Few things are more commercially powerful than your customers seeing themselves in your brand, connecting with your product value, at scale, across the marketplace.
Concepts, like brand and community, are big aspirational ideas with tangible applications. Not every company will build a community of substance, but success without brand connection with your customers, outside of a pure commodity play, just doesn’t happen.
Brands, at their core, are rapt with anomalies.
We design them with specific intent but in reality, they exist solely in the emotions and beliefs of our customers. We craft each component, but the results are unpredictable at best, ineffable even. We build them with excruciating attention to detail, yet their power and control rests solely in our customers’ perceptions.
And of all the things we do as marketers, nothing pays back dividends more than a brand that connects with passion and purpose. You can’t hold a brand in your hand but you can measure its value in dollars.
From a market perspective, a brand is simply your customer’s and the market’s view of your company value translated into their own terms that drives their purchasing behavior.
It’s that simple to define. And truly difficult to place in motion.
Whether you are Lululemon selling joy wrapped in yoga gear, Nordstrom’s selling customer service as shoes, or Blizzard skis selling attitude and over the top performance with their new Bonafide—It’s brand that drives who they are in their customer’s eyes.
As entrepreneurs, we start from nothing and will our brands into being. Graying brands are dusted off as markets and products change. And we leverage brand value into new products and broader markets.
Brands are mostly built by intent, and however different the segment and state of the company, I always comes back to these four simple elements to build from.
-What is your company about? It’s core value?
Not just today, but over time.
Are you selling sneakers, sports footwear that speaks to excellence on the court or performance engineering? Waterproof hiking boots, the wonder of the great outdoors or wildlife preservation? A business tool for predicting and managing growth or power of the science and math to add weight to business decisions?
This is non trivial to really get clear. It’s a powerful rudder for business and communications decisions once you discover it.
-What’s the connection between what you believe and what you sell?
Some companies sell their dream and wear their core beliefs on their sleeves. The artisanal movement is all about this. One to one connection between product and value.
Or are you like General Electric, donating money to ‘causes’ to elevate your humanity in your customer’s minds? Or a neighborhood business giving part of your profit to support your local schools giving back where you earn?
Digging in and really understanding who you are, and how you sell and attract customers, is key to playing out how true your brand is and how it plays into your model.
-What’s your unique vernacular?
How we are heard is equal to what is said. A core marketing tenet.
Are you about information, crisp and clean? Referential and objective, or conversational, messy and communal? Are you about delight in a phrase that informs, or a SKU number to purchase with the utmost efficiency?
There’s no one right answer and the brands that rise from nowhere to become part of the mass market’s world are invariably inventing a new voice along with new value.
–Is what you look like who you are?
Do you really think that how you look is who you are? Or are you a platform to surface the perceptions of your customers? Or are they one and the same for you?
Brand, as a term, came from branding livestock to create ownership stamps. I’m a believer that how you dress is part of who you are. I’m not a believer that logo and presentation as marketing is key. It colors more than it defines.
Whether you are a bakery down the street, a global platform for gathering opinions, a neighborhood brewery or a social network. Whether you sell to customers directly or sell to partners who touch the customer through their own brand, these are the questions to ask yourself. These are the conversations I have with clients every week.
It’s that amazingly not simple, like all things marketing.
We all start out believing we are Apple. The best example of a mass market brand that is loved and revered.
All brands are not created equally of course. Some by definition are highly charged, like Apple, Armani, Porsche or your local artisan. Some are functional, yet still essential, like QuickBooks or Asana. And some we use but honestly dislike and will replace as soon as there is an alternative, like Time Warner Cable or Verizon Wireless.
We start from the same place, from the same four questions and end up where the market, your skills and luck takes you.
Brands are not market veneers nor window dressing or a makeover.
They are the molecular element that is inclusive of everything from your product capabilities, your pricing, to your company attitude. It’s what compels people to buy your product rather than someone else’s. Pay a bit more to support you and most important, feel like you are making the product just for them. And feel good about it buying it and making it their own. Then sharing that decision and contentment with others.
That’s where brand value becomes market magic.
