Brand Empowerment

To empower means to develop confidence in own capacity. This is powerful and liberating at the same time. A greater sense of drive, direction and purpose to achieve. To be Brand Empowered, the brand and its people behind it takes on a strong sense of purpose to deliver its promise to deliver a compelling brand experience. It is a catalyst of brand velocity and growth.

Today, branding activities actualize from the top but brand experience hardly filters down entirely to the entire body within the organization. A brand strategy takes care of the road map and action plan to make this happen. However, without the key ingredient of brand empowerment, the brand experience can waiver and become inconsistent by the time it reaches its customers.

Brand Empowerment should work on all levels. In a SME, it can be the boss who passes down a certain set of instructions to the staff. How to service clients and sell the brand. However, Brand Empowerment is more than that set of instructions. Here are the key aspects of Brand Empowerment.

Who owns the brand? Everyone does!
Everyone in a organization should be empowered to have brand ownership. This means all the staff are able to deliver the brand promise and effectively trained to do so. Think of them as different parts of a body (the brand) to move the body forward. 

Advertising and Brand Delivery, do they align?
What do you communicate and what do you deliver? Is there a gap? Are the customers trying to tell you something? Do you even ask through a simple survey. Customers evolve, why should a brand keep still? Ultimately, if your customers are empowered by your brand, you attained a whole new level of growth. Social media takes brand empowerment to a whole new level. Brand spreads if customers are empowered to do so. Consider a brand platform as a starting point.

Customer Service, a powerful competitive advantage.
In my previous post, I talked about Branded Customer Service. In its essence, it is taking the brand promise and delivering to its customers in an unique, branded way. This can be achieved only if staff are brand empowered in the first place. This transfer can be done through proper brand training at the service front.

Brand Cues
Are there enough cues or touch points which your staff are able to communicate to customers? Do you give enough customers to talk, gossip and spread around? Too often, great brands are let down by lack of the 'long tail'. The tail that allows you to curl up the customers and let them have a reason to come back again. Look at your brand cues, what are those left to marketing which you can refresh, rejuvenate and reengage.

I will leave you with this.

Please leave your comments, if any.

Branded Customer Service

A lot of brands are frustrated. They spent huge amount of money on advertising, branding and design, yet the brand promise fails to get across to their customers. A brand that claims "Our customers are number one" fails to train their staff to deliver this. Great products, great services but lousy customer service. Brands suffer erosion rather than positive gain.When a brand's communication and delivery do not gel, the brand fails ultimately. Brand value drops.

Once in a while, we hear good news about how customer service can lift a brand to new heights. Much more effective than the millions spent on advertising and branding activities. Nick's Pizza & Pub, Zappos, Ritz Carlton and Singapore Airlines. Zappos is worth US$1billion dollars when Amazon acquired it. Zappos spent $0 in mass media advertising before the takeover. That is a billion dollar worth of tangible brand value from delivering good customer service. I find it hard to argue that great customer service is indeed a key competitive advantage for brands, especially for those in Asia where customer service has a huge gap to fill.

Some CEOs realize this but ground issues are especially sticky to handle, they are helpless. The reach and management chain works against them. Meetings and boardroom strategies take priority. It is a slippery slope.

Branded Customer Service takes a new approach at helping brands achieve its promise and potential. Here is the alternative approach. Branding and branded customer service are taught to service staff, not just to senior-middle management. Having a branded customer service training that inculcates brand values and its essence to service staff. How to effectively translate, impart and deliver the brand promise to its customer through great customer service. This is beyond the courtesy greet or 'get-your-shoes-in-2-minutes' prompt service. It is taking the brand essence and effectively imbue it. Getting your merchandise into the hands of your customers in an unique and branded way. Challenging but the results are nothing short of remarkable.
 
To learn more about Training for Branded Customer Service, write to training@ingens.sg for more details. Find out how you can do it the branded way.

Please leave your comments, if any. Image taken from Zappos.

The design of endurance races

In the second post of Design Strategy, I would like to touch on the design of experiences. Experiences which leaves a lingering and impactful memory on consumers who got in touch with the brand. The design of such an experience takes a lot of planning, brainstorming and proper execution. A well thought out design from start till end.

Events which I can personally relate to are endurance races like biathlons. Having completed a few over the past few years, I have my personal hits and misses.

For the 10th year running, the Singapore Biathlon is the longest running biathlon and the largest in Southeast Asia. I had the chance to relish this race experience on the 13th March 2010. There are high expectations on the race organiser to maintain interest amongst existing endurance tribes and new ones.

 There are different areas of experience which can be streamlined to.

1) Design Themes for Comunication: The entire experience revolves around safety, sense of achievement and scale. These are the themes to reinforce its brand promise as the biggest biathlon in the region.

2) Design for Engagement: It is a qualification race. First timers have to qualify by swimming 50m in a swimming ppol for 1.5km under a certain timing. Lapsed participants have to go through this process if they did not race for two consecutive years.

3) Design for Emotional Branding: Medal and Finisher T-shirt. These are the main items for rewarding the well deserved biathletes whom finished the course. These items are badging products which form part of the loyalty towards the race or brand.

Please leave your comments, if any. Picture taken from SAFRA website.

What Design Strategy can do for a lifestyle furniture brand?

The THE LIFE SHOP is a locally founded brand in the lifestyle category. In this category, they sell household items like furniture and even baby wear (LIFE baby). Their theme is New Asian. Part of its strategy is to define and sell this meaning to customers. Not everyone who walks into the store gets it but they are not targeting everyone. The brand is targeting mainly white collars who appreciate finer things in life.

For any Design Strategy, it is closely related to the brand and business strategy. It is a close relation that complements each other. What THE LIFE SHOP has captured is a synergy of the three. At closer look, let us investigate what a Design Strategy can do for a brand like this.

Clear Design Theme: THE LIFE SHOP had a clear design stance. It seeks to define new meanings of items that they sell rather than just being a channel or distributor. Most, if not all of their items are designed in-house. This consists of an eclectic mix of sofas, beds, sofas and household furniture.

Synthesis of Design Experiences with the Business: This brand is a close merger of design and all aspects of its business. From the painting of a lady to the coasters on their table, THE LIFE SHOP business merges the entire experience of their items with their brand identity.

Innovation Driven: The founders and merchandisers are constantly seeking new ways to innovate new designs. So as to constantly remain relevant to their brand identity and consumer climate. Last year, their LIFE baby sub-brand is one of the fastest growing in the challenging retail climate.

THE LIFE SHOP is on the foot path of brand growth regionally. It is not a bed of roses. As Asians become increasingly wealthy, competition for their dollar gets increasingly intense. Brands that do not have a clear brand identity or proposition fade quickly.

The demise of Barang Barang is a cautionary tale. Stellar growth but unsustainable in the long run. I do believe that a Design Strategy would have helped with its growth strategies.

Images and Logo taken from The LIFE Shop .Please leave your comments, if any.

7 Reasons Why Design Helps You Achieve Better Business Results

1) Consumers go for experiences. Brands need to design compelling experiences that engage and connect with tribes. A sound Design Strategy helps you to achieve this.
2) We live in the age of design. Consumers today appreciate the heart and soul behind intelligent, emotive designs. They are willing to part good money for good designs. Your margins increase.
3) Great design sustains both the brand and business. Good design allows a brand to achieve breakthrough growth and market share. Apple designed the iPhone and reaped in billions. One single model.
4) Design communicates your brand value with high impact.
5) Design thinking allows you to innovate outside your business constraints.
6) It allows you to differentiate and gain greater competitive edge over your competitors.
7) A design-centered culture inspires people to work for you. Talents are attracted to innovation.

Please leave your comments, if any. iPhone image taken from Apple website.

Creating Design Strategies for businesses

A brand is a manifestation of design experiences. So are the products, services and marketing communications such as packaging, corporate websites and advertisements. The glass of water with your company logo that you serve your clients is one of them too.

Following this line of thought, it is almost easy to conclude a Design Strategy sounds very relevant to any business. Yet, Design Strategy is relatively rare in businesses outside of the creative industry especially SMEs in Singapore. My guess is that this is a relative alien or new concept where the definition and benefits are not very clear. We need to know what Design does first.

Design in business is hard to define yet its manifestations abound. From the way the logo, brand, tag line and the experience it delivers, it is like a light bulb which produces light but you do not feel it is really there. Increasingly, design in businesses is getting a heads up as we know what it can achieve. Design grows a business and ensures its sustainability.

 
Razer which designs gaming mice and peripherals is a testament of good design and branding. Gaming and mice are both not new categories yet Razer managed to capture nearly half of gaming peripheral market share in a matter of years. This model above is one of the fastest wireless mouse in the market. By this design alone, it is remarkable.Razer understood the language of gaming tribes and dived in deep. Designing true experiences for gamers by gamers which is also its brand tag line.

The Strategy aspects talks about a plan or model which Design is road-mapped like a business strategy. Hence, Design Strategy is about utilizing design or design thinking to help businesses gain competitive advantage over competitors.

In the next 3 posts, I will investigate how Design Strategy can impact businesses with examples.

Please leave your comments, if any. Image taken from Razer website.

Challenging your belief or stance

Beliefs are the makeup of our knowledge, views, culture and norms. As individuals or tribes, our actions are a direct translation of our beliefs. For example, you shake hands with another stranger as a belief of goodwill (I hope at least on your part). Brands try to shape your beliefs about them through advertising and other marketing activities.

It is a fact that we depend a lot on our beliefs and took it for granted. Questioning your beliefs can be fundamentally unnerving. Post September 11, it took a while for Americans to change their beliefs about homeland security. Beliefs are sometimes radically shaped by circumstance. Here are some beliefs that have been shaped over the last decade.

1) Commercialization of space travel. Virgin Galactic
2) Electronic books changing the entire publishing industry.
3) Consumers telling brands what to do.
4) You can make a living out of publishing your life online.
5) Designer office chairs that can cost up to S$2,000 each.

You can probably think of more.

Your beliefs or stance of the world is a powerful subconscious inner voice that guides and alters your decisions and actions. At the same time, altering these deep seated beliefs can potentially impact your lives. One of the most powerful result of changing your beliefs is to solve difficult sticky situations and problems. Relationships, careers and health. Taking a alternative discourse to solve them. In short, changing your stance for the better.

In the book Integrative Thinking, Roger Martin challenge readers to review and change your stance. Has it stifled your thinking and vision? If it is, probably time to reassess and think about reshaping it. Your own beliefs might be the single greatest barrier and tool for creative thinking. In the business world, changing stance can help deliver better experiences for customers or tribes. For example, if we change our beliefs that a hair salon can do more than hair related services, this business model will not look for other complementary services like pedicure and manicure services.

Engaging a coach might be a possible avenue. Here is Enrico Varella & Associates where change development is carefully shaped and mentored in the hands of experts.

Please leave your comments, if any.