Brands Create Customers

In brand circles a popular topic these days is “How to curate a brand.” To my mind, however, most of these discussions really have the issue backwards. As I see it, it’s the brand that should be curating the business. In other words,  the best way to “curate” a brand is to manage the business through the brand. This is the only sure way to preserve, protect and grow brand value. We let the brand do the curating—not the other way around. Trying to curate the brand as an (external) layer separate from the business core can be a daunting task, even in the best of times.

If our goal is a brand-driven business, let’s give the brand the wheel.

The brand curates the business

When the brand curates the business the brand rolls up its sleeves and pitches in to help lead decision-making on tactical and strategic levels. The brand and the business are one, fully integrated at the operations level to deliver a premium, sustainable experience. To use a colorful example, that’s how authentic housemade sodas in a Jewish deli (above) can be so delicious. All parts of the business are on the same brand page, crafting it together.

Brand principles drive operations

When the brand curates the business it’s brand principles that drive operations, enabling the company to fully develop the qualities and capabilities that make it special. In this regard, the brand is more method than media, guided by the brand mission and executed by the brand team. Brand values become business values—the optimal platform for long-term success.

Curating the business from S to XL

A brand can curate a business of any size, from small to extra large. In successful small businesses the brand and the business almost always function as one. There’s no reason for large companies to be any different. Apple and Zappos show how it’s done.

Photo credit: Saul’s Restaurant & Delicatessen

One of the perennial problems in business is that over-exuberant marketing claims can come back to haunt the brand. Essentially, marketing writes checks that the brand can’t cash. When product or service claims can’t be substantiated, or may be seen as misleading, it’s the brand that pays the price. Brand trust—the gold standard of customer relationships—often takes the biggest hit.

Baby Einstein creates a brand trust headache for parent Disney

The New York Times has the story of how the esteemed Disney brand is taking measures to regain brand trust after over-aggressive marketing by its Baby Einstein subsidiary began to take a toll on the Disney brand itself. Disney acquired Baby Einstein in 2001. Baby Einstein’s advertising initially claimed educational benefits from its videos and DVD’s made for infants and toddlers. The claims resulted in a citizen’s group filing a complaint to the FTC alleging deceptive advertising. The FTC eventually dismissed the suit, in part because Baby Einstein scaled back its educational claims.

Separately, a research study at the University of Washington questioned the value of such videos for infant development. Disney defended Baby Einstein from unwarranted conclusions from the study, but currently the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no TV for infants under two years old.

Disney offers a full refund

To help restore confidence in both the Baby Einstein and Disney brands, Disney has announced a full refund for Baby Einstein videos/DVD’s purchased within the last five years. Disney calls this “The Baby Einstein™ DVD Upgrade / Moneyback Guarantee.” You can read the details in the Participation Guidelines.

The importance of brand due diligence

Any M&A activity calls for brand due diligence, an in-depth assessment of the strategic fit between brands. Brand due diligence entails a close review of brand values and brand vision, and how a brand works to create brand trust. When Disney acquired Baby Einstein in 2001, a program of brand due diligence might have uncovered potential brand risks inherent in Baby Einstein’s marketing claims. The Disney brand might have been spared subsequent public disputes with citizen groups and academic institutions—and a large refund.

Since one martini never seems all that productive, I herewith serve up the second pour of my infamous brand quotes. (Part I is here.)  The purpose of these selective sips is to open minds to a world of brands as deep and rewarding as culture itself.

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Brand sensibility

Brand sensibility is the perceptive power to see untapped value in products and customers, and the creative power to bring that value to life.

Brand builder

A sensible type (see above) who creates new markets by creating new customers—through the brand.

Conventional brand icons are their own worst enemies.

Conventional brand icons are their own worst enemies, trapped in their own rigid molds. They’re sitting ducks for brand iconoclasts, the new non-linear brands that spin up in days to create customers on the fly. The new icon is the stream of value, socialized.

Sustainable brands

Brands fueled by customers.

Brand experience

What the product experience can’t do.

How to determine the context of a brand

To determine the context of a brand, ask what the brand is a “brand of.” For a snapshot answer, simply observe its customers. They tell the truth about a brand.

Brand innovation

Brand innovation is the practice of changing the customer’s world beyond expectations. A brand innovates when it frees customers from the constraints of prevailing brands, or commodities, or conventions.  As a rule, innovative brands make new contributions to culture.

Brand emotion

What brands aim for when they can’t deliver brand experience, or brand value.

Brands as creative engagements

For customers, a brand should be a creative engagement with life, opening doors, revealing truths and enabling new selves to be born.

When the brand is complete, the customer is finished.

Brands must continually reinvent themselves and their customers, or drown in message mire. The brand is a shared, open-ended journey. In the old days, brand essence was set in stone to anchor timeless brand monoliths. No more. Today’s customers move faster than brands. The brand mission is to lead with leaps of meaning. Brands are the new map, and metabolic. Act fast. Think small. And iterate, iterate, iterate.

Brands are code

Brands are code. They are algorithms of adventure, discovery and delight. They are written in a language called CUSTOMER. More here, and especially here.

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Sometimes the best way to help a company build its brand is to formulate the brand as a core operating principle of the business. We set aside the brand as a glossy “communication” and dial it down to a short and sweet operating brand principle. We then build it out from there.

To make this happen we first strip away the outer brand layers. We want to situate the brand in the guts of the business, not in some fabricated haze of “meaning.” So out goes the the “brand personality,” the campaign bells and whistles, the culture theory, the 10-pound identity manual, and all the programs and proclamations. The brand that’s left is keyed to the very flesh and bone of the business.

The brand as an operating principle of the business

What we’re looking for is a root form of brand commitment that will function as an operating principle of the business. As such, we want it to accomplish three goals:

1. Ground and guide employee attitudes and behavior
2. Ground and guide corporate behavior, internal and external
3. Define a mutual context that invites interactive exchange with customers, shareholders, the public, and other stakeholders

A brand principle of accountability, quality and trust

We can think of this operating brand principle as an ur principle that establishes three critical frameworks for the brand, and the business:

1. A framework for accountability
2. A framework for quality
3. A framework for trust

As you can see, our “back to basics” approach taps into the values that anchor great companies, and great brands. We are transforming the brand from a business communication to a business predicate. The latter will have far greater impact.

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