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

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.

In brands we make a very clear distinction between brands and labels. Here’s how I see it:

The difference between a brand and a label is that a brand leads, while a label follows you around.

That’s right: brands lead. Brands create opportunities for customers and lead them toward qualitatively better lives. Brands lead customers toward new shapes of self, and toward new forms of being and doing. And yes, brands lead by example.

Take the T-shirt test

Quick test: check that T-shirt you’re wearing. Is it taking you somewhere you’d never reach without it? Or is it just following you around? If it’s leading you somewhere special, and your feet just skim the ground, you’re wearing a brand. Otherwise, you’re stitched to a label.

And here’s a corollary:

Brands make things happen. Labels tag along.

Brands open doors—big ones. They help us interoperate with the universe. Labels help you sort things in a drawer.

Let’s unpack this distinction a bit.

Brands lead us on a unique journey

A brand, when properly developed, leads us on a unique journey, from high adventure to inner peace, and to a thousand points between. The brand embarks on a venture beyond the status quo. It’s going somewhere interesting, and it asks us to join the crew.

Labels bring up the rear

In contrast, labels bring up the rear. They don’t invent, innovate, incite or inspire. They’re inventory. They have their place (on a shelf), but it’s the brand that connects with customers and flies out the door.

Frankly, labels are stuck: on a garment, on a bottle or on a package. Buy the label and you’re stuck, too.

From label to brand package

Brands elevate the label to the brand package. The brand package wraps the customer, the company and the product in the brand journey. Soaring above and beyond the product, it’s the ticket to ride.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

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

Fred Oliveira has written a concise and cogent account of the decline and fall of MySpace: It’s too late for MySpace.

People don’t “get” MySpace anymore … because MySpace doesn’t get itself. What is it? What’s their motto? What problem are they solving? Who and what are they connecting? No one in the audience has a clue and I’m guessing (although it is an informed guess) not many in the company do either. It’s not for music, it’s definitely not for social sharing, so what is it for?

What happened to MySpace can happen to any brand. There are powerful brand lessons (and brand insights) in Fred’s post.

Highly recommended.

Update: The quote was missing from my initial post.

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It’s not too early to discern some strategic brand lessons from BP’s horrific oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. BP is a global oil giant with a highly visible (and controversial) brand identity: a major oil company that’s positioned itself as “beyond petroleum.” Yet today the BP brand is smothered in oil as far as the eye can see, a symbol (and agent) of massive pollution.

Why the BP disaster is a big deal for brands

The BP oil disaster is a big deal for brands because it marks a catastrophic failure of a top-tier brand. As such, it stands to have far-reaching consequences that will play out in time across all brands. At this early stage, three immediate “big deal” factors stand out to my mind:

1. BP has become the antithesis of its proclaimed identity. It has gored its own icon. How could that happen to a billion-dollar brand?
2. We may be witnessing the greatest sudden loss of brand trust by a company in the history of business. This is much more than a brand doing a poor job of crisis management. It appears that the BP brand took its eye off the ball and allowed the crisis to happen, a transgression no brand—or business— can afford.
3. Events suggest that BP’s reliance on “positioning,” “messaging” and “mindshare” (an advertising approach to brands) helped decouple the brand from operational realities. The resulting BP brand was “positioned in the mind” of a campaign audience but had diminished presence in BP’s drilling operations, where it was desperately needed before and after the blowout. Current cost of this disconnect: $2 billion (and growing).

What are the long term brand consequences?

As I see it, the BP oil disaster will contribute to a reassessment of the conventional “mindshare” approach to brands that treats brands as media artifacts in a persuasion package to shape perceptions. This superficial “branding” approach can blind the brand to operational issues desperately in need of brand direction. There’s growing evidence that this is exactly what happened in BP’s case. The brand outcome is the full story. It can’t be bottled in a mindshare campaign.

Due to the enormity of BP’s brand failure I’d expect to see a new emphasis on brands  as a method of delivering operating value, rather than symbolic campaigns. In this structured brand value approach, brand principles and priorities directly drive business decisions, with a brand’s full emotional force. This is a working brand of company culture, rather than campaigns.

What went wrong with the BP brand?

What went wrong with the BP brand? The framing question, as I see it, is this: Did BP fail its brand? Or did the brand fail BP? At present, I’d say the answer is “Both.”

We also want answers to related questions: Were there critical flaws in the BP brand approach? In the brand model? In the brand strategy? In brand program execution? Was the problem weak brand leadership? Or was the brand simply marginalized, relegated to media campaigns and decoupled from essential company operations (e.g., brand practice in the oilfield) where it might have made a difference?

If the BP brand was indeed “beyond petroleum,” what precise vision and values guided BP’s oil production business, and its dedicated employees? BP’s 80-page  Code of Conduct, “Our commitment to integrity,” makes no mention of the BP brand. How is that possible?

Not surprisingly, other oil companies are distancing themselves from BP’s oilfield practices.

A note about this post

I’m writing this as events unfold, so my assessments are preliminary. I’m also aware that BP is not the only company with responsibilities in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. My focus here is on brands as a form of strategic and operational leadership, and that means a focus on BP.

With a failing brand, BP’s troubles just keep gushing

When a brand fails, everything fails, and BP’s travails certainty point to systematic brand failure. We have BP’s CEO being raked over the coals in the US Congress. BP is currently facing possible criminal charges, accusations of cover-ups, fines of up to $258 million per day, and accusations of blocking reporters from covering the story. There are also serious allegations that BP had been cutting corners on safety.

BP’s brand failings have jeopardized the credibility of the oil industry itself, and will certainly lead to greater—and more costly—industry regulation.

What’s especially troubling is that these are the kinds of breakdowns in quality that brand programs are designed to prevent. A more effective BP brand program might have saved the $20 billion that BP must now set aside in escrow to pay for environmental and community damages.

The BP brand could have been a hero and shining star in this tragic episode.  Currently, it bleeds copious amounts of trust with every passing day.

Basic brand lessons

What follows are some basic brand lessons from the BP oil disaster as I see them at the present time. 7

1. “Positioning” the brand where the core business isn’t (in BP’s case, “beyond petroleum”) puts the brand at risk.

The BP oil catastrophe may herald the end of artificial “brand positioning” as an element of brand strategy. Under its striking Helios logo BP claimed a high-profile positioning as a “green” renewable energy leader “beyond petroleum.” As such, the BP brand was aiming for a make-believe category in people’s minds, since BP’s business was petroleum for the foreseeable future. Instead of being an enlightened brand of  innovative and responsible oil production, where 99% of its business resided, BP apparently let its “beyond petroleum” positioning blind it to a disturbing pattern of  risky design practices and short-cuts over a decade of operations.

In the real world, it’s the vision and values at the operations level that position the brand—and the business—to succeed.

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Patent information sites like Patently Apple (which covers Apple’s patent and trademark activity) remind us that patents often point toward larger strategies, or sets of strategies, beyond the details of the patent itself. Such patent-fueled strategies can have powerful downstream effects on competing brands in the same or adjacent markets. That’s why every brand sharpens its competitive analysis at the substrate (patent) level. My rule of thumb (erring on the conservative side) is that “Today’s patents are tomorrow’s brand strategies.” From a brand perspective, a patent can mark a potential path toward a new kind of customer, in a new customer platform, in a new market.

For the patent illustrated above, see Patently Apple’s full discussion here. The comments are informative.

Which way does this patent point?

While a site like Patently Apple is no substitute for in-depth competitive analysis, it may sometimes reveal the strategic brand intent behind new patent activity. In reviewing a patent, one might ask these questions: What new kind of customer could this patent create? What’s the intended platform? What customer dots does it connect? Can it lead to a new level of customer experience?  Could it change the current customer context and in so doing change the game for current market players? What new market(s) might it create?

It’s the customer inside the patent that counts

From a brand perspective, it’s the (latent) customer inside the patent that counts. In the best of worlds, a patent would  be conceived and executed within a strategy of brand innovation, so that the patent protects a unique domain of customer creation. In effect, the patent is the legal launch of a new kind of customer.

It also should be noted that sometimes the latent customer inside a patent may not be apparent to the patent applicant. This leaves the door open for competitors with better customer vision.

Mapping patents to a customer canvas

The real challenge in a brand analysis of patents comes in mapping patents to a forward-focused customer canvas, one containing different models of newly-empowered customers that the patent(s) might create. It’s always exciting when a patent points toward a new kind of customer beyond the conventional marketing model, where the patent itself is but one tiny step in a far-reaching roadmap—or better yet, brand journey.

Image source: Patently Apple

If your company has a Facebook page, be advised that your Facebook page is your No. 1 flagship store. It is your brand completely laid open to the world, with at least 300 million Facebook members invited to share your space with their personal appreciations, advice, comments and perspectives. It isn’t a physical space, of course, like a usual retail flagship. It’s a flagship of your brand character, brand values and brand behavior, in an ongoing dialogue with all your Facebook “fans.”

On Facebook, a brand transacts its future

No money changes hands on a brand’s Facebook page, but what does transact is a brand-driven social and moral exchange that’s every bit as important. In effect, on Facebook every brand transacts its future. Brands are judged on Facebook across social, moral and political dimensions that may well determine a brand’s future. What is the brand’s agenda? Where is it leading the world? How is it a force for good? What are its positions on vital issues A, B and C? Does the brand listen? Does it speak with a human voice, or is it a PR bullhorn? Prepare your Facebook flagship to answer these questions. They will be asked.

Over time, a brand’s Facebook page can reveal a brand’s blind spots, program shortfalls and inefficiencies. Brand ready to listen—and to act—can translate this experience into strategic opportunities.

There are no pedestals on Facebook

There are no pedestals on Facebook. Brands are tenants on a page, co-equals with everyone else. On Facebook the brand is brought down to earth, shorn of its corporate cloak,  poked and prodded, queried, challenged, and perhaps told to shape up here and there—just like any new member of the crew. This process is called brand engagement. It’s a two-way street. Brands can’t script it. They learn from it. And what they learn can be invaluable.

It’s your flagship, but many of the flags aren’t yours

What’s unique about your flagship presence on Facebook is that many of the flags won’t be yours. They’ll belong to your “fans,”  in the shape of the eye-catching profile images that grace their comments. In very rare cases your Facebook page may be visited by individuals or pressure groups with their own causes, as the recent Nestle brand crisis so vividly demonstrated. Flying their own flags, these “fans” may try to turn your own identity against you, possibly using variations of your symbols and trademarks for their own campaigns.

Strong brands can take steps to preclude such eventualities, and can handle unexpected events  if they do occur. On the other hand, a weak or backward-facing brand may be overwhelmed by aggressive fan behavior on what it considers its proprietary Facebook turf. Worse, it may find itself in a nightmare of its own making if it reacts by dictating rules of behavior to the “fans” who share its page.

Flagship brand, Facebook culture

In the brick and mortar world a company will use its retail flagships to help build a unique brand culture, every square inch designed to amplify the brand experience.  On Facebook, a brand’s flagship presence must be built within the neutral Facebook frame, and within the Facebook culture. This is a culture that sees itself as open, egalitarian, informal, tolerant, supportive and respectful. That’s the culture your brand must embrace. Brands that come across as patronizing, arrogant, corporatist or legalistic invite a serious culture clash, which the brand can’t win.

A brand’s Facebook page is social property, not private property.

A brand’s Facebook page is social property, not private property. It can’t be structured as a walled garden where the brand promotes itself from behind the parapets. The purpose of the brand is not to privatize but to socialize, by leading its customers (and Facebook “fans”) to better ways of being and doing (that can also build the business). Brands are their outcomes. The more social the outcome, the stronger the brand. You fly your flags with verve and grace and wit and style and compassion. If your flags fly true, your Facebook fans will follow.