At its very core, every brand has a persona; a persona that is defined by its journey from the day of its inception. This journey is shaped by both internal strengths and external forces. Brands create storms, capture the imagination of the consumers, but at all points of time we can see some brands fading away into oblivion. All brands, both big and small, witness greatness and mediocrity. Even when we look at the story of brands like Sony, Starbucks or Apple, we see that for a variety of reasons, while remaining visible, they have had stretches of mediocrity. Good and strong brands always come back stronger than ever and captivate their audience. A study of brand journeys would help us understand what makes a brand capture the oft quoted mindshare.
In today’s marketplace, brand journeys take on an even bigger meaning as organisations connect with their audience through an ever increasing and wide range of activities and initiatives. The rise of social media and the transparent flow of information have thrown up new opportunities and challenges. Brands are re-evaluating their brand persona and are constantly adapting to the changing landscape of consumer preferences. This constant shift makes brand journeys more challenging than ever, seeking more investment in both time and value. Is it then worth taking this arduous journey? How much of a difference do brands make in a company’s fortune? The answer to the first is an obvious yes, and as an answer to the second, have a look at the adjacent infographic for brand values. Some brands have acquired brand values that are more than 50% of their market capitalization and at times more than their annual revenues.
In the early 20th century, John Stuart, Chairman of Quaker, said, “If this business were split up, I would give you the land and bricks and mortar, and I would take the brands and trademarks, and I would fare better than you.” As the century progressed and products became commoditised, more and more investments were poured into intangibles. Organisations realised that intangibles could create tangible value for the shareholder. This was a paradigm shift in organizational thinking, turning marketing from a cost function to a profit centre that added significantly to market capitalization. Facebook, industry experts mention, could well be worth 37 times more than what they are currently trading at, Google 19 times and Apple 12 times more. What is common to these brands is that not only are they great at marketing and enjoying top of the mind recall, they have turned themselves into great marketing tools for others.
With marketing being in focus across organisations, marketers face increased fiscal responsibility; and that in turn means more focus on fine-tuning a brand’s presence and its promise. This would mean a relook at the brand journey to coincide with the customer’s decision journey. What would it take to create a great brand? A brand that is capable of taking on the existing giants, a brand that can rival Goliaths like Google, Apple, Pepsi and other such brands? To create such a brand, we must first ask ourselves, who we are? And what do we do? Once we find the answers to these two questions, however cliched they might sound, we could ask ourselves copybook – yet extremely relevant – questions: what is our market, who are our competitors and most importantly, who are our customers? With these answers in hand, we move on and pose the question, what is it that we are offering? Is it marketable? Is it better than what our competitors are selling? Are we clear about how we are going to sell it? What makes us special? What is it in our offering that will attract the consumer to us? Is there a gap in the market that we can fulfill? Do we want a share of the pie, or would it be more profitable to increase the size of the market by introducing a product or product variant?
Once we have a clear picture of who we are, we must get to know who our customers are. Defining the target segment is an absolute must; a small mistake here could turn out to be very expensive in the long run. With the target segment defined, the brand guardian needs to dig deep into the consumer decision journey. This would involve understanding what these consumers want and who the influencers in this decision journey are. The goal of our brand communication should be to help our consumers to distinguish us in terms of values, uniqueness, personality and style. Their visualisation of us must be of our creation or at least must be influenced by us. By doing the above, we should have created a brand persona, a persona that our consumers can connect to. This persona when coupled with the right communication and media vehicle will allow us to interact with our consumers.
The rise of social media has made the arduous task of creating a great brand even more challenging. Trends are harder to set and every mistake is immortal. The unpredictable nature of this type of media has even the best marketers stumped. The examples of social media failures are many. In a shining example of a brand being unaware of social media’s unpredictability, quick service giant McDonald’s used the hashtag #McDStories to promote video content of their suppliers talking about McDonald’s ingredients. Unfortunately for McDonald’s, the campaign was hijacked by consumers complaining about the company’s service and the quality of the food. And when we spoke of social media mistakes being immortal, we are not kidding – a quick Twitter search shows that people are still using the hashtag to attack McDonald’s. But this surely does not mean that brands can afford to shun social media platforms. The time honoured method of damage control through press releases is obsolete. In these dynamic times, it becomes important to be proactive, and social media is a great tool to do just that.
A recent Nielsen survey of 28,000 consumers with internet access highlighted some very interesting trends. The most striking was the global impact on consumer purchase decisions because of social media websites/online reviews. Every major product category – from automobiles to toys, from entertainment to hospitality – was impacted, with the results being the highest in the Asia-Pacific region, but still substantial across Latin America, Europe and Middle-east Africa. Social media is slowly but surely changing the brandscape in ways that we have never seen before. Communicating with the consumer, whether present or prospective, has taken on a whole new shape. Even though this shape tends to be nebulous and unpredictable, it is a great platform for marketers to create the connect that they want with their consumers. We have just seen the tip of the iceberg – a fascinating time and an array of new media vehicles await the brave new generation of brand guardians. This evolution in the way people make purchase decisions will change brands as we know them today, beyond all recognition.
