Infamous brand quotes: Part III
Confession: I do it for the olives. But, you knew that all along.
Herewith is Part III of my infamous brand quotes. As in Part I and Part II, my goal is to separate value-based brands from brands cast as illusions, or brands reduced to stylized sales stimulants. Today many brands are often their own worst enemies, desperately creating make-believe when they should be creating customers. (Hey, is that a quote?)
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In marketing, customers are the target. In brands, customers are the core.
The traditional marketing approach tends to separate the “producer” from the “buyer,” as if they’re separate species, with the producer usually fishing for customers using the brand as a lure. In contrast, the brand approach is holistic, with makers and customers joined in a common core. The brand model is a model of value co-creation, instead of a model of selling. Rather than “target” customers, brands co-create value with them to grow the common core. When customers buy the product they “buy themselves” through the brand.
Within the common core brands should be dynamic, vibrant and visceral. A model for this common core was developed eons ago. Who might have the brand advantage now?
A brand should be larger than life—but never larger than its customers.
Mediocre brands play it safe and copy one another, using the same copy machine. A brand that’s larger than life breaks the bounds of convention—and scraps the machine. It breathes new life into its customers, in a new context that disrupts the old. It takes its customers with it—as equals—so they can fuel one another on their shared brand journey.
A brand that’s larger than life makes contributions to culture. It needs headroom for itself—and its customers—to grow. Smaller brands make contributions to spreadsheets.
“Brand awareness” refers to the brand, not to the customer
The conventional definition of “brand awareness” is that it’s the degree to which people know about a brand and what the brand stands for. However, “brand awareness” has a far deeper meaning for the brand itself. We can think of brand awareness as the brand’s own awareness of its value potential: how the brand can make a difference and lead its customers to a richer life.
A brand is “aware” when it sees the future through its customer’s eyes. The first step to brand awareness is to ask the primordial brand question: “What is holding our customers back?”
When brands are in it for the money, customers will be in it for the price.
Every brand defines the terms of its engagement. When a brand exists solely as a stylized sales stimulant, created to monetize a product at a maximum price, customers are not part of the brand. The brand positions them as tools.
Customers may respond by de-monetizing the brand. They accept the brand for what it is—a gaudy act on a commodity stage—and shop on price. Instead of creating customers, the brand has created deal-seekers—the worst outcome possible.
To dethrone a brand icon, create an iconoclastic customer
When competing against a brand icon, don’t try to out-icon the icon. Your best bet is to dethrone the icon by creating a thoroughly iconoclastic customer, one whose new world excludes the old. You radically change the brand topography by changing the entire context of the customer—and the category. This is precisely how iPod/iTunes crushed CD’s and reinvented the music industry.
See here.
Luxury stores sell brand icons. Their factory stores sell brand stereotypes.
Today’s “luxury brands” come in two flavors: the icon, and the stereotype.
If you visit an “authentic” luxury shop in an upscale shopping area, telling your driver to cool it for a few hours, you can experience the brand as it was intended. On the other hand, if you drive 50 miles to the “factory” version of the same brand in an outlet mall, you will experience something completely different. The luxury brand has been reduced to a stereotype–typically the logo writ large, and writ everywhere.
The luxury stereotype flatters the bottom line, but never the brand. It transforms the brand into a “deal.” That’s the last place a brand wants to be.
Photo: Hysterical Bertha — Flickr
