Merits of Brand Flexibility

How flexible is your brand? Is your brand able to meet changing consumer needs? Is your brand still relevant to your customers today? Is your brand shrinking or growing? These are probably burning questions brand managers and owners face. The best way to measure brand flexibility is survival-ability.

Brand flexibility is not about changing brand proposition because of changing trends or tastes etc. A brand needs a grounded promise. Brand flexibility is not changing that core proposition. Will Starbucks ever set up a dedicated juice bar counter during hot summer months? Quite possibly but selling dark roasted coffee is what Starbucks as a brand stands for but they are flexible enough to incorporate non coffee (fruity blends) and seasonal treats in their product mix. Toffee nut latte during Christmas period is my absolute favourite!

Brand flexibility is about staying relevant in order to survive tough compeition.

A defeated tune
Sembawang Music Centre is bringing down its shutters after years in the retail mall scene. Sembawang sells music just like That CD Shop and Gramophone but the latter two survive despite declining CD sales. These survivors have their own ways of selling music. Gramophone takes on a mega store approach that sells CD, DVDs, Blu-Rays, earphones, speakers and even PC accessories. Gramophone recognizes consumer needs for a one-stop supermarket shopping experience. Whereas, That CD Shop fuses sexy (strictly all female sales team) with their own private label music called High Society. That CD Shop builds their own discerning music followers (High Society Tribe, complete with a dedicated website), who appreciate their handpicked compilation, complete with in-store eye candy. Unfortunately, Sembawang failed the flexibility test to evolve. 'Neighborhood-style' music stores simply cannot cut it in retail malls anymore.

Inflexible brands expect customers to listen and follow. What if customers don’t? Tribes get disbanded to join others because there is always another one round the corner that feels and looks better. Profit goes where your tribes go. SMEs in Singapore are more vulnerable. On the bright side, SMEs do have lighter feet to make relatively fast turnaround or brand revamps. Big brands are huge oil tankers, takes longer time to change directions. Being small might not be all that bad.

Is your brand tuned for flexibility to relate and adapt? Building flexible brands start with integrative thinking with your customers. Be relevant; be flexible in your branding.

Please leave your comments, if any.      

Ordinary to extra-ordinary

In the current marketplace where a lot of products are trying to get our attention, it is easy to notice there aren’t a lot of those that really make us excited. Just today, can you name 5 products or ads that sort of leave a deep impression? Chances are, minimal or nothing. The challenge for successful brands is to either stand out or be reminded of all the time. It’s survival not luxury. One of the reasons you are constantly reminded of Starbucks is because it wants to become your ‘third living space’. Your home, your workplace and you guessed it…Starbucks. They are trying for the state of coffee brand ubiquity. At one point, Suntec shopping mall alone has three. Starbucks? McDonald's? See the connection?

We know the Starbucks way is very, very expensive (McDonald’s too). Unless you have millions, chances are most of us needed to get around it or just keep reading this post.

These days, we just have too many things to mind and too little time to take it all. Research has proven that an average working adult will be exposed to hundreds of ads each day. The brain can’t handle all these ‘noise’ and we automatically start to filter or ignore. This instance, ignorance is bliss for our sanity sake. I do that all the time. From any marketer, it’s their worst nightmare. The only other way is to shine through winning design experiences or be simply extraordinary.

Take a look at this device on the left. Most of us would be unable to guess what this is or what it does at first look. Is it a lamp or even a star trek collectable? The moment you ponder, you stick around (much cheaper and more effective than 5 seconds of TV ad space). It is a bladeless fan that sucks in air and throws it out at very fast speed to cool you. It’s called the Dyson Air Multiplier, retails from US$299.99 onwards. Yes, it is just a fan and works exactly like one. Turn it on, close your eyes, you probably can’t tell the difference from a regular bladed one. However, if you put the Dyson along with the other fans in a store, it will be outstanding. I even want one myself. I should have written this before my 30th birthday. For more information on the Dyson fan, click on this link.


Picture taken from Dyson website.

Lets recall a recent trip to a hair saloon. Remember how they always try to sell us hair products? How about doing so while saloon customers are horizontal, staring upwards, having their hair washed. These customers can only look upwards at the ceiling (unutilized ad space) and that is where they should be placing their hair product ads! Throw in some sales talk from the hair stylist; I am sure hair care product sales will go up. What customers get is instant gratification of the products being advertised to them at the same time. Ordinary service, extraordinary effort to increase sales.

One of your brand consultant goals must always be to allow your brand or products to be nothing short of stunning. Keep your eyes on not only appreciating extraordinary things (hard to ignore) but also keep a lookout for the ordinary (try not to ignore) and make it extraordinary.

The key aim; reinvent the ordinary that upscale product or service experience. Create a brand tribe (Bladeless fan fans) that follows it and start profiting.

Please leave your comments if you have any.