Strong brands lead the customer: Honda
Honda (a very strong brand) provides an excellent example of one of my favorite brand maxims: Strong brands lead the customer; weak brands chase the dollar.
Honda’s brand leadership
Honda’s brand leadership is the subject of a recent New York Times article, Honda stays true to efficient driving.
During the glory days of big pickups and sport utility vehicles, one automaker steadfastly refused to join the party.
Despite the huge profits that its competitors were minting by making larger vehicles, Honda Motor never veered from its mission of building fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly cars like its Accord sedan.
“I remember being at the Tokyo Motor Show in the mid-1990s and talking about the environment,” said Ben Knight, head of engineering at Honda’s North American division. “The reaction was there’s no return on that.”
But in today’s fuel-conscious automotive market, Honda is reaping the rewards for its commitment.
No major automaker in America is doing better than Honda, whose sales are up 3 percent for the first seven months of this year in a market that has fallen 11 percent. …
Strong brands have a vision of how the world is evolving, and what customers need (and will need) to keep pace. And strong brands lead by example.
Behind every brand is a philosophy of value
We can also observe that behind every brand is a philosophy of value. This may be implicit, or highly articulated, or simply latent, in need of elucidation. But it’s there.
“Honda is a philosophy-driven company,” said Tetsuo Iwamura, president of Honda North America. “Even when the large S.U.V.’s and trucks were big sellers, they did not fit with our philosophy.”
At its heart, a brand philosophy is a customer philosophy. The brand is the enabler.
The value of brand leadership
Brand leadership is the ability of a brand to lead customers to a qualitatively better life. It means that a brand aims to do what’s right for customers. Over time, brand leadership builds brand trust—a critical foundation for market leadership.
Brand leadership and brand vision
A key element of brand leadership is brand vision: the ability to see your company’s future through your customer’s eyes. This sets in motion a long-term strategy for the brand—case in point: Honda.
Brand leadership and brand identity
A brand that leads builds its identity through its actions, as Honda has done, and is doing. The result is an enduring identity that can itself become a customer platform for wider social and environmental initiatives. When brand context becomes social context, the identity has arrived.