There has been much consternation in and around Westminister about the return of the “Orange man”. No MPs aren’t about to be Tango’d in another stunt for the Britvic brand but rather Tony Blair was back on the political scene.

As someone who has been asked to comment on Brand Blair for the BBC a couple of times, I thought I might venture an opinion on the reaction his speech generated, a marketing opinion though rather than a political one.

The two most obvious things to say from a branding  point of view are that the speech generated a lot of coverage and comment, and that the comments were very polarised – which is in fact exactly what you might have predicted for a strong values-led brand.

The strongest brands not only have great awareness and generate strong emotional responses and those responses are unlikely to universally positive.

Manchester United evokes strong passions – millions fanatically follow them, millions of others sing “Stand up if you hate Man U”.  Microsoft is huge but talk to Apple users and they will tell you another story. Tesco dominates the UK retail scene but it has a growing number of detractors – and of course Marmite famously celebrates the fact that is a love it or hate it brand.

So the fact that Tony Blair’s speech got so much coverage and that coverage was mixed just goes to prove that Brand Blair remains one of the strongest brands in British politics.

Just before Christmas I was stumbling along Regent Street in a haze of bright lights, expensive prices and carrier bags when I espied a little piece of what might be my own personal paradise: a Marmite pop-up shop!

The store was selling a range of Marmite related objets d’arts like t-shirts, Andy Warholesque pictures, aprons, bags, boxes and jigsaws. Of course Marmite itself was available in a range of sizes and formats. 

As a lover of the sticky black stuff I was bowled over by this store and intrigued about the idea of pop-up stores in general. Clearly the pop-up is not a new idea but this was my first such store, was in a very prestigious location and was attracting a lot of interest from passers by. What a fantastic way to promote a brand: massive exposure, huge footfall, strong word of mouth. To add to it all the store had its own Twitter feed so that true devotees could keep track of the high jinks going on at the store on the move.

With all the closed units on high streets due to the current downturn what a great way for brands to get out there and promote themselves, without taking the hit of a full store lease. Love it or hate it, that Marmite sure is clever.

The levees have finally broken. After over a year spent dipping its toe in the water with regional trials in the North and South-East, M&S is starting to sell branded grocery products at all of its stores in the UK.

Normally branding consultants might be tearing their hair out at this news: why are they undermining a point of difference?

But M&S is actually doing the right thing here. The only brands being introduced are in what it calls brand-led categories, e.g., Pantene, Coca Cola, Gordon’s, Marmite, Persil, Kit Kat, Kellogg’s and Heinz. In other words, however hard M&S might try to fabricate a localised monopoly within its stores, these are the kind of destination brands which even regular M&S shoppers would be going elsewhere to pick up. Interestingly, M&S (or rather John Dixon, their Executive Director of Food) divides the brands it’s introducing into two categories:

1. ‘Products that we could simply never compete with, like Marmite and Kit Kat,’ i.e. brands like Guinness which are very closely tied to their product format/flavour/some other intrinsic. While this quality is normally a hindrance to the brands in question because consumers don’t give them ‘permission’ to innovate away from their core, in this case, it’s a quality that means any mimic M&S produce won’t ever be seen as comparable by consumers.

2. ‘Other areas where, whilst we have a great M&S equivalent, the leading brand dominates the market,’ i.e. brands which embody their category and offer the generic, mass-market proposition, e.g. Gordon’s ‘the G in G&T’ and Heinz ‘Heinz Meanz Beanz.’ These are the kind of brands who truly can claim market leader status; all of the marketing muscle they can heft over their central ground makes them basically impossible to unseat. So, as an aside, being selected by M&S as one of these brands is a real accolade, and it’s interesting to think that being chosen and endorsed by M&S may become something brands fight for. And if this is the start of a flood of brands to M&S’s shelves, it may be something that even non-market leading brands may fight for if they believe they have a motivating proposition against the core M&S range in their category.

In any case because the brands being introduced at this stage will only cover 7% of its product range and because they’re the kind of brands M&S simply can’t compete with, I think it’s a smart move. Being brand-free has been a distinct point of difference for M&S, but because that has been to the exclusion of these destination brands, that differentiation has been the wrong kind; it’s been differentiation for its own sake. It’s left consumers frustrated that they either have to put up with a compromised, own-brand alternative they don’t want, or make a second trip to a rival store to pick up what they do want. It’s why The M&S Principle may be a useful short-hand for an important point about differentiation: what matters is owning a compelling position in consumers’ minds. So when it comes to differentiation, motivate, don’t aggravate.