Brands Create Customers

Brands deliver the most value when they’re conceived and designed as brand applications. That is, when they’re an application of company vision and values to advance customers to richer realms of living. It’s that simple. Customers don’t need brand theatrics, ethereal C-suite promises or concocted brand fables. They want a brand that helps them move ahead, the more creative the context the better. Brand applications fill the bill. They’re the brand as enabler, not as static symbol or lifeless icon.

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.

A brand application is a way for brands  to solve important problems for customers, just like a software application. The most popular brand applications these days are “apps” on portable media devices, such as smartphones. What we have in the photo above is a slightly different kind of application. It’s an innovative, inexpensive add-on unit from MIT that can perform simple, accurate eye tests using a smartphone. The unit could help people in remote areas obtain the prescriptions and the eyeglasses they need.

The unit is designed to be dead simple to use, accurate, and cheap. Here’s the full announcement from MIT.

If the device works as intended, this is a brand application that can change the world. It can help give sight to millions of sight-impaired, a tremendous boost to their lives and local productivity.

So, whose brand is this?

Whose brand is this? Well, it could be yours (assuming you work out a deal with MIT). If you want to do some good in the world, this is the kind of brand application just waiting to be picked up by a sponsor or foundation. It’s meant to be used, not sold. A company doesn’t have to be in the eyewear or ophthalmology business to adopt this device (or something similar) as a brand application. Nokia could do it. So could Google. Or Starbucks. Or Toyota. Or any other brand with global reach.

Your brand isn’t what you sell—it’s what you value.

A first step in brand strategy is to understand that your brand isn’t what you sell. Your brand is what you value. (This is a liberating realization.) You can show the world what you value through the brand applications that carry your name. Brand applications can make a tremendous difference in the world. Can they also open up cross-market and new market opportunities for the brand? Of course. Brand applications are strategic tools.

Show people what you value as a brand and they will value you. The app that carries your name could be anything. What’s important is what it does, and how that makes a difference.

Another potential brand application

I previously described a potential cheap, simple and direct brand application here.

Photo credit: MIT Media Relations

Ajit Jaokar explores design parameters of mobile devices and how they can inhibit, or facilitate, greater use of mobile platforms as we move forward.

This subject is relevant to those developing personal brand applications, since one of the goals of a PBA is to be the strongest customer platform possible. Device platform limitations can get in the way.

As a follow-up to my recent post on personal brand applications (PBA’s) on smartphones, here are some rough conceptual examples showing how various industries and organizations might use PBA’s.

As I noted in my post, “The most treasured PBA’s will be exclusive apps of elite circles of achievement.” Real personal brand applications would have much more depth and dimension than I sketch out here.

A conceptual PBA for business publications

A personal brand application from the Economist or Financial Times might help subscribers deftly navigate the global village covered in detail by these publications. If I”m off to a conference in Singapore the PBA might give me an insider’s brief on local airport logistics, where to stay and maybe the best hawker centers for a dash of local food. Tell me the top 10 do’s and don’ts. Remind me how hot it gets and where to go on Clarke Quay (see above). Toss in a Metro map, main local phone numbers, and so on. You know what’s relevant for me because I read your pub. Your PBA is your sharable (neo-Keynesian) savoir faire. It should (in this concept) qualitatively enhance my visit to the Lion City–or any great city.

Would the brand charge for this? Absolutely. This is real value. Make it part of the sub.

A conceptual PBA for an office furniture brand

Office furniture brands already understand that they’re no longer in the traditional “office furniture business.” They’re really in the workspace business, with the many additional opportunities that market affords. They may even be in the innovation business, and in the collaboration business—if their products can contribute in those value-added areas. Hence the strategy set forth in this podcast about Steelcase. The PBA of an office furniture brand might focus on helping customers innovate and collaborate, so the brand becomes a trusted innovation and productivity partner inside and outside the office.

This is what I mean when I call the brand a “value stream beyond the product proper.”

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In the near future you’ll be able to build your brand with an app. No, check that. In the near future your brand will be an app. It will re-define itself as a personal brand application on a smartphone or similar device, where it can deliver unique brand value to customers 24/7. Apple’s current iPhone ad campaign, “There’s an app for that,” provides a glimpse of this brand future.

In other words, there’s a new brand game in town. Can your brand set the agenda here?

The era of personal brand applications (PBA’s)

As I’ve noted previously, we’re now entering the era of personal brand applications (PBA’s). Personal brand applications are software applications on portable digital devices that enable customers to do more, and to be more, through the brand. They represent the intersection of high technology and brands in the palms and pockets of people, everywhere, and the chance for brands to be closer than ever to customers.

Why personal brand applications are important

Personal brand applications are important because they forge a new 1:1 brand/customer relationship. Through this relationship they have the potential to create new classes of customers from the ground up, in new market spaces. In this process they can undermine traditional brands built on ad campaigns, images, messaging and mass media saturation. Most importantly, personal brand applications free brands (and the brand team) to use the full fruits of their imagination—and to use the brand to lead.

PBA’s can accelerate brand trust

As applications, PBA’s are immediate and direct. They deliver results customers can use, now, and they build core brand trust in the process. While traditional brand campaigns may work wonders in building awareness and shaping perceptions, they’re not engines of brand trust. Personal brand applications are. They can accelerate and energize brand trust, compressing what used to take years into shorter time frames.

Technology advances make PBA’s possible

Since I first wrote about the concept of personal brand applications two years ago, we’ve witnessed amazing advances in wireless technology, digital handsets, user interfaces, online services, and software systems and platforms that tie everything together. With Apple’s iPhone, App Store and iPhone developers leading the way, we’re now are seeing a first flush of innovative smartphone apps that foreshadow the personal brand applications to come.

PBA’s: the ultimate brand relationship

In many ways a personal brand application is the ultimate brand relationship, where the brand operates as both a trusty sidekick and a trusted advisor, as close as a second skin. PBA’s do more than “connect” the brand with customers. They transform the brand into a proactive customer platform of choices, directions and actions, helping the customer at a personal level to accomplish objectives and deal with life’s challenges. The brand becomes a central means (and platform) for customer growth and development.

Personal, portable and persistent

Because they operate on hand-held devices that are wireless, Internet enabled and “always on,” PBA’s are personal, portable and persistent–the critical three P’s for brands going forward. In many ways they’re the ultimate brand presence. Think of them as perpetual touchpoints where the brand plays an active role in the culture, context and creativity of an individual’s life, day in and day out.

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Yes, indeed. There’s every chance that brands going forward will be more like a mashed-up mutt than a pedigreed poodle. The days when the brand was paraded as a elite breed with champion bloodlines, showcased every step of the way and groomed to perfection, are drawing to a close.  Adaptable, affable companion brands that are a mix themselves, and made to mix anew, are in. We’re entering an age of sidekick brands in which a resourceful brand mutt is the best pal any customer could want.

As newspapers fold, news mashups unfold

This revelation came to me as I was reading Steven Berlin Johnson’s SXSW speech on the future of news in the Internet era. While traditional newspapers may face long odds, Steven sees news itself as expanding online at local and grass-roots levels. (He provides local examples from Brooklyn, NY.) These new brands of news are like street-savvy mutts, blends of blogs, tweets, diaries, mashups, feeds and links that add depth, relevance, meaning and context to local lives. Their forte is nap-of-the-earth texture and immediacy, and a being-there credibility.

I would add SB Nation as another example, on a grander scale.  It’s transforming sports reporting into sports communities. Its home-grown stories and commentary are deep and deeply engaging, with 290 sites and real-time content. I am totally spoiled by my local SB Nation baseball site, San Francisco’s McCovey Chronicles. It’s both an online companion to a game, the visceral vibe of what plays out on the field, and a meditation in extensis on team strategy and player development.

Brand applications: personal, portable and persistent

I see this mutt/mashup model extending to other brands in the Internet era. I’ve written previously about a new class of brands called personal brand applications. These down-to-earth enabling brands live on digital devices as brand sidekicks: personal, portable and persistent. Strategically, they are brands as applications. They go where you and I go. What they do defines who they are, and to some extent what you and I can become. Their provenance matters less than the loyal support they deliver. They may have the DNA of hundreds of  contributors, or perhaps thousands, like MetaFilter or Twitter, but that is indeed their strength. They are evolving us, not refining us.

Yes, brands will be judged by how loyal they are to you–as they should be.

Photo: ANDI2WHIPLASHEDAWAY — Flickr

Note: Updated 5/31/11.

There’s some strategic brand thinking going on over at National Public Radio (NPR). They’re developing new ways to make the NPR brand a personal brand application. Specifically, they’re enabling the NPR brand to become more personal, portable and persistent–essential qualities of brands to come.

Saul Hansell in the New York Times describes it:

National Public Radio has introduced a nifty little feature that lets you create your own custom podcast of NPR content on topics that interest you. Type in Obama or Madonna or whatever, and you can sign up for a stream of NPR clips that match your keywords that can be downloaded to your computer, smartphone, iPod or Zune.

The future of brands lies in digital devices

As I’ve noted previously, the future of brands lies in digital devices. Brands will be universal enablers, as close as a second skin. It’s nice to see NPR taking a step in that direction. Of course, people don’t want mere “clips” from the information stream on those digital devices. They want a new context of insight into the world around them. That’s a large part of NPR’s brand challenge.

We encounter the term “brand strategy” in just about every brand discussion these days, but what does “brand strategy” actually mean? How does it fit into that dynamic matrix that includes a company, its products, its brands and its customers? And what makes a brand strategy “strategic”?

Brand strategy defined

As I see it, a company’s brand strategy describes how the brand intends to create customers and advance them beyond the reach of competitors. Specifically, it sets forth the creative, social and moral steps that the brand will take to create the customers that will drive the business forward. A brand strategy will position customers as a key part of the company’s competitive edge—and keep moving that edge. The customer wins through progressively added value, and the company wins through customers who won’t settle for second best.

In brand strategy we don’t focus on “positioning the brand.” We focus on positioning the customer—to win. In other words, the brand wins through the customer.

“Creating customers” is a strategic act

“Creating customers” is a strategic act in itself. It is one reason why the “creating customers” approach to brands is so powerful. It is inherently strategic. It aligns company and customers in a shared context from the get-go. A brand strategy should transform the narrow context of “buyer-seller” into the mutually-rewarding context of “team.” That in itself is a key competitive advantage because it frames the brand in a customer context.

The process by which a brand creates customers is outlined here and here.

What a brand strategy must include

To be effective, a brand strategy must include these qualities:

1. It is value-based. It aims to deliver new forms of value that advance customers beyond the status quo, and beyond the reach of competitors.
2. It innovates. It aims to deliver a new customer context, a new vision of what customers can be, and do—exclusively through the brand.
3. It is structured as a platform. Its goal is to make the brand a platform of new customer opportunities, a springboard for personal customer growth.
4. It collaborates with customers. Brand strategy is a joint effort to free customers from current markets, illusions or fears that hold customers back. We structure collaboration through brand engagement.
5. It’s an overt act of culture creation. A brand strategy aims to create a new culture of growth, initiative and discovery that advances customers to richer realms of living. This is a new level that should open up profitable new markets for the company. Compare a life with CD’s to life with an iPod. That’s a brand difference.

A brand strategy takes its direction from the brand mission. It includes the capability of brand vision, which is the ability to see your future through your customers’ eyes.

Many brands don’t have strategies

While there are a great many brands in the world, not all brands have brand strategies. Instead, they have glorified sales strategies. Such brands are constructed as calculated identities to be flogged by advertising campaigns, in which the “brand” operates as a stylized sales stimulant. Such brands are synthetic creatures of marketing and sales. Influence is their game. They’re part of a persuasion package, but persuasion is not a strategy. The mission of these brands typically ends at the cash register.

Brand applications gain strategic advantage

Brands developed as customer-facing applications—where the brand is a method to create value—gain strategic advantage from the get-go. They build on brand synergy, the joint powers of company and customer structured and deployed to defeat competitors.

Dead-end brand strategies

We often see dead-end brand strategies, too. A dead-end brand strategy is one that tries to capture, contain and control customers, as if customers were sheep. This strategy does not tap into the talents, initiative and creativity of customers. It does not create customers as proactive brand partners. Ultimately, it traps the brand in the same corral, with no way out. Companies that employ dead-end brand strategies pave the way for their own disruption.

Dead-end brand strategies often result in brands of illusion that go medieval on their customers. They follow a brand agenda to keep customers weak, because they lack a strategy for dealing with proactive cultures—usually including those of their own employees.

Quick brand strategy test

Finally, I’ll submit this quick brand strategy test:

A brand that shouts “Buy me!” is not strategic. A brand that says “Join me!” is.

Further reading

• Brand strategy: Develop your brand as a joint venture with customers
• Brands as collaborative strategies

Photo: Inky Bob — Flickr