6 Master Principles To Transform Your Brand Strategy
Marketing is a critical function that helps organizations connect with customers, build brands, and drive revenue growth. Marketing leaders play a vital role in helping their companies adapt to an ever-changing consumer landscape. And now is the time of year when companies look to their marketing leaders to help craft bigger, better and bolder brand strategies for the year ahead.
Today, I'd like to offer six principles from masters in our field that have the potential to shift your perspective and elevate your strategic approach.
Steve Jobs
In 1997, Steve Jobs was asked to return to Apple after being fired from the company he had founded. In the two years that Jobs was away, the magic was fading, and it was clear to everyone inside and outside of Apple that the company had lost its identity and forgotten what made it a great and inspiring brand. In 1997, Jobs gave a seminal speech at Macworld, reminding Apple employees to 'Think Different' and never be afraid to challenge the status quo. He previewed a new advertising campaign called 'The Crazy Ones,' which suggested that those who are crazy enough to try and change the world often do.
As marketers, we can create inspiring brands and campaigns if we're willing to help our companies lead with their values and simplify their messages.
Simon Sinek
In 2009, Simon Sinek gave a TED Talk called 'Start with Why - How Great Leaders Inspire Action.' In it, he describes the theory of the Golden Circle, which is depicted with overlapping concentric circles containing the words, Why (at the center), How (in the middle), and What (on the outer ring). Sinek contends that, like Apple, great brands and leaders inspire by enlisting us in their purpose before convincing us of their fantastic abilities and offerings.
As marketers, we know that people seek to belong and become and that marketing is about status. Consumers purchase products and services because they believe those products and services will help to elevate them from the position they are in to a preferred one. In part, the 'Start with Why' principle reminds us to connect emotionally before informing intellectually.
Al Ries
In 1981, Al Ries and Jack Trout, two titans from the age of advertising, published their book, 'Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind' to remind us of the power that simple, memorable concepts have in engendering loyalty and directing consumer behavior. According to Ries, 'To succeed in our over-communicated society, a company must create a “position” in the prospect’s mind. A position that takes into consideration not only its own strength and weaknesses but those of its competitors as well."
Andy Cunningham
A protege of Al Ries and contemporary of Steve Jobs, Andy Cunningham, offers a 6C approach to positioning in her book, 'Get to Aha!: Discover Your Positioning DNA and Dominate Your Competition. Andy is best known for helping Steve Jobs launch the Macintosh in 1984 and repositioning some of the greatest Silicon Valley brands, including Oracle, Cisco, and Blackberry. Expanding on Ries and Trout's work, Cunningham suggests that for companies to build great brands that emotionally connect with customers, they must first do the intellectual work to define their own Core DNA, the Category they are launching into, the Context of the market, the Competitive landscape and the Community around their customers.
Like Ries, Jobs and Sinek, Andy Cunningham points marketers to clarity and focus as a means to achieve greater impact.
Theodore Levitt
Lastly, legendary marketing scholar and Harvard Business Review editor Theodore Levitt reminds companies and their marketers to look beyond the products and services they sell to the deeper desires of their customers. Successful brands focus less on what their products and services can do and more on what their customers can do as a result of their products and services.
I hope that by implementing the timeless wisdom above, you'll be able to distinguish yourself as a marketing leader who knows their craft and advocates for proven methods that lead to transformative change.
