The End of Branding As We Know It (Part 2)

Here's the second part of the riff from Beyond the Brand I started yesterday.

"When companies concentrate primarily on increasing their sales by using static top-down techniques, with only a secondary hope of developing deeper relationships with their customers, no agency or consultant can benefit them in the long term. To enact real bottom-up change in the marketplace, companies must incorporate their use of consultants and agencies, as partners, to help shape their brands and products based on their customers’ wants and needs – they must intimately know their customers at the front end of the process, not only as an afterthought. This ongoing engagement allows the essential space for co-creation.

The bottom line is that an intimate relationship with your customers has to begin before you offer them a product, brand, or service. Their insights, needs, and desires should be driving production from the bottom-up at the front end, and sales thereafter. As people grow more skeptical about common branding practices, and the presence of branding in the marketplace becomes more pervasive, let’s consider how some branding myths prevail, even as branding’s weaknesses are coming to light.

       Myth #1: Happiness Can Be Bought… and Sold

       Myth # 2: Brands are Empathetic

       Myth # 3: Labels Have Meaning

       Myth # 4: Companies Control the Conversation

       Myth # 5: The Vulnerability of Youth

       Myth # 6: The Myth of the “Consumer”

Comments

[Diego from metacool]

Amen. Brand is something that gets baked into your offering from the start. It's about embedded meaning.