The pandemic has changed the business and workplace landscape forever. Today businesses want to see growth or reach a larger consumer share. Stop business positioning! Time to go back to the basics. Identify your brand purpose (“Why”).
Plenty of people are struggling to make ends meet. Brand loyalty is not the priority in purchasing decisions. Customer behaviour has changed too. So, price (89%) and quality (82%) scored very high as influencing factors in a buying decision.
Businesses need to understand their customers to build strong customer relationships. Leaders must admit the rules have changed forever. If you want customers to stay loyal, you better engage and stay engaged.
The brand is what your business stands for. It shows the world why you are better than other competitors. The brand has been the driver of everything businesses do. Now that is changing. The brand is the impact of the whole customer experience. Doing the right thing or meeting customer needs creates business growth. A strong brand will follow with powerful advocacy.
Forget Positioning. Think Purpose.
Do not compete in the oversaturated marketplace. Ask these questions.
Why do we exist?
Then, Why should anybody need us?
Next, Why would people pay?
Finally, Why is it valuable?
Define a purpose for the business. The difference you want to make socially and commercially. Airbnb is an excellent example. It is committed to changing the way people travel. During the pandemic, it protects consumers with a full refund. Today it allows consumers to enjoy a full refund when a cancellation is made within the timeframe. It also ensures the host offers a quality and clean home.
Forget identity. Think experience.
Design whole experiences for people. As of January 2020, 83% of the Malaysian population go online. Interestingly, 96% are smartphone users. In the same study, Malaysians spend an average of 7.5 hours a day on the Internet (We Are Social x Hootsuite, 2020).
Businesses need to think about the User Interface (UI) from a broader perspective. Start looking at your business from the outside. Treat users as co-creators, not consumers. We will discuss this further later.
Stop controlling. Think changing
Why maintain the status quo? Being obsessed with your brand will not grow your business. You need to embrace change. Continue to experiment with strategy and keep connecting with new people and new partners.
Brand matters. It is the customer’s expectations and experience.
Those outcomes are the fundamental input in the decision-making. So, your brand is the bundle of thoughts, feelings, actions and impulses about your business.
The brand culture
Many CEOs believe that creating a healthy internal culture is the best way to build a sustainable business, rather than focusing on aggressive performance targets. The four-day workweek is the latest development.
Similarly, it is not companies that create brands but consumers. Consumers are buying the values you have. Brands are defined by, made or destroyed by, shared by, interpreted by, and expressed by consumers.
Consumers prototype the future of brands. They replace the ownership of the brand. I believe high-growth businesses tomorrow are constantly experimental, sharing with creativity.
21st-century brands
So what drives a business in the future? The purpose!
As consumers become better informed and ethical, they are less ready to be persuaded by brands to buy things. They want to use brands to get things done. Brands become platforms. Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Amazon. They earn our support by being simply practical and motivating.
The future brands are designed to get people to try using something, keep using it, and spread the word. The brand is a set of ideas that influence how people think, feel and act. Consumers become the co-creator of the brand. Something consumers are proud of using its products and services. The brand keeps customers committed. More importantly, the brand stimulates constant innovation.
Brands today live in the boundaryless world of social media. The ways consumers interact with brands shape the brand’s purpose. The brand purpose sits in the centre, and role and experience principles support it. It is an open purpose inside the business. Rather than brand proposition, the brand creates a theme with variations; not a slogan, but a story; not a message, but a value.
It’s your brand. Tell your story well.