Branding is simple

Tom Asacker a man of great insights and ideas when it comes to the field of branding stated this in a recent blogpost. Swift and smart and the fundamental thing is, that branding is very simple when done right. Hard part beeing, just getting to that point.

Perhaps you’re hoping to grow an existing one.

Either way, you’ll be immersed in branding.

Branding is a verb.It’s a continuous, progressive process.

One that answers some very simple questions.

Who?

Who informs everything you’ll do.

Your perspective and intention.

Your look, feel, thoughts and behaviors.

Your vision of the future.

Who is your karma.

Because who you choose to focus on, will ultimately define who you become.

What?

What is your laser focus.

Your passion.

Your unique point of view and expertise.

It’s your daring, meaningful and believable value proposition.

The one that attracts your who.

What is your why.

It gets you up in the morning.

How?

How communicates your what, your passionate point of view.

How is the motivating language, stories and experiences you create and share.

How is your art and your voice.

It sets you apart from others who say they do what you do.

Successful branding is simple.

Who, what and how.

Yes, it requires nuance and subtlety.

But it’s simple nonetheless.

What’s hard is the focus, discipline and unwavering belief necessary to pull it off.

Brilliant!

His blog 

Beeing an innovative brand in a saturated market

What makes a brand tick, how do you define it,  what could it possible be worth to your organisation? You probably get as much answers to these questions as the consultants you ask. 

We need to turn to metrics and analysis. According to Brand Orientation Index, (A Swedish research project which purpose is to identify the link between brand orientation and profitability), states that a company who actively work with their brand is more profitable. That is one aspect. Another study shows that companies with a vision-lead culture significally outperforms those without . (A Harvard Business School global study by John Cotter). 

Now we are on to something, but is a brand and a vision enough?

Well you can obviously get ahead of some of your competition, but todays market place is competitive. 

The expression "business never sleeps" has been around for years. But the expression "brand never sleeps" is equally important. Brands today have to be innovative as well, branding is a daily struggle against competitors and the race for consumers is constantly ongoing, if you fail to deliver upon their expectations they will take their business elsewhere.

Still with me?

So how do you do it, well we could probably start with how not to do it - by being traditional in your approach.
The usual pitfalls:

Human resource takes care of business and employee culture.Marketing takes care of brand platform.

MGMT consultants make the business strategy.

All good initiatives but to many times handled and developed in separate silos with no coherence between. This have to be a top prioritisation for the organisation. Work across departments, align initiatives, engage people within the organisation they are and possibly could be your biggest asset.

But also try to have the outside inside perspective, how to people outside the organisation look upon your organisation. Is your business as clear to them as it might be for you? Metrics and valid KPI's are fundamental, constantly measure peoples relation towards your brand. How you approach them, how do they react to that and adjust if performance is poor.

Differentiate vs. category benefits
Tap into the start-up aspect of business, how do they stay relevant, do they have a masterplan from the start? Atleast they have a product or service that clearly differentiates them from the opposition.

Instead of talking category benefits, talk differentiation. 

Imagine this , if we where to launch a new brand, product, or service, would people support our cause if we were to put it out on Kickstarter? LEGO did it and turned crowd-sourcing into their next winning platform with LEGO Ideas. Everyone can contribute, builds relations even stronger  with the product and brings real brand equity back to LEGO.

Another example, If you have a bank and want to challenge the traditional banks out there chances are that you probably will not stand a chance in competing in the same category. You simply don't have the organisation nor the money to disrupt the category. But when if you neglect the traditional category. Take your traditional business but add the innovative force of e.g digital with the toolset of design processes or/and innovation you might tap into new fields that none of the old banks have the chance to compete with. If your're doing your strategy well you can find yourselves in a whole new segment that is on safe distance from the traditional competition but will close access to the consumers that probably are more eager to save their money in a new type of disruptive bank with promises of taking care of their business with no overhead fees, just making them use the bank in the way they want it the most. Top that off with a service offer based upon customer needs and deliver upon that, then you have the business of tomorrow. 

Screenshot from simple.com

Simple Bank - "We've re-imagined the banking basics."

Create customer experiences that surprise the visitor. Länsförsäkringar shop in Stockholm

Länsförsäkringar -Swedish insurance company - Increased competitiveness and reduced costs with has offices open 7 days a week serving clients with insurances and normal bank services. They have profoundly disrupted the Swedish bank scene by making insurance and bank services a shopping experience.

It would be odd not to mention Uber when discussing disruptive brands. Then american based company have caused the traditonal taxi organisations in Europe to strike, demonstrate and try to legislate against the new kid on the block. 

Customer loves it, the traditional taxi business hates it. The latter unwilling to change. Things are already in motion and by creating a brand that is more simple and more passionate about the customers Uber will forever change the business by doing everything else other then the expected.

Remember, it never stops, so keep on developing, questioning status quo and your brand will flourish. 

Sagmeister is sceptical...about storytelling

It came to my knowledge that one of my favourite designers Stefan Sagmeister recently made an outcry about storytelling and how it has become so misused. 

That sounded way to interesting for me not to investigate. Click the image above to view the original video. Movie by FITC Toronto Conference in April of 2014

So did he add something new and fresh insights or ideas to the debat? well not really. He stated that the term storyteller/storytelling now is used to widely and by people that are not storytellers. Neither did he conclude any other solutions to use instead. 

Everyone is entitled to ones opinion but I think he makes one fundamental mistake and that by trying to define storytelling as something exclusive. I interpret what he calls the ones doing it right as the only one entitled to express their stories/or expressions. It has never been and will never be exclusive to a specific category of people. It is an artform so old is almost impossible to track. People have told their stories since the beginning of mankind. More or less interesting of course. But still stories and that will never change.

"...no fuckhead you are not a storyteller."

If you put this into a corporate context it is a completely other issue. There is Stefan's standpoint more valid. Many brands tend to claim the storytelling aspect and force that into our normal lives. There we have the actual problem.

Brands are not storytellers by birth but they as well as anyone can achieve, innovate, develop something and align that into their DNA.

Brands that construct something that is not necessarily aligned with either their history, future, products or services or/and then applied with a authentic story will eventually fall and that is what I consider to be a false or non existing storytelling. You as well as me can probably refer to hundreds maybe thousands of ads, tv-commercials that tried to be/tell something that you did not associate with the product or service at all or just made the brand more delusional. 

So stay authentic to the core of your business or the truly amazing aspects of your service or product and you can tell almost which story you feel like.

Be authentic: Clear connection with you business ambitions and true to what you are really do. What is the purpose of what you want to express.
Be simple: Do not complicate things to much.
Be passionate: Make something that triggers stakeholders both outside and inside the your business. 

Story is not dead, just used in less flattering manners across all fields, but when used correctly is one of the most powerful expressions for your brand out there.

In conclusion, storytelling or story is non claimable, however one could criticise the context and the quality it is used in. And how it is constantly evolving.

Last but not least lets end with a Seth Godin smartness from the past.

Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.

Designing customer experiences requires considerations of all factors: time, place, environments, emotions, economics and social context.

The Future Brand Index?

Futurebrand recently released their top Future brands of the year. Link to study here

While it may be any big surprises it still is evident that it is still a valid benchmark of how and what the global competition is like among the biggest, baddest and strongest brands. How come Google is the new one? Here's my thoughts.

Google have over the years developed a multi-path approach, meaning that they are moving into new segments that drives new business and new engagement. With everything from search (its core) to innovations such as wearables: Google Glass and new endeavours like Google Design. All initiatives is with the motto: "Focus on the user and everyone else will follow".

That is the bottom-line of their success (now also visible in the ranking on this list)  

Above they have listed their own key findings. A couple of things stand out and is worth emphasising. Brand Awareness is not enough to drive strong perception, which basically means that just to be known is not a good enough factor any longer. A successful brand of today needs to be more than just recognised it has to be known to contribute and get the recognition from something.

Financial value has less impact on the result that one might think, which is good. That tells that the survey have given value (other than financial) a bigger impact for recognition. Might be initiatives in emerging markets, like P&G. 

Chinese brands are still missing out, I would say maybe for yet another 5 years. Then we will see a rather different list either by mergers or by buying in to the other companies. Another thing you could see through this is that these brands have yet to fulfil the needs of the consumers for quality and experience that would grant them a better spot on the list.

One last finding is that the list is dominated by tech companies and consumer related brands. One thing that I see is that the industrial sector is missing out. B2B seem to be somewhat weaker there. Expected but yet frustrating. The reason to that might be that they have a more traditional approach of how they approach their B2B customers. The B2B is shifting to a more B2C like approach when it comes to reaching to their customers and hopefully this will penetrate this list also in a few years time. One would not be left behind in the old fashioned way of branding themselves. 

Are there any brands that I miss on on the top positions?

Of course, I would like to see our swedish flagships IKEA and H&M up there. They have their financials right, they have strengthen their initiatives when it comes to responsibility (or social impact) in the last few years to become really good at this.

I also miss out NIKE, which I regard to be a top 5 competitor for this list. One my references there is this study, which amplifies my thoughts that NIKE probably is one of the most innovative and progressive brands out there. I would stress that they are equally as innovative as Google and even smarter in their processes and how to transcend into new business areas. 

So does this toplist have a huge impact? Well both yes and no.
I see this as a a adequate benchmark for organisations, big or small, to see how they aligned to the top. Hence a reminder that is still plenty of things to do to excel certain business areas, where results are less impressive. It is never to late to get influenced by best practice.

The race is always on, to be in the front you need to work hard each and every day. The initiative of putting brand work on top of your agenda will benefit both short and long-term and avoiding costly and huge strategy work every 5th year.

Brand in beta, work is never done.

Conversation is king!

Brands rarely and unfortunately do not pay enough attention towards its customers requests. However each and every time it happens it gives me great satisfaction. That is what constantly I keep telling my clients. Start conversations and act upon things that might emerge in the that process. If not instant it will eventually create engagement and long-term and storytelling values that will outsmart every tv-commercial to date.

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Image from Adweek

American brand J. Crew recently announced that they will put a discontinued swimsuit back on the shelves due to a request from one customer that longed for yet another great garment that she clearly could not let go of.

Read the full story here 

One small step of conversation, one giant leap for brands.