Global brand heroes create success stories when they transform poorly performing brands. The best examples would be the transformation of Dove as a powerful brand, the shift of McDonald to healthier eating. Good brand renovate the brands before it become too late. But there are brand leaders who wait until the last time to renovate and fail in the market.
Good brands renovate their brands while they are very strong and growing continuously. They try to identify market dynamics and change those as opportunities before the dynamics converts into threat. At last they get a reward of faster profitable growth.
When going through some articles and success stories I came across the following tactics that can be used to renovate the brands across a range of markets.
- Develop a holistic understanding of the brand
A customer driven understanding of the brand and its vision are highly important, organization should consider the holistic view such as brand’s heritage, personality, its functional benefits, emotional benefits and the brand perceived value in the mind set of customers.It’s very important to understand how customers view the brand in their daily life, and compare it with other thing in their mind. This understanding will help the brand renovators to see opportunities in the market place.
- Look for segment swings
Proactive renovating brands spot the trends in early by following the segments where the collision of the change will more expected to happen and segment the customers in different ways to fit their business. - Distinguish the underlying issues
Not only the brands face rivalry from direct competitors, but also from indirect rivals. Proactive brands will always try to set apart the differences between the threats and the issue and respond effectively. Brand Guru David Aaker a brand faces threat from changing customer dynamics , commoditization and brand lethargy . - Apply the right strategies
May marketers think that every brand problem can be solved with the help of advertising and promotional campaign. Highly proactive innovators always ensure that their brands communications spotlight and reflect the different strategies to cope with existing brand strategy, relevance and with differentiation
To be successful in the market the brand leaders must understand the brand by keeping them selves in the customer’s shoes. They have to think how these segments are changing, identify the new dynamics in the customer’s life and then link the brand with those.
While reading seths blog post about “Welcome to Isalnd Marketing” I came across this Zappos.com. Zappos is an online shoes, handbags and purse seller which is famous for high end shoes Zappos Couture. It serves the niche shoe marketing and they has started to sell eyewear, appreal and watches as well as electronic devices.
