Brands Create Customers

We don’t often think of brands as “incubators,” but incubating customers turns out to be a critical part of the brand mission. As a matter of fact, it’s strategically vital.

The logic of incubating customers

Let’s begin by observing, first and foremost, that brands are creative partnerships between companies and their customers. They’re a team effort, bottom-up as much as top-down. As such, brands have a vested interest in incubating as many energetic, diverse and free-thinking customers as possible. These are customers who can push the product envelope and the brand envelope into new forms, formats and markets. In so doing, they add value back to the brand from a dozen different directions, and help drive the business forward.

Strategic incubation

As warm and fuzzy as “incubation” might sound, brands incubate customers for reasons that are strictly strategic. The payback from incubating customers is competitive advantage. Your goal in incubating customers is twofold. You want customers who can:

1. Augment your R&D
2. Carry your business into new markets where competitors can’t follow.

The customers that your brand incubates today may drive your strategic platforms of tomorrow. By incubating customers your brand becomes a means of innovation, organically developing new contexts of product and service value.

The incubator model: an innovation platform

There’s a very specific brand vision behind the incubation process. That vision understands that customers are much more than mere “buyers” of products. They’re potential innovation partners who can pay bottom-line dividends far into the future. Thus, we employ an incubator model that’s much more than heat lamps and a comfy nest. In brands we incubate innovation, and we design the brand as an innovation platform for customers. (Brands belong in the innovation department far more than they belong in the marketing department.)

Brands as innovation tools

Brands are, of course, the premier tools to create (and incubate) customers. Brands enjoy this special status because they encompass creative, social, personal, emotional and moral dimensions. These are all potential innovation levers. This special scope grants brands a transcendent power to transform customer lives—in the right directions if the brand is morally and socially grounded.

A reference model: Y Combinator

One reference model for brand builders is that of startup incubators, the boutique companies who help fledgling entrepreneurs turn raw ideas into business. Treat your customers as brand entrepreneurs, because that’s what they want to be, and that’s you need them to be. A useful model to examine in this regard is the successful business incubator Y Combinator. Brands would do well to learn from their vision and focus.

Incubate today, innovate tomorrow

A brand incubates its customers by nurturing in them the proactive freedoms and abilities they will need to grow themselves, pushing the brand envelope in the process. Strong brands grow strong customers—strong enough to crack the incumbent shell and begin real living for themselves.

A fitness brand such as Nike, New Balance or Adidas can incubate customers by making intense fitness activities an elemental part of the brand process. A product manufacturer such as Weber incubates customers by including grilling recipes and tips with every grill, and offers additional podcasts, classes and community services as part of its “Weber Nation” program.

The incubation process

We can think of customer “incubation” is a critical first phase in the customer creation process. Incubation includes the initial steps that launch customers on the path toward becoming full-fledged partners in brand value creation. It encompasses that brand “golden moment” when company potential first meets customer potential. (Also known, swooningly, as “brand at first sight.)

In the incubation process we’re introducing newly-hatched customers to a life that’s a world apart from their dark, cramped and confined existence under incumbent brands, or under no brands at all.

Incubation as “revelation”

Customer incubation begins before long-term brand programs take hold. It’s really a form of “revelation,” where the brand reveals (stunning) new ways of being and doing to the customer. Typically, the first flush of incubation is metaphoric and symbolic. Walk into an Apple store and a new level of integrated digital experience is revealed, one that leaves Microsoft, Dell and others in the dust. Within a few steps the customer grasps that a complete digital lifestyle can be friendly, simple accessible and aesthetically fulfilling.

Incubation is not inculcation

Note, though, that incubation is not inculcation. Nor is it propaganda, doctrine, or persuasion. It is not the result of “messaging.” It’s a process of introducing a new world view centered on a higher regard for the customer, where the customer first grasps the brand as a platform for proactive growth.

You incubate customers by giving them the resources, tools and experiences to make the most of your brand as an innovative platform.

Elements of incubation: brand vision and brand leadership

Each brand will design for its customers a unique incubation path that leads into long-term brand programs. The goal of incubation, after all, is to get new customers off to a healthy start, chirping and ready to grow. In this process, two brand elements stand out: brand vision, and brand leadership.

Brand vision is the ability to see your company’s future through your customers’ eyes.

Brand leadership is the ability of the brand to lead the customer to a qualitatively better life. Brands lead by example.

A brand rich in these elements can incubate legions of customers who can, in turn, help incubate valuable new markets.

Photo: Farm Sanctuary — Flickr

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 8:13 am and is filed under Brand Innovation, Brand Strategy, Brand Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.