Thoughts
BRANDING
Dear Growth Partners,
People don’t buy products or services. They buy what those products and services do for them!
This leads me to the focus of this weekly share: branding, and why people buy more from some and less from other brands.
While the topics of purchasing and branding are complex, with the holy grail still to be found, a couple of fundamentals can help. And since most of us deal with a finite level of capital, and can thus not freely iterate and innovate, we have to maximise our chances of success and focus on the elements we can control.
Here we go with a couple of fundamental questions:
What does your brand stand for? What is your story and history? What is your purpose? What are the values your brand goes by? What is your brand personality? How is your brand differentiated?
And how will your brand deliver value and be associated with and for that created value, at the core of brand loyalty?
If the answer to any of these questions is not obvious (for you in the first place) go back to the drawing or dreaming table and think them through.
Now that we have set the brand environment let’s bring our most important brand partner, the customer, back at the center of why the brand exists. How?
First of all by understanding their need state (what they need at any given point in time)! Or, is our brand so strong and our beliefs and purpose so clear that we can afford to assume customers don’t know what they want / need and create the need, as is the case for Apple? For most of us, it is not. So research, talk, be curious and make sure to invest in attributes (product, service, experience) that contribute to the customer’s value perception.
And then there is change, societal, environmental, organisational, market … Brands rarely change and evolve as much as they would need to, which creates misalignment in customer perception. Don’t underestimate this ; when a customer is not able to link his need to a brand he knows he is in alignment with and that is able to solve it, a transaction is made so much more difficult.
A great example of a company daring to play and change is Google, with its regular logo changes.
The logo, usually seen as one of the most sacred brand attributes suddenly becomes a communication and differentiation tool.
Dare to evolve, dare to adapt, and do it smartly. Alignment is critical for business success, also on brand level.
Change with respect for all which made the brand what it is, but do not fall in the trap of reverence, the source of standstill and self-centered attitudes. Obsolescence is a decision away in today’s world.
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