A more effective brand strategy: Matter more to people
Meaningful Brands
I believe one of the significant differences between the my view of branding, and other branding techniques, is that my thinking is more holistic in its approach. I embrace a branding approach that goes beyond being a process that addresses only the customer, which typically is only about driving identity elements and advertising campaigns, and which stops once the “brand deck” is completed.
Don’t only think of “customers”
There’s no doubt that customers are a vital audience for any brand. After all, if no one buys the brand, there is no brand.
But it is also true that brands (and the corporations, products and services they represent) don’t just appear out of thin air.
I can’t say this enough times: it takes many people, across many disciplines, to imagine, engineer, build, manage, distribute, market, advertise and support a product or service. It also takes people to invest in the business, so all these people can do their work. It also takes journalists and bloggers to add to the positive aura of the product or service. In some cases, it also takes the officials and citizens of communities to let you open up operations on the Main Street, or in their backyards.
Consider all the people that make your brand viable
I think of all these people as “the people vital to your success”. Without them, independently and interdependently, your brand simply won’t function. These various brand constituents all have different needs, values, hopes and aspirations. Their relationship to your brand will have a specific and unique basis (e.g. buyer, employee, investor, etc.) based on the nature of their interest (solve a problem, pay the bills, build portfolio, etc.) and their level of interaction with your brand (advertising, workplace environment, financial/CSR reports, etc.).
Yet for all their differences in what they need — and what they experience — every one of them needs to be constantly nudged toward greater levels of appreciation, respect and trust for your brand. They need to feel that its worthwhile for them to help your brand succeed. They need to feel your brand cares about what they care about.
I’ve found that traditional branding approaches can readily do this for customers, but they can’t easily (and credibly) extend their thinking across the full spectrum of people vital to your brand’s success.
An ‘all-inclusive’ approach to branding can. This is a smarter process that starts by eliminating the differences between these “segments”, and acknowledging that everyone we’re addressing is a human being.
To this, I bring two documented truths about humans:
1. We have an innate drive for security
Going way back, as hunter/gatherers this meant doing what we needed to do to feel we were in the “right place” (that is, a place where bad weather, marauding strangers and hungry animals couldn’t find us). Fast forward to today, and this drive for security extrapolates to mean, among other things, doing what we need to feel we are in the “right place” (that is, a place where we feel secure in a world jam-packed with often conflicting, and sometimes troubling, information, messages and choices to make).
In today’s world, brands that address these basic human needs to find the “right place”, will adopt a meaningful intent that creates a higher level connection point between the brand and (all) the people vital to its success. This can be described as a purpose beyond profit; it strives to tap deep into the human psyche by showing people a “right place” for them. A place from which they can navigate the world with more security, because they feel connected, along with the brand, to something bigger.
2. Our decisions are led by our emotions
Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience have documented what many have always know: our conscious rational thinking is at the mercy of our unconscious emotional state.
I believe a greatly unexplored opportunity is the deliberate and conscious use of emotions in brand communications and brand behavior (e.g. interactions between people and the brand). Emotive branding make moments of truth resonate with brand-specific emotions, so that messages, gestures, exchanges, approaches and conversations throughout the business behind the brand lead to more heartfelt decisions (to buy, to join, to collaborate, to innovate, etc., etc.).
Go beyond strategy to proactive transformation
Don’t stop at “brand strategy”. Be sure you also create the tools to proactively transform the behavior across your brand.
Find a way to deconstruct products, policies and procedures and to reconstruct them so they better embrace your brand’s purpose and evokes its specific emotions. Show your internal team and external vendors how to transform your brand’s communications by tweaking its look and feel, story and voice, functionality and external references. Take strategy out of the PDF and into the experience your brand creates.
As your brand proactively moves from its present position, to a far more emotionally meaningful position through enhanced communications and actions, people will start to rethink your brand. They will have new reasons to be drawn toward it. They will discover ways in which they can create new meaning in their lives, as your brand shares its meaningful intent.
New behavior leads to better results
As this happens, you will notice changes in the way all the people vital to your success think, feel and act toward your brand. You’ll see how a stronger, more purposeful and gratified workplace, coupled with a more emotionally meaningful presence in the marketplace, accelerates your brand’s growth, enhances your brand’s differentiation and makes your brand more respected, admired and loved.
Adds depth and purpose to what your business does today. Elevates your brand story in a way that people — even if consciously they’re not looking for it — find compelling and desirable.
I believe that in a world of overwhelming choice and intense competition, brands that offer people an emotionally comforting route to the security of “knowing I’m in the right place”, will prevail.
