Three Thoughts on Branding

Steven Koster

BRAND IS A PROMISED EXPERIENCE

First

Brand is Promised Experience

• Stop Designing Products– A directive from Peter Merholz, a user-

experience expert, writing on product design

– Notably, he was talking about designing hardware products, consumer electronics mostly.

• A Product is not a thing, but an experience

Brand is a Promised Experience

• Stop Designing Products

• Kodak: 1888– Roll film, a whole process– “You press the button,

we do the rest.”• Polaroid camera

– Not a piece of hardware– But the chance for instant

memories

Brand is a Promised Experience

• “When you start with the idea of making a thing [like a camera, or a website], you're artificially limiting what you can deliver.

• “The [best companies] succeed explicitly because they don't design products.

Brand is a Promised Experience

• “Products are realized only as necessary artifacts [or by-products] to address customer needs.

• “What Flickr, Kodak, Apple, and Target all realize is that the experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about.”http://core77.com/reactor/06.07_merholz.asp

Brand is a Promised Experience

• Your Brand is a sum of all the experiences your products, your staff, your websites, offer.

• You have to both – ask diagnostic questions about past

experiences – and set direction for future experiences

Your Brand = Promised User Experience

• What do people experience when they hang out with you? – How do they experience you? What kind of

experience do they expect next time they encounter you?

– Have you actually asked? Focus group? Poll?

Your Brand = Promised User Experience

• To whom are you making promises? – Are there multiple promises to multiple

groups? – What do the experiences have in

common?

Your Brand = Promised User Experience

• What do you want people to think of when they think of you?

• What experience do you hope runs through all your projects?

• Can you articulate it?

Your Brand = Promised User Experience

• As in, if you want to experience XYZ, then associate with me, we’re the XYZ people. – If you want to evangelize the world, Back To God

will help you “let them hear,” “tell His Story, Share his love.”

– If you want to experience God more vigorously, then Walk the Way will challenge you to put your hands where your faith is.

PASSIVE EXPERIENCEACTIVE EXPRESSION

Second

Passive Experience, Active Expression

• Brands as not only promised user experience, but promised user expression.

• In other words: People use brands to say something about themselves.

• Think ‘bumper sticker’ or ‘T-shirt’

Passive Experience, Active Expression

• This has always been obvious with Luxury items and automobiles, for example

– You don't drive a BMW just to commute economically and well

– you drive a BMW to show the world you're a BMW-type-of-person.

Passive Experience, Active Expression

• "Think of the owner of a Toyota Prius who wears eco-friendly Nau clothing, buy fair-trade coffee at Whole Foods, carries a Prada bag, and wears blood-free diamonds from Tiffany's.

• This person is borrowing the meaning from these brands to tell a story about herself that ranges from her commitment to social responsibility to her love of quality and style."

– Give Them Something to Believe In: The Value of Brand Culture

They express Me

You don’t give to BTGMI just to get rid of extra cash, you do it to evangelize & disciple the world

You don't wear a WTW t-shirt just to keep warm, you wear it to tell the world You want to live vigorously for God.

You don’t highlight ReFrame websites on Facebook because there’s nothing else to share, but to show more of God’s Story in your life (and to invite your friends to do the same)

Our Brand = your chance to express your identity

• So we promise not only an experience, but a way to tell your own story.

• How are you enabling your citizens to wave your flag? – What experience can they share? – How can they use you to express

themselves?– What language, story, or event can they

use? – T-shirt? Fundraiser? Facebook flair?

CREATING A MEANINGFUL BRAND

Third

Creating a meaningful brand

• How do you build a Meaningful Brand?

Creating a meaningful brand

• Merholz calls for an ‘experience strategy’ – A mission/vision statement of the core

experience you offer– A model, paths of experience building blocks

• How do people encounter you, and what happens when they do? And what happens next?

• What are the levels of involvement from encounter to citizen?

Creating a meaningful brand

• HOWEVER, the experience can’t be faked. – You can't consistently deliver what you're

not passionate about. – People will experience what you care

about– Brands cannot generally be manufactured

Creating a meaningful brand

• Your brand is your corporate culture. – Is your team stiff? Disorganized? Wacky?

Intellectual? Bored? Scared? – Are they passionate about what they do?

About your mission?

Our Brand = Corporate Culture

• "A company must develop (or unearth) an ethos and worldview that it absolutely believes in, and then perpetually act in accordance with that ethos and worldview....

• Customers shopping for meaning [to borrow] are either drawn to that ethos or not."

• But if attracted they "will not only patronize, not only prefer, not only be loyal, they will embrace that brand as part of their own identity."

How will they will know we are Christians?

• (Jn 13:31-35)• A new commandment I give to you, that you

love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

• By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The Kingdom of God?

• (Lk 7:22-23) And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Is Christ the only Way?

• (Jn 14:5-7) Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

• Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Baptize and teach?

• And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19

• Going therefore, make disciples of all nations, – baptizing them in the name of the Father

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, – teaching them to observe all that have

commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mt 28:16-20)

Our Brand = Our Corporate Culture

• Do we want to live vigorously? • To let them hear? • To help people see their place in God's

story? • To experience his Love? His Shalom? • These can't be mere slogans, they're a

way of life.