Every marketer is haunted by fear of missing out. As trends are identified and balloon, the decision to ignore or capitalise becomes more urgent. How do you decide what to pay attention to and what do you let pass you by?
How do we recognise a brand? What do consumers see, and how different is that from the ways brands are structured?
If your brand is taken over by another company or your company takes over other brands, either as a stand-alone buy or as part of a broader merger and acquisition, what aspects of your current brand should stay as they are and what might you look to change?
If brand owners are truly intent on developing brand strategies that cut through, perhaps the best place to start is with stranger questions. Asking the less obvious might push more brands to think more laterally about their futures.
Everywhere you look today it seems, there are people and brands only too keen to spell out exactly what they think and what they want you to know, in the loudest terms possible. As the volume continues to climb, can you even be a quiet brand today?
Much is made of the idea that your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. However, brands are defined by more than reputation and stories are told and spread by more than just consumers. Some stories you control. Many you can’t.
The choice of values and the nature of those values comes up a lot in any team looking to change what it stands for. Sometimes it comes up overtly. More often, it comes out in a reluctance by some to ‘move on’ from what they know because they are concerned that leadership is not up to the task or they will end up compromising their professional integrity.
Apple’s recent stand-off with the FBI refocuses the dilemma of what to do when someone has used your product in a way that was never intended. What should brands do to influence or change how their products are used?
One of the hardest judgment calls for brand managers is relevance. Brands must change to stay consistent yet they must also remain recognisable in order to preserve brand equity. So what should you change, and when?
Brands are quick to identify customer experience as an area of critical success for them. Yet too often those responsible for its delivery lack the authority or the experience to fully act in the interests of those customers.
