruthless. Exacerbated by the ready flow of funds from the West, competition exists even in markets that would be largely uncompetitive. In the Indian mobile market for example, there can be more than ten operators in a local market, all selling the same services at rock-bottom prices.

In the developed Western markets, we have become accustomed to the concept of the “middle class”,  typically associated with a developed set of values, professions, education levels and lifestyle. We have observed that unlike the Western markets middle class which came of age in the 1960s, the emerging middle class consumer culture of the East and South is far less well defined and homogenous. The emerging markets are so incredibly diverse and complex — with wide variations in public infrastructure, culture, and levels of market sophistication — that understanding the local context of consumption is critical.

Also, because of their recent and rapid growth, the emerging markets do not have a history that defines middle class membership. We have observed that the emerging markets middle class consumers often have two reference points. Their first reference group is the lower-income tier they or their generation may have emerged from very recently. At the same time, their aspirational reference group is the highly visible, wealthier upper class consumer who can afford to buy products and brands not merely to fulfill everyday basic needs, but to fulfill emotional motivations.

The result is a unique eclectic demand pattern in these emerging middle class markets. Consumers are savvy and discerning, empowered nowadays by the widespread availability of information. For some product categories, these consumers may welcome “good enough products” that serve their needs quite well at low price points. These consumers expect increasingly higher standards, whether from local high quality manufacturers or Western brands at affordable prices.  It is entirely likely that these consumers will not trade up to middle of the road products, and instead will trade-off and make purchases in other categories that fulfill their emotional wants, aspirations and desires that only strong brands or higher order value propositions can meet.

Faced with this kind of complex demand and intensely competitive markets, companies have two choices. They can enter at the bottom of the market and compete for consumers based on a lower price value proposition. This will require realizing enormous operations efficiencies to be able to match relentless local competitors who are willing to accept razor thin margins in exchange for large volumes. Companies who choose this route need to innovate along an ever improving feature set and hope that consumers are willing to pay for improved functionalities.

The second strategy is to target the middle by positioning themselves at the higher end of the market and appealing to wants, aspirations and desires that only strong brands can provide. At this end of the market, companies must invest in innovation, marketing, branding and customer service. We believe that for most Western companies, this is the only viable position to capture a profitable share of the emerging middle class market in Asia.

This course of action requires companies to understand the full nature demand opportunities, the ecosystem that drives demand in the local context. It is vital to delve deep into the local and cultural context of purchase and consumption – consumers’ local realities and the complexities of their daily lives. In our work, we call this process the mapping of the ecosystem of demand. More than focusing on consumers’ needs or unmet needs, this includes gaining a holistic perspective of consumers’ wishes, desires, fantasies, goals and frustrations – uncovering the entire spectrum of potential demand opportunities and developing opportunistic strategies to tap into these.

Companies must avoid at all costs positioning their products and brands in the middle, where revenues and sales are too small to capture scale advantages and margins are too thin to capture acceptable profits over time.

Anyone chasing the middle of the market is chasing fool’s gold. When it comes to middle class customers in Asia, there is no middle. There is no average preference, and there is no average brand that consumers either need or want. Any company entering the middle of the market with an average offering will soon face competition from the top, or rapidly emerging competition from below, from good-enough products that leverage enormous scale advantages gained through catering to the lower economic classes.

The company that enters the middle of the market with an average offering will find it extremely difficult to compete profitably over time. As consumer markets evolve rapidly in Asia, an organization that has been built for operational efficiencies and scale advantages in the middle of the market must morph into an organization that is able to successfully design, manufacture and market higher-end, more premium products. This is difficult for any firm. It is also extremely difficult to change brand perceptions built in the middle of the market, especially in the highly fragmented Asian markets. It would require huge investment, effort and time to reposition an “average” or “good enough” brand in more lucrative higher end of the market.

Like 110 million other people, we here at Vivaldi Partners watched the Super Bowl. However, our perspective went beyond the fun factor of the ads. We rated the Super Bowl Ads on three different values on a scale from 0 to 5.

First, we looked at the sheer entertainment value. Dogs dominated three out of the top four slots. We all really liked the “Volkswagen: Dog Strikes Back” and the “Doritos: Man’s Best Friend.” However, our group enjoyed the “Chevy: Sonic Anthem” ad the most.

Secondly, we weighted how the ads played into the brand DNA. An ad that successfully integrated its brand DNA with its Super Bowl ad tapped into the essence of the brand that could play out long-term over the year. Dogs took the top two spots with the Volkswagen dog and Sketchers dog on top there as well.

Lastly, we gave each ad a Social Currency score. Social Currency specifies the extent to which people share a brand or information about a brand as part of their everyday social lives. We based our score on the Social Sixes of utility, affiliation, information, identity, conversation, and advocacy. It’s clear that not every brand needs every dimension of the Social Sixes. We scored on how the ads did, based on the appropriate dimension. Overall, dogs and women topped our list with the “Doritos: Man’s Best Friend,” “Volkswagen: Dog Strikes Back,” and “Sketchers: Go Run” matching up with “Teleflora: Adrianna Lima” and “Fiat: Seduction” to top the Social Currency scores.

The final score added the three scores to come up with our list below.

What did you think of the Super Bowl ads?