In an age where products are increasingly similar and of equal quality, the opportunities to compete just on the basis of what you sell are disappearing. In fact, I’d go further than that and say, they’re as good as gone. Even if you know that your product has some sort of technical advantage over that of a rival, the chances of you continuing to hold that advantage or of that advantage being of such significance that consumers actually care are as good as nil.
In a helpful article in Fast Company, Seth Priebatsch provides his insights on how brands can use game dynamics to forge new levels of engagement with customers. He cites three robust principles:
It’s amazing who we forget and how quickly. I don’t remember any of the people on the bus last week. Who did I ride home with last Thurday? My mind goes blank. It’s nothing personal – it’s simply that I have no reason to remember them. Or they me. Most brands have the same levels of recognition for customers.
Almost every brand I work with has a community policy, an environmental policy, a sustainability policy … as they should. And everyone seems to acknowledge that the policy or policies they have form an important part of their reputation and their stakeholder relations … as they should. And yet precious few brands have actively connected those social responsibility activities with their brand.
Coming home from Sydney, Paul and I were talking about ‘moments of truth’. One of the great ironies, and frustrations, for many brands is that reputation must be built over years, but can be lost in a tiny fraction of that time – seconds. All because of an action or a word, a misunderstanding or an expectation that may or may not even have been reasonable in the first place.
I love this distinction by Martin Bishop between the brands we’re stuck on versus the ones we’re stuck with.
We’d all like to think we have a greater understanding of what’s ahead than we do. And while some ideas may seem more credible than others, the fact is that people make predictions and indeed projections every day that may, or may not, be right. In fact, markets depend on it. Without opinion, emotion and uncertainty, they’d be no derivatives market for example, because they’d be no motive for volatility, which is, after all, the lifeblood of trading. We want our brands to be predictable too. We want to know where they’re heading. And yet, at the same time, we need them to be refreshing and interesting. A strange alliance To me, the art of branding is pinpointing what must change versus what must stay still. It’s a strange alliance of familiarity, response and initiative. Familiarity – enough of what we know about a brand needs to remain consistent enough for long enough for us to recognise it and treasure it. This is the bedrock. Change at this level happens very infrequently. Response – markets …
A very different post today – not about brand as such or business necessarily, but rather how we should prioritise after a disaster. When is it time for life to get back to normal?
Every so often, and at the oddest times, I’m reminded of just how big the world is and how competitive and diversified most sectors really are nowadays. Airports have that effect on me. So many flights to so many places, with so many people waiting in lounges to do deals, pitch ideas, sell products, hold meetings, clinch finance …
