DW's Blog
Differentiation Is The Essence Of Competition
by DW Green — December 9, 2015
This is an excerpt from Marc Gobe’s excellent book Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People. I highly recommend reading this book. It presents a new marketing perspective that may very well help you differentiate your company in the market place.
“In A Wall Street Journal article entitled “So long Supply and Demand” the conclusion reached is “The bottom line. Creativity is overtaking capital as the principal elixir of growth. And creativity, although precious, shares few of the constraints that limit the range and availability of capital and physical goods.” In this new business atmosphere, ideas are money. Ideas, in fact, are a new kind of currency altogether—more powerful than money. One single idea—especially if it involves a brand concept—can change a company’s entire future.
But what exactly constitutes a great brand concept today? In this hypercompetitive marketplace where goods or services alone are no longer enough to attract a new market or even to maintain existing markets, I believe that it is the emotional aspects of products and their distribution systems that will be the key difference between consumers’ ultimate choice and the price that they will pay. By emotional I mean how a brand engages consumers on the level of the senses and emotions; how a brand comes to life for people and forges a deeper, lasting connection.
Brand Identity Starts at Home
A brand is brought to life for consumers first and foremost by the personality of the company behind it and that company’s commitment to reaching people on an emotional level.
Retail environments will have to become places to build brand images, rather than just places to sell products. Store will need to emotionally bond with consumers through retail design and merchandising strategies that incorporate imaginative features, offering the kind if entertainment and sensory appeal that cannot be found on the Web.
Sensory experiences are immediate, powerful, and capable of changing our lives profoundly, but they are not used to their full extent in branding, particularly at the retail level. This is where a dramatic, color lit waterfall in the middle of a retail space, or sound, music and scent zones are activated when the shopper strolls into different sections of the store, or basketball courts for trying out shoes and equipment, or exciting entertainment events can come into play. In the stores of tomorrow, “buying” will be outmoded as a sterile activity and in its place will stand the “art of shopping” which is less about purchasing and more about experiencing a brand.
Branding bridges the gap between the provider and the receiver, between authority and freedom. It is about trust and dialogue. Powerful Emotional branding comes from partnership and communication. Building the right emotion is the most important investment you can make in a brand. It is the promise you make to consumers, giving the permission to enjoy the world of the brand.”
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