A brand is an association network in people’s brains.  It’s not just a logo and a name stitched on a shirt or burned on a tea casket. The shape and colour of the logo mean something to people. They associate the sound of the brand-name with positive or negative experiences. People attribute their experiences to the brand, as well as the stories from other people’s experiences. Whether brand managers like it or not and whether the stories are true or not. 

This was true in the 20th century – and Giep Franzen wrote a great book about it: “The Mental World of Brands”– but this is maybe even truer in the 21st century. That is: 10 years ago internet was still a new medium and interactivity was a hot item. Now this is like telling a fish that water is great because it is transparent.

Of course a brand can also be considered as something that is legally owned by a company, something that has a value that can far exceed that of the company’s more tangible assets such as manufacturing plants, real estate and equipment, etc. But a brand is only valuable because people think it is valuable. Like money is only valuable because people think it is valuable. Money is a collection of “0’s” and “1’s”. This digital collection means something only in the eyes of the believers; until they don’t trust each other anymore and the system of symbols and believes collapses.

Why is SAAB valuable? For example because SAAB-fans went on the street to protest against the possible vanishing of their brand: THEIR brand. For its legal owner GM it was just a symbol that was equivalent to an amount of money. Now, for Spyker, the Swedish state and some others, SAAB is valuable because they believe it will help them to reach their goals; not only financial goals.

A brand is valuable because people attribute it to experiences and associate it with their own values and believes, this influences what people know and believe about the brand and the products and services they associate it with. As a result they will trust the brand, or not. They will feel positive about the brand, or not. Consequently they want to have something from that brand, or not.

10 Years ago brand building was more easy for companies. They more or less directed what was said about the brand; simply by buying advertisement space and by promoting free publicity: feeding journalists with news items that they passed-on to the target-group. This was mainly one-way communication.

Nowadays it is not about what the company sais the brand is, but about what others say the brand is. Companies can no longer direct what is said about the brand. All they can do is monitor what is said and try to influence this.

Building a brand is a process in people’s brain. Communicating about a brand is a process in public space: online and off-line, advertisement on billboards, on clothing etc. – Naomi Klein made herself angry about this in her book “No Logo”.  These processes influence each other and it is like a game between people who believe to own the brand: brand managers and target groups.

Target groups. Target groups? This is a word from the 20th century. It stands for a group of people on whom a message, medium, campaign is targeted. A hunter targets a rabbit, with a bullet in his gun. His objective is to hit the rabbit between its eyes or in its heart. The company’s objective also is to hit the target group between the eyes or in its heart, with a message in its campaign. The problem is that in the 21st century a gun does not work anymore: “target-groups” are too small and too agile. People do not sit and wait. They discuss subjects that THEY want, not subjects that the company tries to put on the agenda. They choose their own cool brands and their own opinion leaders. They do not necessarily choose the brands that the company had intended for them.

But companies can learn to adapt to this situation. As follows. During history of man, hunters and collectors evolved into farmers who live in symbioses with their cattle and crops. Similarly companies can evolve from hit-and-run organisations into organisations that exploit sustainable relations in which mutual loyalty is the key.

For a sustainable relation both parties have to profit – provided that they are free to leave whenever they want. Of course a company still has to feed its own employees, so it still has to earn money in one way or another. But it continuously has to add value for the people with whom it lives in symbioses.

Therefore the company has to attract people and contain them. A brand can be a strong lure for this. A brand can represent a promise, the promise that it will make you happy or your life easy, etc. But if the brand does not deliver, people will feel disappointed and will not trust the brand. They will twitter and chat about their negative experiences and emotions. On the other hand, really strong brands have followers who are ambassadors or even evangelists of the brand. (Have you talked with an Apple-user about the iPad lately?)

How can an organisation create an attractive brand? There still is no algorithm for creating attractiveness. It is difficult to calculate and predict attractiveness in advance. (There is a story that tells that at Philips in the ’70, engineers measured the products they made – most of them were grey and box-shaped. If the proportions of length, width and height estimated the Golden Ratio, this was proof that the product was beautiful.) What can be done is create product, logo, name etc. and pre-test it. So, creation and analysis go hand in hand, like Yin and Yang.

For the company this means that left brain halves and right brain halves will have to work together. Either within one skull or in teams where some people have right-brain dominance and others have left-brain dominance. Engineers will have to work together with artists, marketers with researchers etc. etc. Therefore a Brand Manager in many cases is a General Manager in training; he leads and inspires a team of experts. This team should inspire other people, who inspire others, etc. That is communication: passing-on and sharing information, experiences, emotions, etc.; this will result in a group. Communication is group-formation.

tagged with: follow-group, fragmented target-groups, brand-building