The fate of brands: disrupt, or be disrupted
Brand builders sometimes want to believe that brands exist “above the fray,” insulated in a comfy media zone high above the blood-and-guts battles of the marketplace.
Sorry. Brands don’t get a safe seat. The fate of brands lies in the same raw struggle for survival. Brands disrupt, or they’re disrupted. Big teeth help, but so do big brains and nimble feet.
Disruptor brands move customers forward
Brands disrupt other brands—and entire markets—when they’re agents of customer evolution. Disruptor brands move
customers forward, perhaps subtly at first, then by leaps and bounds. They may be daring or prudent, refined or vibrant, but through them customers reach new levels of being and doing. Once customers evolve to a new plane of action, they never turn back.
Disruptor brands are adaptation engines. They help customers adapt to more rewarding forms of living, leaving established brands behind. Highly evolved customers have diverse and demanding needs that can’t be served by moribund plodders. (Disruptor brands gladly help complacent brands adapt to bedrock.)
Value delivery systems, not fabricated fluff
Disruptor brands are value delivery systems, not fabricated fluff. They raise the customer bar, and the customer. They understand that the survival game doesn’t go to the brand that looms the largest. It goes to the brand that creates the fittest customers—who will carry the brand forward.
Gone are the days when the brand ideal was to crawl from the shallows, reach a sunny spot, and bask there forever. That leads to stagnant brands in backwater markets, an ecosystem on the brink.
Disruptor brands move in with muffled steps
Disruptor brands don’t announce themselves with fanfares. They move in with muffled steps. (If you’re an ad agency in the year 2000, the disruptor brand is an ugly online search thing called Google, adored by lowly interns.) Even as they set up shop, disruptor brands rarely make a fuss. They’re too busy on new platforms for new species.
Disruptor brands know that a company’s customers are its greatest competitive weapon. Grow customer, grow the brand, grow the business.
It’s as simple as evolution itself.
Photo: WikiMedia, David Monniaux
July 16th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
I really like your thougts, “Disruptor brands don’t announce themselves with fanfares.” and “Even as they set up shop, disruptor brands rarely make a fuss. They’re too busy on new platforms for new species.”
A long time ago I learned the same thing. That’s why so many “new” things catch the “old” by surprise. Once you’re out there the rest can play catch up on your existing product or service while you’re already ready to implement another and have two or three more quietly in the pipeline.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:20 am
Agreed. The key thing from a brand perspective is to keep working on that “new species” of customer that can change the market context. As I see it, brand building is a process of fiddling with customer DNA so the species keeps moving forward. By the time competitors catch up, they’re selling to a shell of the former customer, while you and the new customer have advanced to a higher level.
August 10th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
[...] Foster’s is certainly not alone in its new media direction. The move from TV to interactive media coincides with a reinvention of brands as tools for innovation and value creation. We will soon see “disruptor brands” that will accelerate this process, leaving only the laggards (and losers) bound to TV. [...]
September 29th, 2006 at 7:41 am
[...] Companies with containment brand agendas often resemble fiefdoms or plantations in how they think, and in how they operate. And this, of course, presents great opportunities for disruptor brands. [...]
October 25th, 2006 at 9:01 am
[...] I’ve discussed how “disruptor brands” can attack established brands in a previous post. My focus here is on mitigating low-end product disruption. [...]
February 10th, 2007 at 10:21 am
[...] You might call brands such as these, “disruptive brands,” but it really comes down to the brand model you employ. Brands that liberate their customers from boring, low-level experience may find they have a new market to themselves without trying to be “disruptive” at all. [...]
April 30th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
[...] For some background on disruptive brands see this previous post. [...]