Inspiration brought to you by the TM Planning Department

This new article from the king nerds at PSFK takes an interesting look at the levels of brands’ energy.

They describe it as a 7-level ladder, with the most active brands being “Volcanic” and the the most seditary brands being “Decaying.”

If we HAD to put our brands on this 7-level scale, where would they be?

And more importantly, how can we get them to Volcanic?

Here are the 7 Levels.  Replace all mentions of “Africa” and add “America” and we’re in business.

Level 1: Volcanic. A CEO with a Volcanic brand is the commercial equivalent of a US Marine with a Congressional Media of Honor. A man or woman of action; prepared to take risks; bright and brave enough to wrong foot the opposition.

Level 2: Burning. Your brand is as hot as a pili pili chicken at Nandos on a hot Saturday afternoon. Consumers feel its heat in their lives. You’ve come a long way, but you still haven’t quite learned how to live in the spotlight. It’s time to do something different, something that pushes your brand up to the ultimate level. Brands in this position may have a window as tight as two years to make the leap. Starbucks was here once. So was Viagra. So was Myspace. In East Africa, most of our ISPs were here two years ago. You get my point – carpe diem.

Level 3: Charged. A pat on the back, Madam Brand Manager. Your brand is being noticed and is moving in the right direction. (Remember how important I said DYNAMISM was?) Your brand is liked and repeatedly bought by loyal consumers. Now is the time to figure our how to get it into the mass consciousness. One way to do this is to think outside the confines of your market segment, and beyond the functional delivery of your brand. How can you give it greater social relevance? Coke did this in the 1930’s when they gave Santa a Coke-red coat and moved the brand from summer refreshment to all-year-round fizzy drink icon.

Level 4: Pulsing. Well, at least your brand has a pulse. This is a condition in which we find many brands in Africa. Market share gain is positive; profitability is good. Which is why most CEO’s and CFO’s stop thinking beyond this point, and disappear off to sort out a distribution snarl-up or have another go at battling counterfeit products. You can’t blame them, running a business in Africa is like putting on a plate–spinning display in a Greek Restaurant. But you can blame the Marketing Manager. It’s his job to keep pushing for more INVENTION, more DYNAMISM behind his brand. MacDonalds was making good money offering meat in a bun at a low price, but they went on to add fun – Happy Meals, birthday parties, a rather scary clown. More recently they have added health. A pulsing brand needs a Marketing Manager who wants to make his name.

Level 5: Inert. You guessed it. The reason I write this column is that I believe there are far too many brands in this category in Africa. I’m not even sure they are brands. At best they are named products. The bottom 9800 brands in the Superbrands long list are arguably all inert. Their logos only inspire excitement among their CEO’s wives. Their Marketing Managers have been exhausted by the process of developing straplines like ‘We care for you!’ and have now slumped into a daily routine of scamming money from third party suppliers. Some of these brands are in low interest categories. So what? In the unspeakably dull computer components sector, Intel has become an iconic brand. If they can do it, so can you. But you have to want to.

Level 6: Sleeping. This is probably the starting point for most new brands in Africa. And as I said above, the pity is that many of them only make it to Inert. A brand in this state needs sound professional advice on targeting and differentiation. Get these wrong, and she’ll never wake up. ‘ If you ain’t segmenting,’ said Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School, ‘ you ain’t marketing.’

Level 7. Decaying. The good news is that I doubt we have many brands in this category in Africa. We don’t have many brands to begin with, and most of them haven’t been around for very long. However this will become a marketing challenge in future decades, so it’s best we all know it exists now. Elsewhere in the world decayed food brands are exterminated by supermarket own label. Or are so weak that they are better marketed and sold through an intermediary. If a whole category falls into decay, it becomes vulnerable to competitors like Sir Richard Branson, whose skill is to reinvent an industry in his own image. Watch out for signs of this in your category.