Bringing Brands to Life in an Era of Disruptive Change: Part 2 of 2

In the previous article in this two-part series, I discussed the three key factors driving the evolution of marketing. Now, let's focus on strategies to address these factors.

The first factor is the need to maintain a brand essence that is both differentiated and realistic. This often proves to be the long-term undoing of even the most sophisticated and successful companies in an industry. Often, as innovative players experience rapid success and growth, they begin to lose focus on those things that make the brand compelling, unique and "real" to their end customers. Products and brands mushroom into a plethora of solutions that address every conceivable niche. Choices become almost overwhelming and require significant self-selection by customers. Brand equity begins to dissipate, and consumers begin to lose sight of what made the brand proposition appealing in the first place.

In this situation, it's often as important to understand what your brand and company are "not" as it is to understand what made your brand appealing in the first place. Customers in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer roles seek brands that inherently connect with their overt and latent needs and communicate that essence of connection across every interaction.

Apple underwent this challenge, and successfully responded to it, in the late 1990s. After years of chasing every conceivable market niche in the PC industry, the company had over a dozen separate lines of Macintosh desktop and laptop computers, many of which overlapped with each other. Once perceived as an icon of simplicity and flexibility, the Macintosh brand had burgeoned into an unmanageable portfolio of different models sold through different channels -- with even Apple marketing and sales personnel having difficulty in recommending which computer system best met the needs of a given potential customer.

The company made the radical decision of cutting the model lineup by over 75% to just four basic lines -- one laptop and desktop model each for consumer and business customers. After restoring the simplicity of its product line, the company next turned its attention to channel differentiation, creating unique store environments within resellers, and launching its own highly successful retail store business to ensure that it had greater ability to maintain that simplicity.

As a result of those moves, Apple's brand proposition once again became solidly positioned as an easy-to-use, simple and integrated solution, with an associated experience that is consistent in every level of interaction with the brand itself. The firm gave up on certain segments of the market, such as low-cost mass-produced consumer PCs, yet gained market share and saw revenues soar to record levels. Consumers had reconnected with the premise of the brand and were no longer confused.

The second factor is ensuring consistent delivery of the brand promise. Even after a company has established the fundamental elements of its brand essence, and developed a compelling story to take to the marketplace, many fail to deliver fully on the customer expectation around the entire experience of interaction with the brand. For example, if an electronics brand positions itself as a "premium professional high-end" brand, yet lacks accessible technical support, its brand equity suffers. If an automotive manufacturer develops a luxury brand that offers a dealership and maintenance experience that is no different from its more pedestrian brands, the premium brand lacks luster.

When Nissan launched its Infiniti premium brand in the United States, the focus was not oriented towards the feature set of the car, or even the styling, but rather the ownership experience. Dealers were well-positioned to offer a premium environment from the sale through to service, for the entire life of the vehicle. The driving dynamics of the product line were also distinct. A "cult following" of loyal Infiniti drivers emerged as a result of these activities, creating one of the lowest-churn and highest loyalty automobile brands launched in the last 20 years. By creating a consistently excellent experience around the Infiniti brand, Nissan was able to move beyond a price-driven market and create a premium revenue segment that remains an important part of its business.

Finally, the third factor is the maintenance of meaningful customer dialogue. Brands that listen and respond to customers are consistently more profitable and have a greater degree of loyalty than traditional mass-communication brands that focus on one-way, top-down communications pushed out to consumers.

There is no shortage of companies that are attempting to initiate this dialogue, but only a few do it truly well. One of the best is Google, which understands that the "Google experience" reaches out beyond just its own communications efforts and product/service portfolio. The company has successfully built a culture of technical excellence and ingenuity that is embedded in each of its solutions, but has equally created a meaningful dialogue with customers through a number of channels. It is physically present at a number of events, keeping its brand and story current outside of cyberspace. It encourages employees to blog about technology, networking, and communications, stimulating dialogue that contributes to perception of the firm as an industry leader. It also employs business and systems intelligence that uniquely respond to the actions, preferences, and desires of individual users, creating a passionate and committed userbase that views its offerings as difficult to replace -- even in "commodity" areas like e-mail and search engines. Deployment of business intelligence that historically lived in the data center, rather than the marketing office, has become Google's most important marketing expenditure.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you craft a strategy to adapt to the evolving marketing landscape:

* How genuine is our brand promise? Are we making the promise because consumers found it compelling, or merely because it sounded good at the time? Is the promise credible? Can we deliver on the promise in every venue where our consumers encounter the brand -- retail, online, advertising, telephone interactions, resellers, agents, etc.? What do we have to change within our operations to make the promise come to life in every interaction with customers? How are we going to track how well we perform in delivering on the promise?

* What is the essence of our brand? Are new products, services or venues that we're thinking of pursuing compatible with that essence? How are we different from the other players in the space -- present and future?

* What sort of experience are we building around the brand promise? Are we consistently in places -- real or virtual -- where customers expect us to be? Are we surprising and delighting our customers by appearing in places where they might not have expected us, but where we can add value?

* How are we listening to customers? What are we doing to create meaningful interactions with our customers that go beyond a standard "form letter reply?" Are we working to facilitate dialogue in every possible channel? Do our customers view us as a dynamic and accessible brand? What are we doing to reinforce our commitment to customer needs in a proactive real-world fashion?

Businesses that have good answers to these questions are well on the way to owning successful 21st century brands.

Brian R. Miller, Director-Consulting and Strategy, Sparks