Ever since the GFC, global markets seem to have become more volatile. Oil prices rise and crash; China’s growth soars and slides. When market dynamics are this dramatic, how should you look to effectively develop a brand? Do you go with the ebb and flow, or act as a beacon of constancy?
An observation from the Havas CES 2016 report that we will increasingly see more companies working together across widely different marketplaces is a reminder of the new bridges that brands must be looking to build going forward. Inevitably these invite new approaches.
Is flexibility replacing footprint as the new black for global brands? That’s the inevitable question as Walmart announces a major redraft of its stores policy.
It seems everywhere I look in the marketing press these days, someone is advocating the need for brands to deliver experiences. But not everyone can or should deliver a formatted experience, and, equally, some brands would quickly wither if they didn’t.
Brands come alive for people when they encapsulate ideas that consumers want to have in their lives. That’s partly what makes brands distinctive and desirable. So what do you do when your core idea is no longer as attractive as it used to be?
Successful brands have a story that connects them with their audience and that forms the backbone of their strategy. But if you’ve been around a while, the story that your loyal customers know is not yet shared by those who are new to the brand. Here are 4 ways to connect your longer story to those who don’t know it as well.
Many Roads, One Goal is based on my most popular blog post ever. It’s about why it takes more than one strategy to find the best strategy and how you can develop a portfolio of strategies to overcome challenging times, implement and test them in batches, and then manage the portfolio down from many to whatever the market has revealed works best.
How should you think of your brand when you have a product that costs a lot to use? Is an expensive product automatically luxury? How should we draw a distinction between luxury and, say, premium?
Everything your brand does happens within a context. You can’t ignore that, nor should you. But here’s the irony – if you allow that wider context to drive how you manage your brand, then you risk losing control because the course you are steering is no longer yours.
Any brand manager worth their salt is looking to cultivate and manage a brand that is noticed and valued. But how far should a brand go in that quest for distinctiveness? Interestingly, the answer doesn’t just come down to taste.
