Relevance Archives - Emotive Brand

Brand Relevance Amidst New Expectations

In a time of constant change and heightened customer expectations, the greatest danger facing most brands today is loss of brand relevance. People are ultra-connected. Markets constantly shift. New trends emerge. Competitors enter and shake things up. And customers expect more from the brands they buy from. As a result, many businesses struggle to stay relevant —trying to get ahead of competition, adapt fast enough, and maintain their position in the market.

In order to survive, brands need to evolve in a way that differentiates them from their competitors, and at the same time meets the needs of the customers who matter to their business. Oftentimes faced with an issue of relevance, brands struggle between two ends—wanting to gain parity with competitors and adapt to market needs, while feeling worried about losing established brand credibility or diluting their brand image.

As a result, maintaining brand relevance comes down to two courses of action:

Adapting to the current needs of customers in the market, or

Disrupting what people want to buy. Many businesses do this by creating new categories or subcategories altogether – altering the way customers approach a purchase, and making their brand a pioneer in a new category

Sometimes in these situations, brands have to reposition all together. This is why brands that maintain long-term relevance are often bold, strong brands—constantly moving forward, innovating, adapting, and disrupting, while making sure they stay true to the core of their brand. So how do you know what direction to take? How do you make sure your brand maintains value in a competitive marketplace?

Here are some rules of brand relevance.

Be customer-centric. Everything your brand invests in, builds, and brings to market should be designed to meet the needs of your target markets. This includes needs that customers themselves might not yet be aware of. It’s about working to see what others don’t. These kinds of insights can allow you to create brand relevance in ways that your competitors are not. So get in your customers heads. Analyze their purchase patterns. Examine the ways they live their daily lives, and build a brand that integrates seamlessly into the lives of the people who matter to your success.

Focus on experience. Focusing on your customers means focusing on how people experience your brand. As a result, every touchpoint counts, and relevancy can only be maintained if your brand interacts and engages in relevant ways. It’s not only about a single product. Or a new website. Your brand has to create a holistic experience that is relevant to your target audiences at every point.

Don’t forget what makes you different. Jumping on a bandwagon may be a short-term fix, but it’s not going to help build long-term brand relevance. You have to adapt in ways that still play to your brand strengths and emphasize why your brand is different. You don’t want to lose your brand’s differentiating factors in an attempt to stay relevant.

Create, innovate, and engage. Be open, take chances, and don’t be afraid to push your limits, engage in fresh ways, and find unique ways of meeting your customers’ needs. Don’t put your brand or business in a box. If you do, you will lose any chance of staying relevant in a competitive market. So as leaders, make sure you strive to build a workplace that encourages creativity and innovation. And don’t fear doing something new.

Align decisions with your purpose. Make sure you’re making authentic brand decisions. Trying to stay relevant but not doing it authentically never works. So look to where you want your brand to head. What are your long-term goals and aspirations? How can your maintain relevance while moving towards those goals?

Relevant Brands are Successful Brands

Brand relevance is never a sure thing. Anything can change at any moment. As a result, smart brands understand the rules of relevance, and earn and re-earn their position in the market place each and every day. Think of all the brands and even entire categories of brands that have fallen off the map, many of which used to hold immense value for groups of customer. How? Loss of relevance is probably to blame.

Maintaining brand relevance means maintaining the trust and loyalty of your customers. Brands that commit to being relevant brands are focused on and oftentimes ahead of what their customers might expect and need, willing to rise to the top, take a risk and redefine what they do and/or how they do it, all while staying true to who they are as a brand.

So take time to consider how you can build a more relevant brand. Maintaining brand relevance is the key to remaining valuable to the people who matter to your business and where it’s headed.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

What’s Old Is New Again

People have been drinking coffee, listening to music, and shopping for groceries forever. But if you peered into the modern household, chances are these common operations would look completely foreign to someone ten years ago. One might load a coffee pod while streaming an album from their phone, then ask their voice assistant to add something to their online cart.

This is the brave new world of brand category creation, and it’s something that we’ve written about extensively. The reason we spend so many words on this topic is that it’s absolutely paramount to sustained, long-term growth.

Build Upon a Frame of Reference

As a quick refresher, a brand’s frame of reference is the foundation of its positioning. Think of it as the set of hurdles a brand must be able to leap to be considered a legitimate player. People need a frame of reference in order to understand and approach your offering. As UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff explains, “framing provides a mental structure that shapes the way we see the world. If a strongly held frame doesn’t fit the facts, the facts will be ignored.”

So, while coffee pods and streaming services are technically new, it’s still just coffee and music: two beautiful, sturdy frames of reference to build upon. That’s the delicate art of launching a new category. It’s not that you’re trying to invent something completely from scratch, but rather building a new path to a known, beloved experience. Asking your customer to take an imaginative leap is a dangerous thing. You want to make sure that they land on something comfortable.

The Pros

When done right, the rewards are huge. Harvard Business Review examined Fortune’s list of the 100 fastest-growing U.S. companies from 2009 to 2011 and found that the 13 companies that were instrumental in creating their categories accounted for 53% of the incremental revenue growth and 74% of incremental market capitalization growth over those three years.

“The message is clear,” says Eddie Yoon, “category creators experience much faster growth and receive much higher valuations from investors than companies bringing only incremental innovations to market.”

The Cons

When done wrong, of course, the backlash is swift and unrelenting. You might remember Bodega, a glorified vending machine that positioned itself as “reinventing the Mom and Pop store.” Silicon Valley is infamous for touting so-called innovations that, more often than not, are only techy-twists on an existing category. This combination of hubris and mislabeling will immediately turn-off your customer.

If launching a new category is so treacherous, why take the risk? Wouldn’t it be better to just give people what they already want? The issue is, what people want – and the medium in which they prefer it – is always changing. As Al Ries writes, “a brand is the tip of an iceberg. How big and how deep the iceberg is will determine how powerful the brand is. The bottom of the iceberg is the category. If it melts, the brand will melt, too.”

Trying to Hit a Moving Target

Look at Kodak. What’s a Kodak? Why only the world’s best film-photography brand. Unfortunately for Kodak, the film photography iceberg has steadily melted ever year – and with it, Kodak’s brand awareness, influence, and stock price. It’s not that people have stopped taking pictures, so why wasn’t Kodak able to make the digital jump? They stayed relentlessly focused on brand instead of observing how the category was shifting.

Competing against other brands and giving people what they want now is a short-term play. Competing against the category you’re in and giving people what they’ll need for tomorrow is how you achieve sustained, long-term growth.

Take Citrix, a legacy software company founded in 1989. For decades, they have provided innovations like desktop virtualization and cloud computing. And for decades, that was enough to differentiate them. Cut to 2018, when everyone and their mother has a SaaS offering, and that is no longer the case. So, how did they respond? By leaning into the new brand category of “digital workspace” – a unified app that brings together the best of all their existing and future technologies.

Not only that, but they are doing the hard work that launching a new category entails: being consistent with messaging, generating competition, popularizing, tapping into early adopters, and educating customers.

Launching a new category isn’t for every brand, but if your product or offering is misunderstood, your competition is stifling your ability to grow, or your category has fallen out of favor, it’s time to consider a shift in strategy. In this fickle business, there’s no such thing as being permanently safe. Great brands are like sharks – you have to keep moving forward if you want to make it out alive.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.

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Tag: Relevance

Maintaining Brand Relevance in a Fast-Paced World