Brand Relevance vs. Preference

If your customers can choose a product from you or from your competition and only compare prices, quality, customer experience or service, your business is faced with a Brand Preference Competition. In other words, you are operating in the exact same market with your competition without having a real unique selling proposition. In this case, you have only been making incremental innovations to your products or services, and you only win over your competition because your brand is better than the competition.

However, if you can make substantial innovations to your product or service, your brand wins because there is no competition. Your improvements have become a must-have to your customers. David Aaker calls this Brand Relevance Competition. He says companies should look at underserved segments and watch their customers closely to find out what substantial improvement can increase their brand's relevance. Marriott has done just that by observing hotel guests and developed a substantial improvement in several areas. They stepped in the shoes of guests to find out where their pain points were.
Aaker also mentioned cases where companies partnered up with a customer or a business partner to create a new substantial improvement in the industry.
Following this strategy, Steve Jobs has created six sub-categories in the 10 years while he served as CEO of Apple. These were:

News and Newspapers
Computers
Television
The Music Industry
Transportation and Accommodations
Photography
Apps for Business and the Business of Apps

But timing is important.
Chrysler Mini Van went 16 years without competition
Sub Category Exemplar defines and connect
Market the sub category and not the brand
You don't need to be the first but the early market leader
You need to be an Authentic Brand trust reliability
Create barriers for competition: execute over the top, continuously innovate and get beyond functional benefits
Brand relevance is not only an opportunity but also a threat because you have to defend your position.

You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who do what you do.

By Jerry Garcia, the grateful dead

Comments

3 Steps to Re-Branding Your Company

Sometimes, you hear that a company announces that they are planning a rebranding initiative. You might wonder what exactly this means. Are they changing their logo, their brand colors or maybe even adding some additional brand touchpoints like signage or event banners to the brand? What might often be overlooked is what a rebranding initiative really entails. Rebranding is the changing of a company's brand's identity. A company's Brand Identity includes everything from why the company is in business, how they operate and what they are offering. Rebranding a company can be compared to a person not only changing the person's cloth. It is more like a person decides to go to different restaurants, changing the job, getting new friends or even changing a partner. Here are the three basic steps to rebrand your company: Research how people see your brand by looking at your Brand Image . Review and re-define your Brand Identity . Hire a graphic designer to create your Bra

Jumping The Curve

On October 6, 2011, the day after Steve Jobs died, Guy Kawasaki gave a talk at the Silicon Valley Bank’s CEO Summit. He talked about lessons he learned from Steven. And one lesson he mentioned was "jump the curve". What Steve meant by that statement is not really a new concept but it makes clear what entrepreneurs really need to do if they want to become and stay relevant. You certainly have seen a typical product life cycle curve that every product runs through. The picture below illustrates this curve. What Steve is referring to is the fact that if companies, especially start-ups, want to avoid the harsh headwind from their competition, and if they like to grow their business, they need to be innovative and bring a new product onto the market, which is unique and valuable to the customers – they need to jump onto a new product lifecycle curve.

Branding vs. Brand

It is important to make a distinction between the term Brand and Branding. If we use the analogy of an iceberg, things underneath the waterline are represented by the term Brand. They are not immediately seen by the audience, like employees, suppliers, and even the company's products or services, customers and other partners represent the brand. In contrast, Branding is an activity that is visible and is considered the process of designing brand identity . Items that are the result of branding include all identifying artifacts like the logo, icons, avatars, taglines and the company name. The output of branding activities consists also of a style guide, employee guidelines, the vision and mission statement and a list of company core values. If we go one step further and create branded touchpoints like flyers, business cards, posters, etc., we consider this step Marketing. Marketing is illustrated as ships that come and go from the iceberg. Brand Builder Box™ considers the e

Brand Builder Box™ Blog

Search This Blog