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4. A great brand invents or reinvents an entire category.
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The common ground that you find among brands
like Disney, Apple, Nike, and Starbucks is that these companies
made it an explicit goal to be the protagonists for each of
their entire categories. Disney is the protagonist for fun
family entertainment and family values. Not Touchstone Pictures,
but Disney. Apple wasn't just a protagonist for the computer
revolution. Apple was a protagonist for the individual: anyone
could be more productive, informed, and contemporary. A great
brand raises the bar -- it adds a greater sense of purpose
to the experience, whether it's the challenge to do your best
in sports and fitness or the affirmation that the cup of coffee
you're drinking really matters.
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5. A great brand taps into emotions. |
It's everyone's
goal to have their product be best-in-class. But product innovation
has become the ante you put up just to play the game: it's
table stakes. The common ground among companies that have built
great brands is not just performance. They recognize that consumers
live in an emotional world. Emotions drive most, if not all,
of our decisions. A brand reaches out with that kind of powerful
connecting experience. It's an emotional connection point that
transcends the product. And transcending the product is the
brand.
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6. A great brand is a story that's
never completely told. |
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A brand is a metaphorical story that's evolving
all the time. This connects with something very deep, a fundamental
human appreciation of mythology. People have always needed
to make sense of things at a higher level. We all want to think
that we're a piece of something bigger than ourselves. Companies
that manifest that sensibility in their employees and consumers
invoke something very powerful.
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7. A great brand has design consistency. |
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Look at what some of the fashion brands
have built -- Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, for example. They
have a consistent look and feel and a high level of design
integrity. And it's not only what they do in the design arena;
it's what they don't do. They refuse to follow any fashion
trend that doesn't fit their vision. And they're able to pull
it off from one season to the next.
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8. A great brand is relevant. |
A lot of brands are trying to position
themselves as "cool." More often than not, brands that try to
be cool fail. They're trying to find a way to throw off the right
cues -- they know the current vernacular, they know the current
music. But very quickly they find themselves in trouble. It's
dangerous if your only goal is to be cool. There's not enough
there to sustain a brand. The larger idea is for a brand to be
relevant. It meets what people want, it performs the way people
want it to. In the last couple of decades there's been a lot
of hype about brands. A lot of propositions and promises were
made and broken about how brands were positioned, how they performed,
what the company's real values were. Consumers are looking for
something that has lasting value. There's a quest for quality,
not quantity.
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