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.

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Brand Differentiation - A banana story

This is a story of a banana I bought in Gold Coast Australia while I am holidaying there. Its a fruit that we commonly find in fruit stores and supermarket. Ordinary and nothing remarkable. Wait, there is more about this common fruit.

Upon closer examination, you will notice the tip of it is colored in red. It is actually red wax. All the ends of it in this bunch have been given the same red color treatment. Simply, this fruit producer has applied a sort of brand differentiation technique. To think that other fruit producers mostly brand their produce using tiny stickers or wrappers around their products, this brand of banana has taken another route to try something different and yes, remarkable.

This is a purple cow initiative in a market where products need to be presented in their natural state (fruits are foremost scrutinised for their freshness and looks) but yet seek to achieve differentiation. A challenging balance. Has your brand achieved differentation? If in doubt, probably its best to conduct some market research with a touch of branding creativity. Time to go bananas over brand differentiation.

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Apply Design Thinking to Branding

Design thinking and branding are two different yet related concepts. Both are ways to solve consumers’ needs and wants. Their synthesis could result in an impactful way of how we look at branding and achieve brand differentiation. Branding is a way to tell customers about products and services; what brands stand for and why do they matter to customers. It is ultimately about creating and managing perceived value.

Design thinking (IDEO) is an approach that involves exploring diversion thinking (think multiple ‘what ifs’), prototyping and storytelling before arriving at the solution. There are actually much more than this and I only extract the essentials for this post. Design thinking is a highly collaborative and possibilities-first way of solving problems. It is about bringing ideas and experiences to life through story telling. This approach is on the way to enhance business processes, health care and even social problems. I am a fan of design thinking and branding. So why not combine the two. I believe this synthesis will elevate innovative thinking in brands. Try Change by Design by Tim Brown on design thinking approach to find out more.


Here is my attempt to combine the two. 


One the star qualities of design thinking, is the visualisation of ideas or prototyping to bring out the essence of solutions proposed. For example, if IDEO needs to design a new surgical tool (Pic B), this is how a quick prototype (Pic A) can be assembled to get a feel about the shape and form factor. Primitive yet it tells a powerful story. Hold it and you know what this idea is about. Further discussions formed around this prototype are a lot more impactful.

Pic A: Prototyping the tool

 Pic B: Final product

Lets apply design thinking to branding. For example, a mock up corner of a new Food Republic theme, complete with empty stores but with applying authentic thematic design elements. All these to test out the new brand experience. The idea is to simulate and test the brand experience through immersion and participatory thinking. Clients can also take part in this exercise and go through their ‘consumer’s experience’ together with designers and brand strategists. Ideas are added and/or refined along the way in this prototyping environment. The end result is a brand experience that is closer to reality and what the customers will go through.

Design thinking has essentially allowed branding to be lot more experiential driven, exploring innovative solutions that could not be thought about on paper or on computer screens. Critically, experiences are assessed, discussed and gauged at the pre-launch brand design stage. 

Market research has taken a stab at such new product development (NPD) work through conducting surveys and focus groups. The missing ingredient I discovered has always been the lack of brand/idea immersion or letting the ideas play a role in consumer lives. Hence, the insights gathered tend to lack depth. A brilliant idea may lack the legroom to fully reach its full potential and risk getting buried rather quickly before it can see any light.

Additionally, diversion mindset (‘what ifs’ come first) from design thinking is also another powerful tool to elevate brand differentiation in the current fiercely competitive landscape. We want our brands to be Purple Cows. 

“A Purple Cow, though, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow -- the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows -- is that it would be remarkable . Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to.” –Seth Godin  

Purple Cows are remarkable and worth talking about. Design thinking can help you achieve that.

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Re-Branding Traditional Chinese Medication (TCM)

One of the first things that came to my mind when I recalled a recent TCM store visit is that it is filled with Asian tradition. The smell of herbs, dried goods and bird's nest etc. A store experience which somewhat brought back the memories of herbal remedies; prescribed and brought back for preparation. It seems to have little connection or relevance with me today. I am quite sure some of you may agree with me. However, there is a successful outlier that stood out from the rest which made a renewed connection.

One of the home grown Singaporean TCM brand had undertaken a rebranding journey. Productizing their tonics and herbal remedies yet retaining their traditional TCM values. Its red and white logo that can be found all over Singapore with even their own specialist clinic at Paragon Medical Centre. It has already expanded to different parts of Asia today. I will not be surprised to see this brand at international airports all over the world in the next few years.


This is indeed a fine example of successfully branding a truly Asian, traditional product and service. The challenge for the brand is to continously evolve and remain relevant to the needs of their customers. For example, they have reduced sugar bird's nest for the health conscious.

I firmly believe there is hope for Asian brands to shine with the potent combination of market research and sound brand strategies. I sure hope to see more in the list with Singapore Airlines, Banyan Tree and Breadtalk.

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