Doug DavidoffI just picked up the book Brand Harmony. I'm only a few pages into it and it's already given me three points that I want to share. Here they are:
- Your brand is not what you say you are ... Your brand is what you customers think you are.
- Great marketing and branding is not about telling a story. It is about having our stories understood.
- Branding isn't something companies do to their customers. Branding is something customers do to companies and their products.
If you've read anything about the history of where the idea of 'brand' comes from, you've probably seen the stories that it goes back to the cowboy days, when owners of cattle 'branded' them with their marks; enabling them to determine who owned which cattle.
The industrial age took that concept and applied it(or, more appropriately, misapplied it) to marketing and customers. All of a sudden, the focus of too many companies became building a great brand instead of delighting customers, or making a compelling promise, or just building a great company. Somehow, people forgot that a great brand is a result of doing the right things.
The great thing about today's world is that customer's can take the power back. This is good news for companies (like Starbucks, Apple, Harley, etc.) that focus on doing 'insanely great things' then letting the chips fall where they may.
Every fast growth company will do well to remember that, today, customer's control their destiny - as it should be.