Credit: Everydaylifemodern
I remember once when I was in what was a pretty inebriated state in a dry state (ha!) that I wrote down “Brands and products should be like water”. Obviously, the next day my sober self had no idea what my extremely drunk self meant with that.
I did keep mulling about it cos’ I knew that it was important. Anyways, I was in discussions with a HR head later, when he said something pretty cool “HR should be like water !” (Familiar?). He continued “It doesn’t have its own distinct color, flavor or anything. But you can’t really cook without it. You can’t even survive without it. But you never acknowledge its presence.”
I loved that one! That’s what I think about brands. I’ve stopped thinking of my Nokia N95 as a Nokia-branded phone with Bluetooth and Carl Zeiss lense-equipped 5 MP camera. It’s just MY PHONE. Similarly, the phone I bought for dad has stopped being a Nokia 5000 and has become’s DAD’s PHONE. I would never buy another company’s phone simply because it won’t feel like MY phone. When we stop discussing the features and start discuss what I do with it, that’s when I’m really going to try your product. On a side note, those who saw my old Nokia 6600 would say “Oh that’s XXXXX’s phone!” It looked so much like something I would own. That’s branding. Just stop pushing your company’s name to my face. The brand should be about why it should be my phone as against why I should simply buy yours. A lot of branding obviously has moved this way through social networks but it just isn’t in the background enough. You might argue that the brand is the promise of what you can get from the company. I am not too sure about that. Especially when I get the same promise from all your competitors as well. For example, iTunes is a name, not the brand. The brand is “best way to transfer songs to the iPod”. iPod is a short form for “the coolest way to move with music in your ears” (or get mugged though I’m sure that must have come down a bit). So, you don’t really talk about iPod or the name as such. You talk about the purpose. you don’t market the name. You market the positioning. It’s not just about what you can do with the product/ service. It’s about what you can’t do without the product/ service.
A bit about positioning now. I realized one thing. That brands talk about how they have features that are really useful to you before you even think about whether you need that particular feature or not. The ideal positioning exercise from a customer’s standpoint is such:
1. “Man, my clothes are a mess”
2. “The dhobi charges way too much for ironing. I am a fricking bachelor. I can’t afford this”
3. “I need an iron”
4. “Jesus. I know jack about ironing. Maybe I’ll ask XXX for advice”
5. Calls XXX “I need an iron. Whaddya think ?”
6. XXX thinks “He’s a lazy bum. Can’t do anything right. He’ll definitely burn himself if he uses the usual irons”
7. XXX says: “Go for AAA irons. They are the best!”
AAA irons may not be the best but definitely are the safest. Now what essentially has happened is that among all the irons in the world, this is the mind space that AAA has. We didn’t think of AAA first. We thought how fucked up the bugger was. We worked backwards to reach the choice of AAA. That’s how brands need to position themselves.
Anyways, for your own benefit, I definitely recommend: Digital Strangelove
(or How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The Internet)
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