Brand Communication: When Uncommon patterns Give You One Step Ahead

To innovate, Uber relied on its consumer network, while reinventing the rules of the game that governed the passenger transportation industry. A strategy that brands must follow to boost their audience.

We usually compare digital communication to a highly strategic chess game. From the beginning of the campaign, a brand must prepare its strategy and know in which media it can rely on. During the campaign, the brand must reanalyze the situation in order to achieve the expected result, as it’s unusual that the path is linear. Chess, like all strategic games, is extremely regulated. There are few stricter rules like chess one’s.

Ultra-regulated, in theory it’s impossible to get out of the imposed framework and impossible to imagine new rules to win by other means. The best players are completely different thanks to their ability to anticipate and calculate many moves in advance. They anticipate movements. Thus, they constantly manage to model the situation in their brain in 3D, the chessboard becomes almost virtual among these geniuses. Everyone would like to project themselves into their brain to see what happens there.

The rules of Uber

When Uber set up its strategy, it faced the world of taxis. The rules of the game were immutable for years. This profession was ultra-regulated on paper. Any external observer would have told them that they had no chance of winning, no chance of creating a business to transport with new humans rules. However, now we know what happened. Instead of meeting this market head-on, using the same rules as taxis, they invented a new way of gaming outside of the regulations.

New game or new rules?

Imagine that one day you will have the opportunity to play a chess game against Garry Kasparov in a tournament. Your chances of vanquishing him? Absolutely nil … Worse, as for any amateur of this game, the probability of resisting more than a few moves would be absolutely non-existent! Unless if you invent new game rules and finally play another game…

It was in 1997 that Garry Kasparov lost to “Deeper Blue”. That day was another form of play that was played out. The strike force of a computer with its billions of connections was stronger than the world chess champion.

Imagine now that in this tournament you can turn into “Deeper Blue”, which network could help you? A public that is on your side could constitute this immense network.

By using this collective force, it might be possible to win. Of course, this rule of thumb does not exist, it’s another game.

Imagine now that this audience can help you in another way, every time Garry Kasparov takes a pawn, a person from the public could replace him. The game would have completely changed, its rules would be quite different.

In both cases, the failures would no longer be truly failures. Regarding Uber, they didn’t face the taxis head-on, they didn’t try to change the rules of their competitors. They left them in their situation, with their constraints. Of course, chess will never evolve in this way, that would be of no interest. However, chess rules have already changed when humans started dealing with computers.

Bet on the power of impact of consumers

They have to deal with an increasingly infinite memory that is constantly reorganized itself to beat them. Playing a chess game against a computer is not the same game as against a person. Beyond that, it should also be remembered that Garry Kasparov said: “One does not succeed by sticking to convention.”

Thus, the uberization of digital communication requires this ability to combine the striking power of consumers to spread information. Any digital brand strategy must have sufficiently strong foundations that will allow maximum virality and highlight its strengths.

Each brand needs to map its best points of relay, its best crossroads in networks, its best ambassadors, those who will make the difference in this ultra-competitive world. More and more, uncommon patterns will make a difference and it is often by inventing new rules of the game that it will be possible to take a considerable advance.

Alban Jarry

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Translation with Sophie Perrin