Imagining that you have a protective brand halo when either nobody has heard of you, or is confused by your brand definition, or has a different conception of what it stands for, can be an arresting experience.
BRANDING AND VALUE DRIVERS –
Operational excellenceis about doing what you do, well. The cogs of your processes are well oiled.
Such ‘excellence’ can bring significant competitive advantage, in a market where reliability and consis- tency is important, or prices are competitive.
IKEA
IKEA is driven by operational excellence, achieving huge effi- ciencies through its logistics chain, from manufacturer to store, and its in-store ‘self-selection, self-collection’ formula. The IKEA brand makes a virtue of these internal processes, shouting out the excellent value it can provide for its customers (just witness how many first-time house buyers on a shoestring budget kit out their home at IKEA).
A service provider driven by operational excellence would perhaps have a no frills brand that spoke of low costs resulting from the experience and economy of the supplier. EasyJet communicates its key driver through the brand in this way.
Product leadershipis about producing the best, or the market dominant products. Businesses with high rates of innovation and patent application often have this value at their heart. It is hard to imagine a successful pharmaceuticals company that is not driven by this value. It must always be at the leading edge, pushing at the boundaries and, most impor- tantly, be seen to be doing so. The brand definition of such businesses will be appropriately innovative and entrepreneurial.
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operational processes
Microsoft
The pace of innovation achieved by Microsoft is amazing, the downside being that you can sometimes feel out of date as soon as you carry its latest product out of the store (which puts me way out of date: rephrase that last comment – as you download their latest product… ). The Microsoft brand repre- sents innovation and state of the art, and is perhaps happy that it also represents a small element of risk. Brands that push at the boundaries will occasionally make mistakes, it’s almost expected by the customer. When there are doubts (and much publicity) about a new version of Windows, sales just keep on rising. It would seem that a lot of us want to be part of that leading edge, bugs and all.
Customer intimacy is the desire and the ability to identify with specific customer needs, and to match products and services accordingly. What distin- guishes the customer-intimate business is its stated determination to develop close customer relation- ships, and to act on the resultant knowledge at all levels of its operation. It will probably have a wide menu of products and services, and the ability to mix and match these to suit individual customer requirements – or perhaps it will go further than this and offer a totally bespoke service.
Many B2B and service brands will aim to put this value at the heart of their brand definition. The upside is that it enables them to project an image of personalized service. A potential downside could be that an apparent claim to be able to do anything is non-credible. This requires careful brand management. The customer-intimate driver should not lead you down an unfocused road. Rather, think of it as intimacy within clearly defined boundaries, boundaries set as a result of your business strategy
Making a brand definition out of your own NPD strategies
and your approach to market segmentation (see Chapter 10).
Quest International
Quest International supplies fragrances to the perfume industry.
Each of its customers’ products is unique, and the fragrance is equally unique – there are no off-the-shelf solutions in this business. The perfumer’s art is as much one of black magic as chemistry and this makes for very demanding, and often seem- ingly eccentric customers. Quest must be able to identify with this, but more than that, ensure that its own people can work on this basis. Customer intimacy is essential for success, resulting in an absolute identification with the customer’s needs, and the ability to focus the whole organization on meeting them. The brand represents that ability.
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A brand helps you to target your audience. A learning brand gets to know its customers, and goes out looking for them. Segmentation is the process of identifying those target audiences and understanding them in such depth that the offer, through the brand, can be tailored with both precision and sufficient uniqueness to win compet- itive advantage.
Other books deal with the mechanics of segmen- tation (see page 171). Here we will focus on the importance of segmentation to the development of a winning brand strategy and, in particular, the need to practice segmentation with a level of sophisti- cation greater than the norm.