Brands Create Customers

A brand, when properly constructed, helps its customers interoperate with the universe. Yes, it works at that level, and on those many, many levels in between. Let’s not forget that the genius of brands is that they have no limits. The value of brands is that through them, customers have no limits.

So yes, brands are big picture tools, for very big spaces. They help customers get from A to B, and to worlds beyond.

Wayfinding should be baked into brands

Brands negate the void, and the abyss. The best brands are a form of cultural orientation, and leadership. They certainly lead us on a directed brand journey of their own invention. Thus, some element of wayfinding should be baked into brands.

Brands might embrace new forms of signs and signage, directional cues as cultural cues, at all sorts of scale and resolution, the more personal the better.

Personal brand applications will have a key role to play in these developments. They can transform brands into a mobile sense, leading customers into (and through) new terrains. (A brand has no future if all it can do is lead customers in circles.)

A Slate series on signage

Slate has a nice series on signage and wayfinding beginning with The secret language of signs. It’s rudimentary signage, and for starters, not a bad place to begin.

Map the world and your customers will follow

In its series Slate has interesting examples of hand drawn maps, and how they can provide more meaningful/useful/human information than conventional maps. Yep, in brands we’re also in the mapping business.

How does your brand map the world? The universe? Customer want to know.

Every so often I review and update my New Brand Glossary, adding terms from recent posts, or filling in apparent gaps between terms. This version is Update 4 to the original glossary, first published in 2006.

Why create a new brand glossary?

Brands are long overdue for a glossary of new concepts, terms and definitions tuned to an age of collaborative, bottom-up brands, where companies use brands to team with customers to innovate and create new forms of customer value.

This brand glossary is different

You’ll note little similarity between the terms and definitions here and those of conventional brand practice. That’s because most conventional brand approaches are campaigns to contain and control customers, rather than create them. In so doing they condemn themselves to run in circles, unable to innovate themselves (and their customers) out of a self-imposed corral.

Specific problems with traditional brand glossaries

Traditional brand glossaries often seem archaic and shallow today because they’re predicated on a narrow vision of brands as top-down, stylized sales stimulants. Traditional brand glossaries are typically written from an ad agency perspective, where “brand” is an emotional tool for persuading customers. Traditional glossaries usually assume a passive customer “audience” for brand messaging campaigns, where the brand aspires to be a “belief system” that serves the company’s interests. In this view, brands aim to be timeless (static) “icons” worshiped by “consumers,” who are positioned as little more than sheep with credit.

Traditional brand glossaries are therefore largely glossaries of control. The brands they describe really don’t do much for customers—except to keep them in place.

A glossary of brand innovation

In contrast to the traditional brand glossary, this is a glossary of value-based brands and of brand innovation. It contains concepts, terms and definitions for a new era of brands designed to foment new business by creating new customer opportunities. The essence of these brands is collaboration, not control. These brands create proactive new customers who leave old brands—and old companies—far behind.

Where I can’t stretch old brand concepts to fit new realities, I invent new concepts and new terms. Many of these concepts and terms are the subjects of full web posts in the Brands Create Customers weblog. (Check out the Key Posts section for examples).

This glossary is very much a work in progress. Your insights and comments are welcome, as is the dialog we can create.

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Architecture of Participation

A brand model that favors customer interaction and initiative through the brand, leading to bottom-up innovation and new market growth. It stands in sharp contrast to the top-down, command-and-control architectures of legacy brands. Companies choose an architecture of participation when they desire to team with customers to build new markets.

Brand

Brands are tools that enable customers to interoperate 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.

Brands encompass many dimensions. The following definitions touch upon key parameters:

Brand (Core Definition)
Brands are avenues of value innovation in a creative engagement between companies and their customers.

Brand (1)
A brand is vertically integrated value.

Brand (2)
Your brand is one of your capabilities. It extends your ability to deliver open-ended value to customers. When properly executed, it accelerates customers to a new realm of fulfillment which you create, and which only you can sustain.

Brand (3)
Brand is a non-commodity experience. It can grow from a product or service, a company’s character, or from artful wrappers that sharpen customer perceptions. The essence of non-commodity experience is passion. Your brand has to have it.

Brand (4)
Strategically, the way you value your customer defines your brand. A brand that treats its customers as commodities (purely to be sold to) wastes much of its potential.

Brand (5)
Brands are programs to achieve company growth through customer growth. As programs they invoke two critical perspectives: 1) “the customer inside the product,” and 2) “the customer inside the company.” Weak brands distance the customer. Strong brands open their arms.

Brand API’s

Brand API’s are application program interfaces. They provide convenient latch points for customers to grab onto brands and advance themselves through the brand. The best API’s help convert customer initiative into better brand content, context and value.

To see a brand API in action, visit Apple’s App Store.

Brand Character

Functionally, brand character is the spine of a company. It’s evident when a company is accountable to the values that make it stand tall. This means accountability in action, not on paper. Brand character draws a line that moral weakness cannot cross.

Companies with character create brands with character. Brands with character lead.

Brand Chain

The brand chain begins where the classic supply chain ends. While the supply chain is made up of value-adding inputs leading to the product, the brand chain begins with product development and heads toward the customer. Through brand platforms and programs it delivers multiple forms of downstream value. The brand chain consists of creative brand interactions between customer and company, customer and product, and between customers themselves.

Brand Context

Brand context is the unique world of opportunity that a brand presents to customers. It’s the real deal of possibilities that the brand incarnates, and enables, across all human dimensions: creative, social, personal, emotional, spiritual and moral.

Brand context is human texture. It’s the opposite of artificial worlds fabricated by hype, spin, and distortion. (These are aspects of propaganda, not brands.)

A brand’s context is only as “relevant” as the customer opportunities it creates.

(more…)

In a previous post, Brand lessons from the BP oil disaster, I framed my discussion by asking: Did BP fail its brand; or did the brand fail BP? In this post I’ll explore these two failure modes in greater depth. A brand failure like BP’s might arise from using the wrong brand model, which no amount of execution can save, or by employing a correct brand model but failing to implement it properly, especially at the management level.

What caused the BP brand to go off track?

I’m looking for causal factors that might explain why the BP brand went off track, resulting in the blowout disaster and massive pollution. Future hearings, investigations and court cases should provide us with much more data than available now. This is a preliminary snapshot, nothing more. My goal is to posit some basic brand rules applicable to all brands, in whatever business or organization. I’m using BP as a provisional case study.

(And to those who might argue, “You know, you really can’t separate brand strategy, brand model and brand execution” I’d say I agree philosophically, but I’m forcing such a separation here for analysis purposes.)

How can a brand “fail the company?”

The brand itself can fail the company when it’s the wrong brand approach for the business. This is a brand model/brand strategy issue, as I see it, in which a brand can fail the company in two ways. The first is when the brand model can’t advance the company and its customers beyond the reach of competitors. The brand doesn’t create competitive advantage, and the business suffers as a result. In the second (and far more serious) case, the brand fails to optimize internal operations, and in so doing actually increases business risk. The result may be a quality breakdown, or even a business breakdown. In both the first and second cases, a company has the wrong brand model for the job.

The perils of an “image campaign”

My “sense” is that brands most often fail the company when the brand is positioned as a stylized sales stimulant, in an “image campaign” of advertising and promotion. The resulting brand isn’t part of the meat and bones of the business. When stressed the core business can founder, with notable weak points being innovation and quality.

Signs that a brand might fail the company

Here are some specific signs (as I see them) where a brand might be in danger of failing the company:

1. The “brand” is defined as a media campaign that promotes the brand identity. It exists as part of the company’s persuasion and promotion package. (E.g., “Beyond Petroleum.”)
2. The brand doesn’t state what it values, and why. (And the brand is no guide to what’s right and what’s wrong inside the company.)
3. The brand makes no commitments.
4. The brand doesn’t define a clear chain of accountability.
5. The brand is largely decoupled from day-to-day operations. As a brand, it’s mostly symbols and slogans. It is not a working brand.
6. The brand relies heavily on myths and make believe, further divorcing it from day-to-day realities. (The brand also plays little role in innovation, quality and value creation.)
7. There’s nothing visceral in the brand for employees (and customers). It has a “Wizard of Oz” feel to it. Lots of smoke and mirrors, and a very big curtain.

How can a company “fail the brand?”

Let’s now look at the other side of the question: How can a company “fail the brand?” Here we assume a brand that’s properly structured within an effective brand strategy. The brand is OK, but the company prevents it from achieving its objectives.

Signs where a company is in danger of failing its brand

Here are some specific signs (as I see them) where a company might be in danger of failing its brand:

1. Management believes that the brand’s sole purpose is to make the company look good. The brand has no internal value beyond the “image appeal” it can generate externally.
2. Management positions itself above the brand. It doesn’t exemplify brand values in its actions, nor does it lead the brand by example.
3. No one in management is accountable to the brand. (Or accountable to brand values.)
4. The brand does not fuel the corporate culture. It’s decoupled from business decisions.
5. The brand is treated as a form of communication, rather than a method of optimizing operations. It’s kept as a messaging layer.
6. The brand team (if there is one) has no authority. It’s marginalized into a feel-good adjunct of marketing and corporate PR.
7. Management treats the brand as a financial “asset.” In this accounting mode the brand loses its position as a core value-set and tool for best practices.

And in BP’s case, perhaps “both”

In my previous post on BP (link above) I suggested that, based on preliminary indications, BP’s brand failure in the Deepwater Horizon blowout was probably a combination of both failure modes: a brand that failed the company, and BP management that failed the brand. Maybe more of the first than the second,. In time more facts will help clarify what actually transpired prior to the blowout, and may reveal other brand issues as well.

Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue — Flickr

In an example of brand innovation Google Labs has released App Inventor for Android, a desktop (browser) application intended to make creating Android apps fast and easy. According to Google, no programming knowledge is required. One simply drags and drops blocks of pre-packaged code into a composing screen, and the app is generated.

At this point the App Inventor is fairly rudimentary, and the demo apps appear somewhat simple. Wait a few months, however, and we all might be surprised with the apps that  result. One observer calls App Inventor “a game changer.”

An excellent example of brand innovation

I see App Inventor as an excellent example of brand innovation. With App Inventor Google is putting more power in the hands of Android users. It’s enabling them to do more of what they want with Android, shaping apps to their personal or particular needs. These will be apps in the pure context of the customer, and as such they can build significant brand depth. They’re also at the edge of the brand ecosystem, and that gives the brand new territory to enter and explore. That’s what personal brand applications are all about.

Personal Apps or Corporate Apps?

Google provides an example of a personal Android app in the video below, but there’s nothing stopping businesses from developing their own Android apps for sales, marketing or operations. A delivery business might find use for such an app, because one of the functions is geo-location. And if the Android OS powers the (rumored) Google tablet, these apps may work on the Google tablet, too. That could open up more possibilities.

Types of applications possible

Quoting from Google Labs:

	Because App Inventor provides access to a GPS-location sensor, you can build apps that know where you are. You can build an app to help you remember where you parked your car, an app that shows the location of your friends or colleagues at a concert or conference, or your own custom tour app of your school, workplace, or a museum.
	You can write apps that use the phone features of an Android phone. You can write an app that periodically texts “missing you” to your loved ones, or an app “No Text While Driving” that responds to all texts automatically with “sorry, I’m driving and will contact you later”. You can even have the app read the incoming texts aloud to you (though this might lure you into responding).

App Inventor in education

App Inventor may have important educational uses. See the video here from the University of San Francisco.

Google video and demo app

Here is an introductory video from Google showing the app development process and a completed app:

One thing fairly certain about brands is that brands that live in the past eventually stay there. Brands innovate, or die. In other words, your brand is not your legacy. Your brand is your tomorrow. It’s your brand innovation that writes your future. Backward-facing brands are kaput.

Apple’s brand story: wildfire innovation

Apple understands this principle and innovates like wildfire, advancing its customers to new realms of value: iPod, iPhone and now iPad. Each step forward explodes the limitations of legacy approaches. In their place Apple enables new ways of being and doing, in new contexts where customers are better-off. That’s what brands are supposed to do.

Microsoft: chained to a legacy brand

In contrast to Apple’s ardent innovation, Microsoft is chained to a legacy brand, its brand of market power stemming from the desktop monopoly that Microsoft forged in the 1990′s. Microsoft drags this legacy everywhere, like an anchor, in a vain hope of installing the past on the future.

Unfortunately, Microsoft can’t make its old brand form fit the new multi-platform world. The Microsoft brand, initially a liberating force in corporate America, now creeps like a pall. It’s heritage hangs likes a curse. There’s brand failure everywhere, most recently with the Microsoft Kin, a highly-touted mobile phone scrapped just two months after launch.

These failures weigh heavily on Microsoft employees, the makers of Microsoft’s future. Their comments on the Kin debacle in Mini-Microsoft describe a backward-facing brand in full dysfunction.

Interesting article in Ars Technica on how Intel employs ethnographers, anthropologists and other social scientists to help it define reference sets of customers for its new System on a Chip (SOC) designs. This is a smart move by Intel to position itself in the customer creation process. Intel fabs a customer context with each SOC design. (SOC’s are the heart of handhelds and similar digital devices and will drive the future of portable computing.)

(I say “fabs a customer” because Intel is famed as the world’s greatest fabricator of microchips.)

Creating a customer—by proxy

Intel doesn’t make consumer goods, and it doesn’t sell its chips to you and me. It sells them to manufacturers who put them in their products. So how does Intel make sure that its SOC’s will meet the needs of real consumer markets—or help create those markets?

From the Ars Technica article:

The ethnographers essentially stand in for OEM devicemakers, in that they provide Intel with market-oriented input into the kinds of products that the company should be designing SOC’s for. In other words, the user experience researchers can function as substitute “customers,” so that Intel can iterate its products internally in conversation with a kind of “market.”

The end result . . .  is a set of “reference experiences”—basically complete, market-ready products with everything up to and including the interface already designed by Intel and run internally through a product development process that includes ethnographers. These products are then labeled as “reference designs” and offered to what are essentially resellers, who can either take the whole thing, re-badge it, and go to market, or replace parts of it with some of their own engineering.

To me, this is creating a customer by proxy, an enlightened marketing initiative. The result is that Intel’s SOC’s are really more than “systems on a chip.” They’re markets on a chip. Or, when fine tuned, they’re potentially customers on a chip.

Is Intel destined to be an ingredient brand?

Is a powerhouse like Intel forever destined to be an ingredient brand, buried in someone else’s products, etched in cold silicon and never feeling the hot product passion from customer hands? I don’t think so. You’re an ingredient brand by choice. By using design ethnography Intel has migrated from being an ingredient in a device to being an ingredient in a customer context. That’s a monumental step upward. It points toward a growing capability to develop a full (passionate) consumer brand downstream—if that’s what Intel should want.

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

The new Apple iPhone 4 has some stellar HD video capabilities, and the following clip showcases what they can do in professional hands. It’s a pretty amazing feat for a smartphone, especially since the video was edited on the iPhone itself. (See the extra “behind the scenes” feature for details.)

Record a brand story anywhere your phone goes

How might this technology affect your brand? Well, anything worth sharing about your brand can now be told visually—and creatively—anywhere your phone goes, with decent production values. Just whip out your iPhone 4—or fairly soon, no doubt, any of its direct competitors—and assemble your brand story. But don’t delay. Your customers (and competitors) will be sharing brand stories, too.

SOURCE: “Apple of My Eye” – an iPhone 4 film – UPDATE: Behind the scenes footage included from Michael Koerbel on Vimeo.