Do you actually have a brand? Or just a business with a logo?
Seth Godin inspired me to think about brands and businesses with a logo and how the two differ. Keep listening for some interesting examples and what you need to think about for your brand.
TRANSCRIPT – BRANDING BEFORE BREAKFAST EP78
Hi. This morning, I want to talk to you about the difference between brands and a business with a logo, no matter how prominent they are in the market.
I was recently listening to as Seth Godin seminar and in that, he talked to the same subject matter. And he said that if he thinks about Nike and Hilton, is that if Nike was to open a hotel, he can already see what the hotel would be like. He knows what it would stand for and he knows what type of people would want to go to that hotel. But if Hilton were to design a shoe? Nothing, we’re not sure. We don’t know what they stand for. We don’t know what they believe in.
So it got me thinking about other examples and I started thinking about a well-known Australian brand, you might say ‘brand’, which is Myer. But actually, if you thought about them in comparison to Coca-Cola for example, if Coca-Cola was to open a department store, I can already envision it. I know that it’s all about sharing the happiness. It’s about good times. I think about their personalised bottle and how they might have that in the products that they’re selling in the department store. If Myer was to have its own drink, I honestly draw a blank. What does Myer stand for? What does it believe in? Who is it trying to connect with?
And then we don’t even need to look at brands from different industries. Let’s look at Apple and Dell for example. Now we all know the Apple store but even if they didn’t have that in existence, if we were to predict what an Apple store may look like, I think we’d all take a very good guess. We understand who they want to connect with. We understand what they believe in and the experiences that they want to create. Dell, I don’t really know. Maybe they’d have a store with lots of strange numbers and letters that don’t mean anything to you, but I don’t know who they’re appealing to. I don’t know what they believe in or what they’re trying to create in the world.
So today I’d like you to have a think about your customer value proposition. Who is it that you want to connect with and what are you providing to them that’s different from your competition? Think about your brand personality and your brand values. Is that coming across in everything that you do? You cannot solely rely on the products or the services that you offer? What is your brand saying? And how is it connecting with your most desired consumers?
Okay, that’s it from me. Time for brekkie.
Written by: Jo Whelan
Published: July 14, 2021