How does the Apple brand create so much value? In the last decade Apple has introduced an unparalleled stream of breakthrough products, re-defined how people engage the world with digital devices, delighted millions of new customers, built profitable new platforms and ecosystems, disrupted lethargic industries and created rich new markets. With 200 million credit card accounts in iTunes and a market cap north of $300 billion, the Apple brand must be doing something right.

The simple secret of Apple’s brand strategy

As I see it there’s a simple secret behind Apple’s astonishing success in the last ten years. It’s an Apple brand that’s operational, where core brand principles shape the Apple culture and drive the business. Apple is a classic example of the brand goes in before the brand goes on. At Apple, the brand is a systematic and integrated method to create value. It’s a method, not a message. While Apple’s cutting-edge aesthetics, exemplary taste and showstopper keynotes often draw the media spotlight, it’s Apple’s operating brand at work in Cupertino that makes Apple’s strategic success possible.

Two principles focus Apple’s operational brand strategy

From press accounts and public documents we can discern two brand principles that shape and focus Apple’s operational brand strategy. There may be more, to be sure, but these two stand out to me. They steer the Apple brand toward market-leading products and superior customer experiences.

I’ve gleaned these brand principles from comments by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. They caught my attention because they make profound statements about the Apple brand mission and brand approach.

First, Tim Cook on the Apple brand mission:

We believe that we’re on the face of the earth to make great products . . .  in markets where we can make a significant contribution.

Second, Steve Jobs on the Apple brand approach:

We put ourselves in the customer’s shoes and ask: ‘What do we want? . . . “

Let’s now explore the brand implications of these principles.

Tim Cook on the Apple brand mission

We believe that we’re on the face of the earth to make great products . . .  in markets where we can make a significant contribution.

I’ve adapted this principle from Tim Cook’s remarks in a 2009 conference call on Apple earnings. (It is two phrases made into one principle.) From a brand strategy perspective, Cook does three things in this principle.

A singular, elemental mission

First, with “We’re on the face of the earth to make great products“ Cook makes great products the singular mission of Apple and its employees, with pursuit of greatness an elemental (face-of-the-earth) calling. This positions the Apple brand to reshape the world. In fact, it demands it. And it’s a context that’s unkind to excuses.

Setting a high standard for the brand

Second, with the mission of “great products” Cooks sets a high standard for the brand. Apple is not in the business of producing “market offerings.” It makes “great products.” There’s a difference. For some implications, see The Apple doctrine.

Is “great products” mere rhetoric? Ask these folks. Or check this chart.

Apple’s brand goal: make a significant contribution to culture

Third, Cook shapes the Apple mission when he states Apple’s goal is “to make a significant contribution.” A contribution? Interesting choice of words! Does Dell demand that its products make “a contribution”? Acer? Asus? HP? The implied Apple brand goal is to make a contribution to culture. Thus, Apple’s brand mission is cultural:  judge us by our contribution to the fabric of human endeavor. (This sets another high standard, and a decisive one in high technology.) Given how Apple has advanced design, music, telephony, computing and publishing, and may help usher in advances in learning via the iPad, the company’s brand intent to contribute to culture would seem to have made a difference. For additional reference, there’s also this picture.

Apple’s cultural context

Within Apple’s cultural context the Apple brand enables customers to engage the world in more meaningful ways. This is a cultural achievement based on what the brand does rather than on what the brand is.

Steve Jobs on the Apple brand approach

“We put ourselves in the customer’s shoes and ask: ‘What do we want? . . . ’”

I have abstracted this principle from a famous 2007 Steve Jobs  Q&A (audio file) in which Jobs was asked why Apple did not slap stickers on its products like other PC makers. His comments end with the quote above, which I have slightly abridged.

This is a profound brand approach. The maker places himself or herself in the shoes of the user, and asks, “What would satisfy me?” The brand identifies with the user, empathizes with the user, looks ahead for the user (brand vision) and wants what’s best for the user within the realm of the product or service. A brand that lacks these abilities won’t get far. It will “target” customers with netbooks instead of changing their lives with touchscreen tablets and a new ecosystem of engagement.

A brand puts itself in its customers’ shoes so customers can run faster and farther, leaving competitors behind.

It’s a strategic act when a brand puts itself in its customers’ shoes. A brand puts itself in its customers’ shoes so customers can run faster and farther, leaving competitors behind. While this is simple in concept it’s difficult in practice. You need deep vision, sharp, unrelenting focus and the talent to make it all work. To it’s credit, Apple does.

In Apple’s case the result is a brand strategy that positions both Apple and its customers to win—with a “secret” that’s in plain sight.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In conventional brand strategy a great deal of effort is often spent in “positioning the brand,” as if we could park the brand in a premium space in people’s minds. From a brand strategy perspective, I’m not convinced that such “positioning” exercises are all that  productive. In fact, “positioning the brand” usually gets things backwards. The strategic priority is to position the customer. That’s where the customer—and the brand—gain advantage.

Position the customer—to win

As I see it, the goal of every brand is to position the customer to win. That’s strategic, and that’s the only “brand positioning” that counts. Thus, brand positioning is customer positioning. We position the customer to win by making the customer strategically better off, through carefully crafted enabling and empowering capabilities unique to the brand. As the customer moves forward the brand moves forward, too. Smart brands position the customer in new realms of being and doing, beyond the reach of clunky, mediocre competitors. The customer wins, and so does the brand. Think of how the best-selling  iPad positions customers far beyond netbooks, and how it potentially positions them in a new age of computing, beyond the tired paradigms of the PC.

The proof of positioning is in the customer

A brand is well-positioned when its customers have advanced beyond the reach of competing brands and commodities, and have no need to turn back. The proof of positioning is in the customer. We are re-positioning (i.e., elevating) customers above the level of competitors. We’re changing the game by changing the customer. In this process the brand is not just another “offering.” It’s a new way forward.

“Brand positioning” is more messaging strategy than brand strategy

What is called “brand positioning” today is often more messaging strategy than brand strategy. It’s really campaign positioning. It’s a campaign approach that tries to create a new and relevant category of meaning in the customer’s mind that is only fulfilled by the “positioned” brand that “solves” the  problem. The typical result is a campaign to sell “the brand” as a desired product perception. The danger is that such campaigns can usurp the brand. They can transform it into a platform of messaging, greatly reducing its ability to innovate and enable. Such brands often fall short strategically because they do little or nothing to advance customers. When they fade—as all campaigns fade—customers move on, leaving the brand behind.

How to position customers to win

A brand positions customers to win when it enables them to be more capable, more creative and more proactive than previously possible under incumbent brands. For customers, the best brand positioning should manifest itself as a new world of opportunities. The Weber brand of grills positions its customers to win as backyard grill chefs via recipes, videos and apps. The Harley Davidson brand positions its customers to win via the camaraderie of its Harley H.O.G. clubs. Historically, the PC revolution re-positioned office workers from being slaves to hierarchy to being proactive contributors with the power to launch ideas on their own. A pair of running shoes can help position you as “fit,” but only if you run. The brand can step in to help you run, and to help you make the most of your miles. Thus, the Nike + iPod Sport Kit and Nike+.

The evolution of brands from mark, to media to means

Brands must be enablers if they are to position customers to win. We want customers who are smarter, stronger and more proactive, so they can grasp the value of the innovations lined up in our R&D pipelines, and leave behind the do-nothing brands of yesterday. As enablers, brands have history on their side. The digital era is the era of the brand as “means.” See: Brand evolution: from mark, to media to means.

Differentiate the customer, not the brand

Making a brand “different” doesn’t really help the customer. Difference does not enable. I’ve discussed this subject in a previous post, Differentiate the customer, not the brand.

The brand positions employees to win, too

As I’ve discussed previously, here, here and here, the brand is a method to create value that optimizes internal operations as well as customers. A well-executed brand will position its own employees to win, too, by unleashing their creative talents. They’re the key to making the whole brand work.

Photo credit: Mandeep Flora — Flickr

How does the application approach for brands differ from traditional brand approaches?

In the application approach the brand is a customer enabler. It incorporates dimensions of innovation that can move customers forward by making them better off. It does so as part of a joint venture with customers, an act of teaming rather than an act of selling. This is quite different from conventional brand approaches which treat brands as a structure of meaning to be communicated, or as a persuasion package to influence how customers feel and think.

Why is the application approach better?

The application approach incorporates a complete brand/customer strategy. The brand goal is to make customers better off through innovations that advance customers beyond the reach of competitors. Example: iPod and iTunes advanced customers beyond the CD, and beyond less integrated music players. They moved their customers to a new market space (category) where competitors couldn’t (easily) follow—and, where life was much, much better for customers.

The application approach also anchors the brand in company operations. We have one brand approach for company vision, values and operations that we leverage into the customer sphere. The brand is the backbone from the lowest employee to the highest customer.

What role do ad agencies play in the application approach?

They become app agencies.

Why must the brand be geared to innovation?

Gearing your brand to innovation can confer strategic advantage. Your brand helps deliver value that advances customers into new realms (markets) where competitors can’t follow. You make customers exclusively better off. If your brand can’t innovate, you are condemned to ad campaigns to make your brand “work” —while your customers are going nowhere. Eventually, the only way they can move forward is to leave.

Aren’t all brands applications of some sort?

Yes they are. Most brand programs are applications. Customer service is a common brand application. Community programs can be applications, too. These will be piecemeal and inefficient applications, however, unless the entire brand is developed as a focused application to move customers forward. The good news is that your existing brand infrastructure may facilitate the transition.

What about brand relationships?

In the application approach, a brand creates customer relationships through its structured customer interactions. These relationships become sustainable when the brand delivers value that moves customers forward. They are more strategic compared to relationships formed using the brand identity model, where what the brand “is” (or what it represents) forms the basis of relationships. Thus, a brand trying to become an “icon” is at a disadvantage to a brand developed as an application (other things being equal.) The icon is fixed. The application moves forward on customer feet. It can explore new types of brand relationships because it’s made to be iterative, collaborative and open to prototyping.

What about brand experience?

The application approach offers the best platform for creating strategic brand experiences. You will have a single, unified brand application that runs the business and makes customers better off.

Can the application approach scale the brand to new levels and new markets?

Yes. That is one of its primary benefits. It is designed to scale. And it can pivot.

Does the application approach entail a different definition of brand?

Yes. It defines the brand as a method of creating value. The brand goal is to create new forms of customer value that advance customers into new market spaces that competitors can’t reach. As a method for creating value, the brand equation is Company Potential X Customer Potential. The brand works as a single, integrated and systematic method to optimize company performance and customer performance. (A philosophical tenet of the application approach is that a company is only as good as its customers.)

Does the application approach change the context of the brand team?

Yes. The brand team acts more like developers than communicators. Instead of “building” a brand as a structure of meaning to be communicated, we develop it dynamically as an enabling platform, through strategic acts of innovation, in concert with customers. The brand team works shoulder to shoulder with product teams through product development and delivery. Ideally, the brand team leads product development. Through the brand team product development becomes customer development.

How does the application approach treat brand identity?

This is a very interesting question. We can view the brand as an application of the brand identity, and/or we can view identity is an application of the brand. It can be both, in a dialectic. Personally, I would put identity on a 3 X 5 card and put brand applications on a global canvas. Nordstrom gives us a clue. So does Zappos. Identity is a form of leadership. It must point the way. It can’t be an idealized projection decoupled from reality, like BP’s ill-fated “Beyond Petroleum.”

Our company believes that brands are perceptions. Why should they be “applications?”

If your brand is a perception, then you’re in the perception business. Your employees are being paid to make perceptions, not valuable products and services. As a perception, your brand will become a creature of campaigns, just like millions of others. It won’t create value. It won’t innovate. Your customers will reward you with the perception of loyalty. Frankly, your brand deserves better (and your customers, too).

Look at it this way: consider your brand a joint effort between you and your customers to out-wit, out-deliver, out-perform your competitors. It’s the real deal, not a “perception.”

What’s wrong with building a brand as a belief system, or as a total structure of meaning?

Nothing, really, except that those belief systems and those structures of meaning tend to be monolithic and inert, and are usually designed to lock customers in place. They’re often attempts to bind customers to a brand that can’t innovate. To survive, they require progressively irrational customers, a risky bet. They’re often a sign that innovation in the industry has stopped, and that only mind games remain for incumbents. Hence, we see these approaches in mature industries whose products resemble commodities in brand wrappers. These industries are ripe for brand disruption.

What is brand disruption?

Brand disruption is what the application approach is all about. It is the process of making customers exclusively better off in a new brand context beyond the reach of incumbent brands. A disrupting brand runs off with the customers of incumbent brands. It throws open the gates of the corrals where incumbent customers have been trapped for “branding.” Customers escape to the better brand context provided by the disruptor. And this context is real. It’s the difference between being subject to a monarch in a kingdom and then arriving in a republic of democratic laws where one is free.

Whole Foods is a pretty good example of the application approach to brands. It disrupts KFC, among others, by being an application of healthy living.

Our brand strategy is to capture, contain and control customers so they keep buying our products. That’s Marketing 101. Why is the application approach better?

The application approach is better because it’s strategic. The problem with the “capture, contain and control” theory of brands is that it locks customers and the company in one place. When a brand corrals its customers it imprisons the company in the same corral. The brand traps itself. It becomes a stylized sales stimulant that’s essentially static. If it’s an icon, it’s an icon with feet of clay.

In the application approach we keep advancing customers so we can progressively raise the brand bar, leaving competitors—and their corrals—in the dust. (For more information, see:  Some brands go medieval on their customers.

Is the application approach better at collaboration?

Yes. In the application approach the brand collaborates with customers to create new customer opportunities, instead of attempting to hold customers in place with emotional levers. Customers thus become active players in re-creating their lives; they’re not passive “targets,” and they’re not an “audience.” Through this process, customers become a brand’s greatest competitive weapon–not for their static “loyalty” but for their ability to help create new value that creates new markets.

Our CEO says our brand is an application to boost sales and make money. What’s wrong with that?

Your CEO is reducing your brand to a stylized sales stimulant. He thinks of it as “soft” advertising. This is a weak approach because it decouples the brand from value creation (via innovation), it doesn’t leverage the brand internally, and it disregards the power of the brand as a tool for customer collaboration.

We have a branded app for the iPhone and for Android. That’s an application approach, right?

Not really. A typical “branded app” is a poor excuse for an app, and a worse excuse for a brand. It’s usually little more than website features fluffed up with a new interface and maybe a game or contest for “interest,” as if the brand itself is boring. That doesn’t cut it. What you need are personal brand applications.

We’re on Facebook and Twitter. Can social media be our application?

No. Facebook and Twitter are applications of Facebook and Twitter. Your brand is a tenant on their sites. Besides, brands typically use Facebook and Twitter as promotional platforms. A sales platform is not a brand platform.

What if we use Facebook and Twitter to help our customer service?

That makes sense. In that case you would be using Facebook and Twitter as partial platforms for your customer service applications. Responding to immediate feedback can improve customer service. However, Facebook and Twitter are no substitute for the larger application that is your brand.

It seems like software companies have a big advantage in the brand application approach.

Yes they do. To control your own brand destiny you can’t let their applications outflank you. You have to be every bit as application-focused as they are.

In developing brand platforms and brand applications it always helps to have a concise brand strategy directive at hand, to keep things aligned. One that I favor is this:

The brand goes in before the brand goes on.

This directive is easy to remember and anchors the brand in company values, principles and operations, where its true strength lies. It defines the brand as a method of value creation, consistent with the brand mission, and not as an after-the-fact add-on. What counts is what the company puts into the brand and the desired brand relationship.

Why this brand directive works for me

Here are a few more reasons why I like this particular directive:

1. It’s strategic. It reminds us that the brand result depends on what we do upstream in product development. In other words, “brand in, brand out.” A development and production process governed by brand values will create products rich in those values. We’re talking about the brand value chain, and the brand value of kaizen.
   
2. It recognizes that brand strategy is innovation strategy. If we expect our brands to change the customer’s world, then we better be developing world-changing products.
3. It considers the brand to be a single application. Brands are much more than symbols and slogans. They’re customer-focused applications of company vision and values.  We develop brands to advance customers beyond the reach of competitors. What we design  into the brand now can have long-term rewards as the application takes root.
4. It creates brand authenticity. When your brand goes in before the brand goes on, your brand is authentically you.
5. It reminds us that brands are not campaigns. Brands are the stuff that companies are made of. Campaigns come and go. The customer take-away from your brand is what you put into it.

Brands can be methods to create value, or campaigns to sell perceptions. Which brand would you buy?

Photo credit:  Bill Gracey — Flickr

The amazing success of Apple’s category-creating iPad raises some important brand strategy questions for high technology companies. What makes a “next-generation” product that creates its own category? Can traditional brand methods power a next-generation product leap? Or do we need a “next-generation” brand approach, with a new form of brand and brand strategy? Lastly, does Apple’s impressive brand achievement (Mac, MacBook, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad) suggest a new brand strategy template?

These are critical times for brands in the digital era

These are critical times for brands in the digital era, as brand strategy and innovation strategy converge. Brands can no longer be treated as add-ons after the fact. They need to be baked in from the get-go, as methods of creating new customer value through the innovation process. As such, brand strategies can help power a sustainable first mover advantage. Brands late to the party can be reduced to peripheral players, on the outside looking in. Luckily, we can observe a “next generation” and “new category” transition first hand with the emergence of the iPad. The “Post-PC” iPad can teach us valuable brand lessons.

Is the iPad a next-generation product?

We can begin by asking, “Is the iPad a next-generation product?”  Writing in reference to the iPad as a “Post PC” device, Horace Dediu identifies key factors in  next-generation computer transitions, based on the historical computing transitions of Mainframe > Minicomputer > Personal Computer > Tablet.

He concludes:

I would suggest that the definition of a new generation of computing is that the new products rely on new input/output methods and allow a new population of non-expert users to use the product more cheaply and simply.

Consequences of moving from one product generation to the next

Dediu then enumerates the consequences of moving from one product generation to the next:

1. Consumption increases
2. Skill required decreases
3. Support required decreases
4. There are new applications and use cases
5. The economics are not favorable for incumbents
6. The economics are favorable for new entrants
7. The older generation slowly fades through diminished growth but never disappears.

It would seem that the touch-screen digital tablet exemplified by the iPad certainly marks a next-generation product.

The iPad as a “Post-PC” product

Steve Jobs likes to claim that the iPad represents a “Post-PC” product, a new category beyond the reach of conventional PC approaches (not to mention traditional PC companies.). He contends that tablet manufacturers locked in conventional “PC” modalities—trivial hardware features coupled with an outsourced operating system— can’t match the seamless user experience that the iPad delivers. Apple develops the operating system, user interface, tablet device, key apps and processor for the iPad, enabling a high level of system integration and fluid, intuitive operation.

You can see Jobs drive home these points in the first 10 minutes of his keynote at the iPad 2 launch event.

Competing brands stumble, and can’t keep up

Some of Jobs’ comments are hype, to be sure, but the fact remains that the iPad has seemingly created a category unto itself in the year since it’s initial launch. Competitors aren’t keeping up.

Some examples:

1. The Motorola XOOM has recently been released, but isn’t complete.
2. The 10 in. Samsung Galaxy Tab is being re-designed.
3. The BlackBerry PlayBook has yet to ship, amid marketing turmoil.
4. The HP TouchPad (Palm WebOS) has yet to ship. April?
5. The Microsoft tablet won’t arrive until late 2012.
6. The ViewSonic tablet with two OSes seems cobbled together.

The biggest (apparent) loser is Microsoft, the iconic PC company. Microsoft invented the “tablet PC” a decade ago, and got nowhere with it. When the new Microsoft tablet arrives in late 2012 it will probably be competing against a third (or fourth) generation of competitors, including the iPad.

Brand weakness of the “PC” Approach

We can define the classic “PC” approach as follows: The software comes from one source (originally Microsoft) , the components come from a multitude of sources, at many price points, and a computer manufacturer puts them together in a particular form factor (desktop, laptop, netbook, PC tablet). The maker’s brand is put on at the end, usually supplemented with a splat of partner stickers.)

Historically, the dominant brand in the classic PC approach has been Microsoft. Its software rules hardware makers and the end user experience. It commands the largest margins, often turning computer makers into low-margin commoditized complements.

The perennial brand weakness with the “PC” approach is the lack of deep integration between hardware and software. Hardware makers are largely dependent on another party’s software for their end user experience. No matter how elegant or high quality the hardware, software flaws in the user interface or device operations will create a mediocre (or negative) brand experience.

The “PC” approach and tablets

Microsoft has no competitive OS that’s ready at this time for the new generation of tablets. In tablets Microsoft’s role has been taken by Google, which makes a tablet version of its powerful Android mobile OS available free to tablet manufacturers. The manufacturer typically becomes a packager of the OS, and this limits the amount of brand value that the manufacturer can contribute. (Manufacturers can add interface layers to the OS, however, as they’ve done with Android OS mobile phones. See here.)

BlackBerry PlayBook and HP TouchPad

To their credit the BlackBerry PlayBook and the HP TouchPad will employ their own native tablet operating systems, giving them full control over the brand value chain. If they execute well, they may gain distinct advantage over the mass of Android tablets soon to flood the market. They may threaten market leader iPad, too.

The Apple brand advantage

I would argue that Apple’s current (and commanding) lead in tablets is largely due to Apple’s brand advantage. Apple’s brand advantage is operational; it’s not in myths,  “magic” or marketing. It lies in the way that Apple integrates software and hardware in its products in accordance with its clearly-defined vision and values. The latter are focused on optimizing user experience. The result is a unified brand approach, with the entire brand operating as a customer-focused application of Apple vision and values. The Apple brand infuses Apple products and the entire Apple ecosystem, making it operate as one.

Apple’s brand logic

If we look closely at Apple we can discern a resolute brand logic that underlies the recent course of Apple innovations. Today’s iPad is the product of at least eight years R&D in mobile operating systems that encompassed the iPod, iPod touch, iPhone and now iPad. The brand logic that runs through this development process is that innovation must make customers better off by making mobile devices more intuitive and less complex. It’s a logic where simplicity is power, and design does more by being less, all in the context of the user. This enables radical innovation across new form factors while preserving a consistent and productive user interface and experience.

Do tablets require a new brand strategy?

Do tablets require a new brand strategy, or can they simply recycle old brand modalities? Apple’s dramatic success would argue that a new brand strategy approach is required, where the brand infuses operations as a method to create value through fully integrated software and hardware. To my mind this means developing the brand as a customer-focused application, which Apple does in spades. Anything less leaves the brand hobbled in its efforts to advance customers. In this light, we can look forward to the BlackBerry PlayBook and the HP TouchPad as potential “end-to-end” competitors to the iPad. They appear to “get it” (on the drawing board) as brand applications for the customer.

For the time being, at least, the old “PC” approach seems doomed to a game of catch-up.

Photo credit:  waferbaby — Flickr

Pretty simple, really.

Pretty hard to copy, too.

Results to date

• 100 million iBooks downloaded
• 2,500 publishers on iBookstore
• 200 million iTunes accounts, each with user ID and credit card number
• $2 billion in profits paid out to app developers
• 100 million iPhones sold to date
• Nearly 15 million iPads sold in 2010–more than every tablet PC ever sold
• The 15 million iPads generated $9.5 billion in revenue
• The iPad has 90 percent share of the tablet market
• More than 350,000 apps in Apple’s App Store

More than 65,000 have been optimized for iPad

The liberal arts brand advantage

Should we consider Apple a “tech” company? It’s culture is 180º opposite that of Google, which really is a tech company. Perhaps Apple’s signal brand advantage lies in its liberal arts heritage, and orientation. It works from the user back, not from tech forward. Its innovations, no matter how spectacular, are almost always innovations in ease of use, often dramatically so.

In its chosen markets, it would seem that Apple’s embrace of liberal arts is a decided brand advantage.

Photo: Engadget

Brands are customer-focused applications for getting things done

It’s always been apparent to me that brands are really customer-focused applications–for helping customers get things done–far more than they’re calculated  sets of  symbols, slogans and stories to influence how customers think or feel. (I began writing about personal brand applications way back in 2007.) As I see it, we develop brands to help customers achieve outcomes that they can’t achieve through products and services alone. Thus, a “brand”  is much more than an identity, a stylized sales stimulant, a promise or a reputation. It’s a deliverable that acts as a supra-product method of creating value, limited only by the brand imagination of the company.

Notably, the brand is a form of innovation rather than a belief system or persuasion package. Critically, it’s an interactive application, too, one that enables the brand to team with customers in the value creation process. As I’ll discuss  below, brand  applications are essential building blocks for brand  platforms, and for building strategic brand experiences.

What (exactly) is a brand application?

A brand application is a method (a series of steps, guidelines, interfaces, interactions, innovations and revelations) to advance customers to richer realms of living. It may accompany products and services, or it may be a framework for them. The brand is the operative vision and value stream. It lays out where the company is going, and the rewards for joining in. The brand journey marks the path.

The goal of the application approach is to make customers better off in a way that ultimately disrupts competitors. As part of the application approach we create customers (here and here) through value innovation in ways that competitors can’t match. Our customers win, and so do we.

For strategic purposes the entire brand can be developed as a unified, customer-focused application (as I propose). Within the brand itself, however, there will be many discrete brand applications. These function like brand programs. Customer service is a brand application. A warranty is a brand application. Note, though, that customer service at Zappos is the whole brand as an application.

Brands gain strategic power as applications

Brands gain strategic power when they’re developed as applications. In traditional brand approaches brands are typically a form of communications. They emerge as calculated messages and meanings to promote sales and customer loyalty. In contrast, the brand-as-application is a comprehensive, collaborative, multi-threaded and multifaceted means of helping customers change their world in reality, not “in the mind.” As an application, the brand emerges as a strategic means of action, a change agent and deliverable on par with products and services. As applications brands stand to be far more productive than a brand “essence” showcased as a glorious–yet static–identity.

Your entire brand is an application—inside and outside the company

One of the strengths of the brand application approach is that your brand becomes a coherent and consistent method of value creation inside and outside the company. You are one company, one application, one brand. The brand becomes your operating mode rather than a media construct. As an application it fuses strategic vision, employee creativity, quality, productivity, and desired customer outcomes. Brand applications lay the foundation for a company “Way” of unique vision and values. Conversely, when the brand becomes “image” instead of application, we wind up with sad examples like BP.

A big difference in brand approach

When we develop brands as applications we take a dramatically different approach than used for conventional brands. Here are the main differences:

1. Brands are agents of transformation, a means to change the world. They’re not sets of “meanings” to program customer behavior.
2. The brand goal is to innovate so we can advance customers into richer realms of living where our brand gains market advantage.
3. Our brand is part of our innovation strategy. It’s a method for creating value through customers.  Brand strategy becomes innovation strategy.
4. The brand team joins the innovation team. They pump brand intelligence into new products and services ab ovo.
5. Customers become strategic innovation partners, not just “buyers.” They are valued for their insights, intelligence and initiative far more than for their “loyalty.”
6. There is less need for brand symbols, slogans and stories, and no need for brand magic and miracles. Applications create new realities–an infinitely better result.
7. There is little need to “position” the brand. The application goal is to position customers to win–in new market spaces where customers and company can prosper. The application is self-positioning.
8. The era of the brand icon is over. Icons don’t innovate. Applications do.
9. There is less need for ad agencies. There is more need for app agencies.
10. The brand ceiling leaps skyward. It becomes: Company Potential  X Customer Potential. New brand avenues abound.

Innovative brands already use the application approach

The good news is that many of today’s innovative brands (young and old) already grasp what brands can accomplish as applications. In many respects their brands largely function as end-to-end applications as they focus on delivering market-leading customer experiences. They build their brands outward from their vision, values and core operating principles. Their brands begin as internal applications (operating policies and programs) to produce distinctive  products and  services. Extending brand applications to customers is a natural  follow-through of what makes the company tick. In the larger scheme of things, the brands of Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, FedEx, Costco, Nordstrom and Zappos function as applications. They advance their customers beyond the reach of competitors. They are more focused, more coherent, more disciplined  and more distinctive because of it. And customers can tell the  difference.

How do we implement a brand application approach?

In broad brushstrokes, the generic procedure runs like this:

1. Identify seeds of greatness in your company vision and values. (May take some work.)
2. Ask, “What is holding our customers back?” (Remember: the mission of your brand is to advance your customers so they’re dramatically better off—in markets made possible by your innovative genius.)
3. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Ask, “What would I want?” Trust your passion and beliefs. (See vision and values, above.)
4. Map out the innovations needed to advance customers and raise them to the next level. (Hint: listening to music on an iPod is a higher level than listening to a CD.  Creating your own style is a higher level than searching retail racks.)
5. Identify new market spaces where you and your customers can prosper. In these new market spaces your competitors should be irrelevant. That is, they can never advance their customers to the same (real) context.
6. Identify the kinds of customers who will disrupt your competitors. These are the customers your brand must create. They are your competitive weapon.
7. Develop a brand roadmap to the new market space. This is also a customer roadmap toward more proactive and enabled customers.

Advantages of the application approach

As I see it, these are the major advantages of the application approach.

It’s strategic. As an application your brand can advance customers into new market spaces where competitors can’t follow. Brand applications can confer a first mover advantage. Because of their focus, they can also confer domain dominance.

It’s collaborative. The brand-as-application works with customers as it helps move them forward. It learns from them as they learn from it. Brand teamwork replaces messaging, campaigns and passive brand loyalty as the operative connection. Customers are made part of the brand as the brand becomes part of them.

It’s active and dynamic. When structured as an application a brand stops being a static  “thing” and becomes a method to change the world. It breathes adventure, discovery and innovation, and runs on customer feet. It’s made for prototypes, iterations, and strategic touchpoints. Big picture:   Brands are tools that enable customers to inter-operate with the universe. The genius of brands is that they have no limits. The value of  brands is that through them, customers have no limits.

It engages customers directly. To engage a customer is to move the customer forward. There’s no better way to engage a customer than to put a tool in his or her hand, to share their fate, to have their back, and to serve as sidekick, mentor, confidant and guide.

It builds an integral brand backbone, organically. The brand becomes one application internally and externally. It is not a media layer folded back on the business from above, to “align” employees. The unified application gives the brand a singular integrity and backbone, organically. In essence, the brand is an application of what motivates the company to excel. The same application animates and drives employees, partners and customers to create exemplary products and services. The application approach is intrinsically authentic.

It’s infinitely scalable. Your entire brand can be an application, global in reach, and you can have an infinite number of discrete brand applications within it, down to the smallest personal brand application on a smartphone. Those apps can work wonders, too, because they’re personal, portable and persistent. As applications brands can make the most of digital innovations, the very future of brands themselves.

It’s an enabler that doesn’t depend on media campaigns. Brands have evolved from mark, to media, to means. In the application approach brands directly enable customers to be more and to do more. The brand and the customer are on the same page, writing it together. The brand is a framework for teaming, a means of teaming, and a means of execution. In the application approach the brand and the customer campaign together. There’s less need for conventional media campaigns.

It can create value. The original iPod was a nifty device but it made its mark as an application of music acquisition, management and enjoyment. Thanks to iTunes software, the device became a massive music enabler, giving millions of Apple customers personal control of their music, and permanently advancing them beyond the reach of the incumbent music industry, and the random makers of MP3 players.

It is platform enabled. A brand platform is a platform of opportunities for customers. When you structure your brand as an application you open it to complementary applications from customers and other brand partners. Mashups are one example. Mobile apps are another. Your Brand API’s will be vital.

It can disrupt other brands. As an application, a brand can change the game by changing the customer. In effect, the brand application creates customers beyond the reach of incumbent brands. The iPod/iTunes (and iPad) are cases in point.

Brand applications are a big change for brands

When we develop brands as applications we’re making a big change in the context of brands. We’re moving beyond the classic identity model of  brands where the brand was designed to be an idealized proxy for the company, a designated “essence” with programs to radiate calculated meanings to target market segments. In contrast, brand applications are transformative. They represent an action model for brands. They’re the brand as verb, not noun. Identity is important, but it’s what the brand does—to advance customers—that matters most.

We still ask a brand, “Who are you?” and “What do you stand for?” But the big question going forward is, “What have you done for me lately?” Only a brand application can answer that question.

Brand experience and brand applications

When we talk about brand experiences we’re talking about a structure and logic of customer experiences intended to create customers through the brand. In this sense, a brand that delivers structured brand experiences may in fact already be operating with a brand application approach. The only question I might raise is, “What’s the brand agenda?” Are the experiences simply designed to provide more “delight” than those of competitors A, B, and C, leading to a hard-to-win “brand delight race,” (e.g., three mints on a pillow instead of two) or are they strategic experiences designed to move customers into an entirely new space?

Brand applications and service design

The application approach to brands and service design appear to have much in common. I’ll get to this in a follow-up post.

Brand applications and social media

Can brands use social media as their applications? I will tackle this question in a follow-up post.

Brand applications—the brand as visionary enabler

To end this overview I’ll observe that as applications brands assume the role of visionary enabler. The brand must summon the courage to lead where roads are few. This is a daunting challenge. We’re far removed from the brand as pretty face or noble promise. This is the brand that envisions a far better place for customers, and innovates to help them get there against high odds. The brand must have the rare talent to discern high value at the edge of possible, but it must also see through customer eyes.

UPDATE: FAQ: Creating your brand as a customer-focused application.

Brands in the digital era are also collaborative, thanks to Facebook, Twitter, online forums and the like, and a brand’s collaborators are also its developers. They have a hand in its future, too.

Nurturing developers to build the best brands

It thus pays for a brand to nurture its developers with capable development tools and a process that makes development (relatively) easy. For software companies–who have the inside track on brands of the future–the standard developer toolset is the SDK, the Software Development Kit. Developers need a solid SDK to create solid apps. If a software company falls short in its SDK, it risks losing its developers and potentially, its brand.

A developer’s complaint against RIM and the PlayBook

Are digital tablets important to the future of business and culture? Absolutely. It’s therefore news when a developer details a long list of factors that make developing applications for a particular tablet unnecessarily difficult. One such developer complaint surfaced this week:  “You Win, RIM! (An Open Letter To RIM’s Developer Relations).“  In it a developer cites major (and unnecessary) obstacles that block the application development path for the spiffy new RIM BlackBerry PlayBook, leaving  the developer to throw up his hands in despair.

The complaint is written with the passion that builds brands, or tosses them aside. Here’s how it begins:

You win. I concede defeat. I no longer want to attempt developing an app for the PlayBook. Are you happy now? Surely you must be. Considering how terribly designed the entire process is, from the registration right through to loading an app into the simulator, I can only assume that you are trying to drive developers away by inconveniencing them as much as humanly possible.

Brand touchpoints critical to developers

The entire complaint is worth reading for the light it shines on brand touchpoints critical to software development. These touchpoints are like building blocks. If they don’t fit together quickly and securely, building the desired app becomes problematic. RIM certainly knows this, too.

Did the RIM brand team vet the PlayBook SDK? It is certainly a brand-building document.

The application reaches beyond the product proper

The video below shows a creative brand application from Pilot Pen. The application enables people to send email in their personal handwriting. You create a font from your own letter forms. As a brand application it reaches beyond the product proper (the Pilot pens we use on paper) to help personalize something as routinely impersonal as email. In this small but significant way, a user can enrich his or her life (and the lives of one’s correspondents) through the Pilot Pen brand.

The application helps change the context of the Pilot Pen brand. Instead of being a “brand of pens” Pilot becomes a brand of personalization, a far richer platform for brand relationships.

Brand applications rise to the next level

As nice as this application is, however, it currently has some limitations. Yet, Pilot Pen is certainly on  to something, as evidenced by the review in Core77. There’s obvious headroom for this brand application. If Pilot Pen can’t take this app to a higher level, perhaps another brand will. The brand focus must be on advancing customers as far as possible, creatively and practically, not in tying them down.