Brands: kaizen for customers
Brands and kaizen aren’t normally tied together in discussions of business practice, but they should be. The two are inextricably linked. Brands are the extension of kaizen into the realm of customers.
Continuous improvement
Kaizen is the Japanese manufacturing practice of “continuous improvement” or “change for the better.” It’s a disciplined, systematic approach that analyzes every step of the manufacturing process in order to improve quality, cut costs and reduce waste. (Kai = “change;” zen = “good.”)
Kaizen first grabbed the headlines back in the 1980’s because it explained, at least in part, why Japanese car makers were consistently turning out higher-quality vehicles than the iconic auto giants in Detroit. Toyota was the champion of kaizen, and its top-tier ranking today testifies to the worth of the practice.
Kaizen has now become a mainstream concept. It can even be applied to online businesses, where focused, incremental improvements to a sales or operational website can yield dramatic near-term benefits in customer experience, as economist Hal Varian recently noted. (If that NYT link is unavailable, a related summary is here.)
Brands as an extension of kaizen
I see a strong kinship between brands and kaizen. So much so, in fact, that I’d argue that brands extend kaizen into the world of customers. What kaizen is to products, brands are to customers. Both are value-driven practices that systematically, and relentlessly, keep raising the quality bar at no sacrifice to profits. Kaizen helps create better products; brands help create better customers.
Of course, when I talk about brands I don’t mean the happy-face facades that pass for brands in many markets. I mean brands that intend to make a difference in customer lives. These are brands that focus on delivering value that customers can use, in contexts that free customers from the constraints of conventional market offerings.
Brand builders and kaizen
Brand builders can employ kaizen processes in three areas:
- Improving brand platforms and programs
- Improving products based on customer use
- Improving (growing) customers themselves
Improving brand platforms and programs: In a world of multi-threaded brands and digital brand platforms, a brand builder can employ kaizen-like analyses, explorations, pilot projects and frequent trials and iterations to wring every last bit of customer value and customer growth from digital brand interfaces and interactions.
Improving products: Brand builders can use digital brand platforms and programs to initiate continuous improvement in products based on customer use, feedback and customer innovation. Brand communities and value networks play an important role.
Improving customers themselves: A key goal of brand builders is to grow the customers who will grow the business. Brand builders can use kaizen approaches to foster continuous improvement in customers themselves, making them better informed, wiser, more proactive and more demanding. This creates customers for improved products in the pipeline, while putting competitors at a greater disadvantage.
