I recently got my hands on a copy of Salesforce’s latest State of the Connected Customer report, which captures customers’ thoughts from midway through 2020 and, ultimately, the pandemic and other societal crises during the year. At this point, the key findings are probably not a surprise to read, but the details and stats behind them are interesting, nonetheless.
It’s trendy for big companies to devolve authority to operating units, and the jury is still out on whether or not making them compete as collections of smaller independent ones makes any sense (the management consultants who came up with the plans will be long gone before there’s a verdict).
But it’s already clear that giving marketing communicators responsibility for overarching corporate communications is dead on arrival.
When people ask me to define “brand,” I say, “A brand is what you do and how you do it.” This might not be the most common definition of what a brand is, but the one I use because it’s shorthand for the business school definition of a brand: a product or service’s value that is delivered to its customers, and the way of doing business that is the basis of a company’s relationships with stakeholders. This definition of a brand also captures the action orientation to brand-building – and it implies the tight connection between brand and business.
Are you building your brand the way great brands do? Today I’m introducing a series of 10 one-minute videos, each covering a question that you can use to assess whether or not you are getting the full value out of your brand. Below is the first question, which is about the gap between your brand promise and what you actually deliver. For the next 9 days, I will release another video with another question. In a total of just 10 minutes, you will get 10 questions to assess your brand.
Here’s a hypothesis: There are essentially nine different types of brands and you can jumpstart the development of your brand strategy by identifying the one that’s right for you.
What is Brand Essence? At the core of your brand strategy is your Brand Essence — your Brand Essence is what you stand for. Brand Essence is often thought of as your brand DNA, the essential value of your brand, or the ultimate role your brand plays in the world. It’s a critical element of your strategic brand platform because if you want your customers to be clear about what your brand stands for, you must first be.
Brand differentiation is more important now than ever before. You can’t just be better than your competitors — you must be different. Here are five of my resources, all in one handy spot, to help you understand the new challenges and requirements to differentiate and how to achieve greater brand differentiation.
This blog reflects the personal opinions of individual contributors and does not represent the views of Futurelab, Futurelab's clients, or the contributors' respective employers or clients.
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