Brands Create Customers

Buying a car is a spiritual decision. There is some logic and lots of feel. You and that vehicle are going to be a prime package of kinetic energy busting down unknown byways, so it pays to go soul to soul before you take the plunge.

At one time, to check out new cars you’d go to a dealer, ignore the hovering salesperson, and see for yourself. It was OK, but the dealer was interested only in the sale, not in you, and probably not even in the car. You and the car could be in the same room, but the car wasn’t allowed to say much.

It was like piping Shakespeare through a straw.

Car shows were an alternative. Car shows had car people. You could learn something about the car. And car shows had concept cars, which soulfully breathed the future. Of course, there might be only one or two car shows in your area per year–or none at all.

How could you shorten that product distance between the car and you? You were on the same wavelength, but on different waves.

There are now ways that car makers can chop that product distance. Lexus is bringing their car shows to you. Concept cars, too.

It’s a new form of car talk. As a brand, Lexus is saying: “We’re an expression of you.”

It’s a small step, but it helps. The more immediate the product, the stronger the brand. It’s almost as useful as online car forums, where people and cars speak the same language.

Jeff Jarvis has some interesting thoughts on the relationship between blogs and brands, using the media business as an example. That business was once characterized by a limited number of players whose dominant brands defined what was available at the corner magazine stand. In effect, those brands were publishing. They prospered within a limited brand space.

Internet innovations and network economies are now changing that traditional media model. In particular, blogs and their online brethren have mushroomed the world of publishing. The once sheltered brands at the corner magazine stand are now exposed to the elements. The new magazine stand is your mouse, controlled by you. Through the internet, its shelves are infinite. As Jeff says, there is now no scarcity of brand space. Brand opportunities exist all across this “distributed-to-the-edge internet,” with many of these opportunities being seized by new players, working from the bottom up.

Well, what’s true for brands in media markets is also true in other markets, with an even wider horizon. Blogs are one of the factors that are irreversibly transforming the once-limited “brand space” of the shelf or the channel into wide open spaces, where new rules apply. Brand value is being generated at the edge, by new players, and by customers. This can be a superior form of value to that promulgated by companies using conventional brand practices.

Companies shackled with legacy brands will view blogs as threats, and will react accordingly. Forward-facing companies will make the most of new opportunities. Virgin brand territories await.

As we say elsewhere, “Brands of the future will not be top-down monoliths. They will be a thousand agile initiatives, loosely coupled, rich in customer texture, often sparked by customers themselves.”

We’ll write more on this in coming weeks. For now, here’s a rough listing of how blogs can help brands create customers:

1. Break down barriers between company and customers
2. Engage customers in fine-grained conversations
3. Identify needs of lead customers and others
4. Define new brand spaces
5. Tap into customer initiative and intelligence
6. Create new forms of product value/brand value
7. Open new brand innovation avenues
8. Spark new market initiatives
9. Facilitate pilot programs and prototypes
10. Form customer bonds that competitors can’t match
11. Express your passion for what you do
12. Build trust through openness
13. Focus employees on customer results
14. Extend brand building to the market edge
15. Lead by example

This site is a treasure trove of corporate design guides, guidelines and policies.

It’s a useful resource for those whose job it is to manage a company’s visual identity, signs and symbols.

Of course, a company’s performance identity is a different matter. That will largely be determined by its brand programs.

Joe Wilcox compares Microsoft and Apple on their different approaches to managing expectations, and brand experience.

Because brands play a critical role in creating customer value, they are often deeply involved in a company’s innovation process. (Ideally, they lead it.) But what is “innovation?” How does one separate feature creep and superficial enhancements from the real deal? At some point you have to define innovation so you can focus your efforts.

I define innovation as follows:

“Innovation is what you do for the customer, not what you do to your product.”

From a brand perspective, you’re looking for innovations that can advance the customer. New product “features” that replicate the old product mindset often miss the mark.

The brand team should be plugged in to the vast array of innovation that takes place across a company: process innovation, channel innovation, service innovation, etc. Every so often you can do an innovation roll-up that takes the best of these and translates them into added customer value. That’s the context where companies (and brands) can make a difference.

Over at Sandhill.com Geoffrey Moore dissects ten “innovation myths,” and then makes solid business sense of what remains on the bone.

Read his essay if you’re in brands. Innovation is what you do.

What should the brand team be doing? What’s their mission? Their charter?

The brand team plays a pivotal role in how your business creates value for customers. To clarify the team’s mission, you want a mission statement that’s brief, results-oriented and forward-focused. More often than not, the brand team is pushing the edge. They’re defining your tomorrows, not perpetuating your past. Their charter needs to give them working room, and breathing room.

Here’s how I see it:

Marching orders for the brand team:
Open eyes, open minds, open markets. Create value. Create customers.

That’s it. Short and sweet.

Is it like most conventional brand team mission statements? Nope. Not at all.

It’s aim is to lead the business through brands. That’s where the brand team belongs.

In what appears to be another instance of brands playing catch-up to technology, Microsoft watchers and MS employees are pointing to potential customer confusion between the new Windows Live brand (now in beta) and Microsoft’s established MSN brand. The two online brands overlap in many areas, and address the same set of customers.

At present, it’s not clear how the two brands will co-exist, or if the older MSN brand will be retired. Windows Live is the more dynamic platform (AJAX, software as a service), and represents Microsoft’s online business future. MSN is the brand that millions of Microsoft customers have used for an array of online programs (Hotmail, Messenger, etc.) and for online content (automotive, sports, financial).

Hotmail, Messenger and other MSN programs are being revamped and re-branded as part of Windows Live.

Other reports say Microsoft may re-brand MSN as a content-driven “Microsoft Media Network.” This would add another brand and a draw a line between online content and services. However, much of the Live platform tends to blur such distinctions through its strong focus on access and feeds.

Microsoft’s challenge is to migrate customers to a new brand context that empowers customer choice and action. For Microsoft, the question is whether the brand will add real customer value, or be a last-minute kludge that leaves customers in the air.

Potential brand confusion is a critical issue for Microsoft. The company is competing head-to-head with Yahoo, AOL and Google in a high-stakes battle for market leadership. This is a battle of brands as much as it is a battle of technologies. If you come to market without a fully-baked brand strategy (architecture, platforms, programs and identities), and without a clear idea of the customer value you plan to deliver, you run the risk of confusing customers and the market. You also leave openings for competitors.

Here’s a rule worth remembering: In brands, there is no beta.