Companies that find themselves in markets of parity and take strategic initiatives to break away from the pack will have a better chance of increasing their market share. Branding is a powerful tool that can create meaning and purpose for your product, giving you distinction and visibility in the most saturated industries. To help companies pursue brand distinction we offer a few suggestions.
Brand strategies are powerful, underutilized tools that are frequently misunderstood. Regardless of the size or leadership experience of the organization, branding is customarily stymied within marketing communications groups where advertising is sexy, PR is influential, design is uplifting, and social media is alluring.
Strategic branding can indefinitely influence, shape and enrich each phase of the product's life cycle. To fully capitalize on each phase requires a shift in mindset, away from managing the life of a brand and towards managing a brand for life. To effectively manage a brand for life requires knowing where you are in the life cycle, listening to your customers and aligning your brand with customer perceptions to encourage brand evangelism.
Before the–world-as-we-now-know it, brands were basically omnipotent. They stood on soapboxes and they preached to us - the customer. They told us how to make our teeth whiter, our laundry cleaner, and our lawn greener. Today, we not only expect that brands respect and involve the customer in the development process, we demand that brand interaction is entertaining, engaging, and relevant. Edutainment is here, and understanding this new medium is more important than ever.
With the entire world battling it out for consumer dollars, it comes at no surprise that creativity and innovations are increasing at a rapid rate. Understandably, this places increased pressure on businesses to act quickly for risk of being left behind, or worse, forgotten. The impulse for most people is to dive-in and start rapidly turning over stones for new ideas, to follow the shiny-new-object, or closely echo their competitors. Unfortunately, responding too quickly can be more disruptive and harmful than most people are aware. When you're exploring new innovative ideas, knowing the problem you’re trying to solve can force a natural process of elimination, in turn minimizing the overwhelming options, tempering creative impulses, and dismissing ideas that do not fit your purpose.
In 2010 and beyond, the travel industry has a unique opportunity to leverage the mobile device platform to build travel brands — from offering unique location-based goods and services, to optimizing Web sites for mobile viewing, to opening up the real-time dialogue between companies and consumers. Mobile devices can give travelers relevant, actionable information, and in return, customers can provide feedback that allows travel brands to be nimble, proactive, and customer-focused. The travel industry's successful implementation of a mobile strategy — based upon listening to customers and analyzing their needs — will empower brands to give their travelling customers more of what they want, converting customers into mobile brand evangelists.
With the launch of the Internet, the customer assumed the reins in the marketing relationship between people and brands. Access to information became ubiquitous, and customers were able to make buying decisions using perfect information. Online social networking has pushed control even further into the customer's court, with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the relationship between customers and brands at the forefront of many companies' marketing agendas. So important are the customer and his/her input to the brand, that co-creation is becoming increasingly the norm, rather than the exception. The brand winners are those that can respond nimbly and agilely, becoming more of what their customers want them to be.