The ColaLife Aid Pod sure seems like a great example of “design thinking.” It’s a set of lightweight, form-fit containers designed to carry medicine inside Coca-Cola shipping cases, piggyback style, as the cases are transported from distributors to villages in Third World countries.

See the video.

The ColaLife idea

Here’s the skinny from ColaLife:

ColaLife is a campaign to get Coca-Cola to open up its distribution channels in developing countries to save lives, especially children’s lives, by carrying much needed ’social products’ such as oral rehydration salts and high-dose vitamin A tablets. For the latest on the campaign, please visit the blog. ColaLife is an independent and purely voluntary movement backed by thousands of supporters on its Facebook Group. ColaLife is not an organisation.

Brands are collaborations in context

With this very clever (and designerly) idea, ColaLife is extending the Coca-Cola brand. Brands are collaborations in context between companies and their communities. In this case, the ColaLife folks envision a context where the Coca-Cola transportation network can also function as a brand of health. Getting needed medicines to people is a major distribution problem in many Third World counties. Being able to piggyback medicine distribution on an available (and reliable) transportation network is a plus—and potentially a life-saver.

Opportunities as a “brand of distribution”

In many respects, the Coca-Cola brand is a brand of distribution. You can “like” Coke because you know you’ll always be able to find it. ColaLife presents Coca-Cola with an opportunity to leverage this key element of its brand.

Photo credit: Simon Berry

A brand is at its best when it doesn’t pitch or posture or pretend. It simply becomes a metaphor on the world, endlessly inventive, buoying customers along.

Whole Foods has taken initial steps to create a personal brand application (PBA) that can strengthen its brand ecosystem and develop deeper brand relationships with customers. Potentially, it’s a PBA that can radically differentiate Whole Foods and its customers from the Safeway’s of the world, raising Whole Foods customers to a level of brand experience that other grocers can’t match.

Personal brand applications

Personal brand applications are software applications that deliver brand value on smartphones and similar digital devices. As brand applications they do things, and they’re personal, portable and persistent (always on). They enable the brand to be a partner, sidekick and mentor to customers 24/7.

(You can read more about personal brand applications here, here and here.)

Being enabled is a high-level brand experience

Personal brand applications enable customers to do more, and to be more, consistent with the brand’s vision and innovation roadmap. This sense of enablement is a brand experience. It’s proactive, not passive, the experience of a newly empowered partner and participant. It’s a tremendously powerful and often liberating feeling.

Brands that aim to amuse, flatter, entertain or otherwise “delight” customers are no match for brands with the power to enable.

What the Whole Foods PBA does

The (free) Whole Foods PBA is based on the iPhone/iPod touch platform. It enables customers to enjoy tasty and nutritious food by providing a comprehensive database of 2000 recipes, including nutrition information and tips for preparing meals from what one has in the fridge. As Whole Foods describes it:

Searchable by ingredient, special diets, and other elements like “budget” and “family friendly,” each recipe contains detailed preparation instructions and nutritional information, which can be copied and pasted, saved as a personal “favorite,” and emailed from within the App itself.  The App also includes an “On Hand” feature where customers can enter ingredients and get back meal recommendations.

The brand context of the PBA

At first glance this may seem like a pretty basic smartphone app that helps people chose and cook good food. However, there’s tremendous brand potential in the context of the PBA, where Whole Foods and its customers can team and collaborate in the daily process of eating healthy food and living sustainable lives. That’s a very different brand context than the traditional “grocer” + “shopper” context of supermarkets. It’s a shared context of value chock full of opportunities for personal growth and new market creation.

Whole Foods becomes more than a supermarket brand

The PBA makes Whole Foods more than a brand of organic foods and natural products. Its certainly helps raise Whole Foods beyond your basic supermarket brand. Through the PBA Whole Foods becomes a brand of healthy choices, healthy living, creative cooking, nutrition, sustainability and taste. All this happens at the personal level of the customer, via the iPhone/iPod touch. Brand and customers share and act within a unified, holistic vision, accessed on a daily basis. This shared context extends far beyond the store proper.

A PBA that builds brand trust

An added value of the Whole Foods PBA is that it can help build brand trust at the personal, interactive level. It integrates Whole Foods into a customer’s daily life as a trusted partner. And if Whole Foods ever decides to offer new products down the line, such as health insurance or life insurance, it can leverage the platform of trust created in part by its PBA.

Changing the retail future

Personal brand applications have the power to change the retail future. A retailer can combine store brands with personal brand applications to gain more brand presence (and brand clout)  with customers than packaged “name brands.”  The PBA becomes the connective tissue between retailer and customer, a low cost substitute for the billions of dollars spent by national packaged brands to advertise their goods. The PBA puts the retailer and the customer on the same page, writing it together.

Related post: Brand platform innovation at Whole Foods

Photo credit top : kalebdf – Flickr

Photo inset: Whole Foods

A doomed brand agenda

Howard Stringer has been “transforming” Sony for years, but so far all he has to show for it is the old entrenched Sony with a few younger faces. While other brands are innovating to set customers free (as with that Internet thing) Sony remains a preeminent brand of lock-in and lowered horizons. It innovates for Sony, not for you. That’s a doomed brand agenda.

The “transformed” Sony will be called Samsung

The way it looks now, the “transformed” Sony will be called Samsung. When you’re intent on capturing customers instead of creating them, you’re opening doors for your rivals.

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.

“The amount of advertising needed to sell a product is inversely proportional to the amount of design thinking that went into the product.”

I Tweeted this thought this morning (@brandstrat) in a slightly different version:

The amount of advertising required for a product is inversely proportional to the amount of design thinking that went into it.

In other words, design thinking contains a “viral virtue.” It produces outcomes that can sell themselves through customers, rather than require large-scale campaigns.

Several Re-Tweets by others improved on the original quote in Twitter, so I’m now offering up the version above. It’s still a bit wordy and needs pruning, so feel free to whack away.

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.”

A conceptual PBA for a health brand

If  you’re a health brand you can forsee that eventually everyone’s medical data will be securely stored on their smartphone or similar device, to be downloaded to medical personnel as needed. Where will your brand be when that happens? Will it already be the leading brand of wellness on everyone’s fingertips, as a vital personal brand application? At this early stage of the game, your PBA may start with something as fundamental as this.

A conceptual PBA for a museum

If you’re a museum you command an unmatched context of culture and creativity right out of the box. Everybody wants what you have. Ergo, you are hot. The easiest way for you to deliver unique value through your PBA is to make it the voice/presence of the creators whose work you now curate, and make relevant to the world. Put the insight, wit and wisdom of your artists in the hands of your members through your PBA. Most people want more creativity in their lives; help them find it. Elevate them to a creative platform—through you. For an idea, see the Twitter feed for TheCubist. Now multiply that by 100. Unleash your curators for fresh content.

A conceptual PBA for an automobile maker

A smartphone PBA from an automobile maker might include the following:

1. The owner’s manual in a nice UI, with key sections on how things work, including a troubleshooting guide
2. Emergency procedures for those unimaginable emergencies
3. Email contacts at the carmaker’s HQ for any critical issues
4. Names, addresses and phone numbers of every dealer, in case I need service on a trip
5. Service schedules and reminders; seasonal tips; downloaded recall notices
6. Updated reports from other owners on key problem areas
7. A way to track mileage and gas purchases
8. Accident reporting protocols

Alternatively, such a PBA may be offered by insurance carriers, who have their own reasons for building lasting relationships with automobile owners.

A conceptual PBA for a conference or event

Conferences and events can be messy places. A conference PBA (downloaded on payment) would put the conference at each attendee’s fingertips. Show all the attendees and sponsors with their contact info. List all the speakers and sessions, with updated scheduling changes. Provide a Twitter-like feed that puts all attendees on the same real-time page, maximizing interaction. Include links to all presentations, demos, etc. so that attendees can review these and follow up post conference. List the (major) local hotel numbers, so that if  I meet someone at the conference who’s staying at the Hyatt I can contact them without difficulty.

In other words, this personal brand application would increase the depth and impact of the conference by packing relevant conference content and connectivity into my smartphone—where it would probably stay for quite a while.

Photo: wenzday01 — Flickr

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.

The brand as an application

Old-school brands are often fashioned as symbols, stories and messages calculated to influence customer emotions and perceptions. That was fine for an era of mass media print and broadcast, but the digital era calls for a more direct approach if brands hope to hang with customers. Today people are busy. They’re on the move. Their lives are “small pieces, loosely joined.” They need context clarity, and structure. Brands as “messages” aren’t that useful.

Today’s brand is a value stream of deliverables that customers can use, over and above the product. As software applications PBA’s are personal programs to build customer trust by helping customers connect the dots and get things done, using value streams from the brand. They are the brand as context architect and enabler. They listen. They guide. They advance. They inspire. They empower. And they do so at the touch of a fingertip.

How will your brand application engage your customers?

How will your personal brand application engage and empower your customers? The agenda is up to you.  The potential scope of brand applications includes anything and everything that engages the customer, from the sacred to the profane and back again: spiritual, aesthetic, practical, adventurous, envelope-pushing or chilling out. You pick a context where your brand can 1) enable customers to be more proactive, and 2) provide exclusive value to create the customers that will drive your business forward.

You know your customers and their horizons. You also know your creative and contextual strengths. As their chosen brand, you are your customer’s confidant, mentor and alter (brand) ego. You have the big vision. You know what’s vital. Your PBA is your chance to lead customers on a shared (strategic) brand journey.

Content of a PBA

Every PBA is expected to be personal, relevant, focused, easy (fun) to use, customizable and continually refreshed. A PBA can do many things. Generic content areas would include (within a PBA’s unique mission):

1. Provide needed context, and vision
2. Provide relevant (riveting) truths
3. Simplify difficult choices
4. Help customers break barriers
5. Share profound/witty/hilarious insights
6. Connect and advance like individuals
7. Guide customers through major challenges/passages
8. Help customers to get things done (in high-value situations)
9. Create proactive customers (that can advance the brand)
10. Engage the imagination; stimulate innovation (to be fed back to the brand)

As appropriate, a PBA can also entertain. A suite of PBA’s may include some killer games.

Where to start in developing a PBA

Your personal brand application is a main driver of your customer creation strategy. It’s fundamental to how you design your customers. You can begin to scope out the context, functionality and deliverables of your PBA by addressing these questions:

1. In the broadest context, where are our customers going?
2. What is holding our customers back?
3. How can our PBA advance customers beyond the reach of competitors?
4. What deep intelligence do we possess that might be transformed into a stunningly unique PBA that could re-shape our markets—or create new market spaces?

Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy has strategic tools that can be used to map out potential directions available to a PBA.

Use PBA’s to expand your brand context

In brands, context is king, and a personal brand application is a hand-held context engine, ready to extend your brand context (and reach) across current and new customers. A PBA enables a brand to engage customers in new and/or deeper levels of context, beyond the product proper, and beyond conventional media and market boundaries.

Nike and Apple were proto-pioneers in PBA’s with their iPod-based Nike+. The same concept, raised to the power of an app on a smartphone, would resemble a PBA. A narrow PBA from Nike could be about running, or fitness. A more ambitious PBA might raise the Nike context to local outdoor activities in general, elevating Nike to a higher context platform. More broadly, a  Nike PBA might develop a Nike context of sustainable environmental choices, if Nike desired a leading brand presence in that space.

A personal brand application can carry the brand into new domains–consistent with its vision. And brand domains are markets in the making.

The insight, wisdom, sense and sensibility of the brand creates the  context of its PBA, opening new areas of brand engagement in the process.

The difference between a smartphone app and a PBA

The difference between a regular smartphone app and a personal brand application is this: the regular app is designed to perform a specific function; the PBA is designed to re-define brand value and create a strategic class of customers. It does this by advancing customers to a new context, as in the hypothetical Nike example above.

A fashion retailer’s online site that’’s accessible via a smartphone browser is not a PBA if all it does is present product information and enable online sales. Brands run deeper. What that retailer might do is aim to become an exclusive fashion guide beyond its own store, with a more global PBA. Such a (hypothetical) PBA would be several generations beyond this current iPhone fashion app.

Exclusive or free?

Many personal brand applications may be free downloads, or even web apps, but there’s a strong business argument to make PBA’s so compellingly useful that they command a premium price. The most treasured PBA’s will be exclusive apps of elite circles of achievement.

PBA platform and structure

A PBA can be a native app, written for the OS of the handset, or a web app, even a widget on steroids. Mobile OS platforms rich enough to support gaming and intuitive user interfaces include iPhone, Nokia, BlackBerry, Google’s Android, Palm Pre and Microsoft. Current iPhone apps show the stunning advances possible with multi-touch technology.

You may decide that your brand is best served by a mashup, or by a suite of online apps and mashups that represent your brand value stream. There’s nothing wrong with being a ringmaster of mobile brand value.

Are PBA’s social apps?

First and foremost, PBA’s are customer apps, but they are potentially more powerful with social software capabilities. PBA’s may need to work with Twitter, Yahoo Meme or Google Wave, to name only some of the potential PBA partners/resources in social software. The goal is not to lose customers in the social app, but to advance them strategically through an optimal set of resources. (They’re advancing to new markets you have waiting downstream.)

PBA’s can elevate brands to cultural leadership

A primary benefit of PBA’s is that they elevate brands to active roles of positive cultural leadership, far above brands as stylized sales stimulants or ginned up myths and messages. At the level of culture, brands have no boundaries. In this regard, PBA’s become the beacon lights of a company’s core values, insights and imagination mapped to the cultural canvas, above and beyond its products. Expect strong PBA’s from innovative companies (or organizations) with value-based brands and sustainable social vision.

PBA’s can elevate small creative companies into new realms of prominence by enabling them to “steal the customer culture” from established brand icons.

Personal brand applications: the road ahead

The advent of personal brand applications makes this is a great time for brand builders. PBA’s are poised to inaugurate an era of brand creativity focused on delivering unique customer value in new and engaging contexts, where the brands can make an active contribution to personal growth and culture. In this process, PBA’s will have the power to make brands the avant garde of business innovation.

NOTE: For some conceptual examples of PBA content, see this post.

Photo: Apple iPhone