Marketing

Avoid Having A Dull Brand

April 13th, 2010 by Matt Haff

Who should read it? Anyone that wants to build their brand and fully understand what your brand is and is not.

A few things I picked up from this book…

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. It’s not what you say it is. It’s what THEY say it is.

The foundation of brand is trust. Customers trust your brand when their experiences consistently meet or beat their expectations.

Modern society is information-rich and time-poor. The value of your brand grows in direct proportion to how quickly and easily customers can say yes to your offering.

There are five disciplines of branding that must be mastered.

1. Differentiate

• Our brains filter out irrelevant information, letting in only what’s different and useful.
• Differentiation has evolved from a focus on “what it is,” to “what it does,” to “how you’ll feel,” to “who you are.” While features, benefits, and price are still important to people, experiences and personal identity are even more important.

2. Collaborate

• By asking left-brainers and right-brainers to work as a team, you bridge the gab between logic and magic. With collaboration, one plus one equals eleven.
• Over time, specialists beat generalists. The winner is the brand that best fits a given space. The law of the jungle? Survival of the FITTINGEST.

3. Innovate

• It’s design, not strategy, that ignites passion in people. And the magic behind better design and better business is innovation.
• How do you know when an idea is innovative? When it scares the crap out of you.
• Expect innovation from people outside the company, or from people inside the company who THINK outside.
• Avoid the three most common barriers to web innovation: technophobia, turfismo, and featuritis.**

4. Validate

• The standard communication model is an antique. Transform your brand communication from a monologue to a dialogue by getting feedback.
• Measure your company’s brand expressions for distinctiveness, relevance, memorability, extendibility, and depth.

5. Cultivate

• A living brand is a never-ending play, and every person in the company is an actor. People see the play whenever they experience the brand, and they tell others.
• No decision should be made without asking, “Will it help or hurt the brand”
• The growing importance of the brand has a flip side: its growing vulnerability. A failed launch, a drop in quality, or a whiff of scandal can damage credibility.

** I will be doing another post highlighting this point.