Let’s keep this simple…
The customer will fall in love with your brand if it plays a valuable role in their life.
See, I said I’d keep it simple.
But…Yes, there’s always a but…
So, here it goes, as with every brand, the nature of their role tends to be versatile and dependent on the customer.
Pick a brand, any brand and I promise you they will play a different role to different people – even if it’s based on the same purpose.
For example, a trendy coffee brand is one person’s social statement, another person’s treat after a busy morning and another person’s chill out and time to think, drink.
It’s the same coffee brand playing a role in their customers’ lives in many ways.
It’s no secret that understanding the above is a lottery win for brands.
So, how do you win?
Brands create value for the consumer in many ways as I’ve mentioned above.
This can be individual needs and desires or social positioning -bragging rights, spanning functional and pleasurable benefits.
This ranges from acting as an identifier to their identity or helping to build that identity, or just simply making their day that little bit easier.
For new and up-and-coming brands, it can seem daunting and another maze to crack in to capture an audience.
After all, it’s a brand’s goal to find customers and that’s why research and insights play a huge role in finding how customers use a brand to create value in their life.
I worked with a famous chain of vodka bars. Research showed us many people visited for a variety of reasons and at different times. And they were all looking for a very different experience depending on the time they visited.
We looked at the research and then developed a strategy of splitting the day into three time zones – afternoon, after work and after dark.
This allowed us to then develop a range of comms aimed directly at the time zones.
Afternoon tended to be more food orientated.
After work was very much helping them to unwind.
After dark was party time.
We then created colour palettes, photography styles and a tone of voice for each of the time zones. Along with developing campaign assets for each time zone giving the audience a brand promise that talked directly to them.
This celebrated the fact that the brand played a role in people’s lives in many ways and delivered a new way of attracting audiences.
Brands can often overlook the fact they play different roles for different people. But understanding this is a huge bonus on brand value.
It’ll come as no surprise then that our brand workshops really go into detail on purpose and personas. It’s vital we talk to each persona from a slightly different angle because experience has shown us that if we give each persona a rational reason and an emotional reason that they can relate to, then they will find it hard not to love your brand.
Don’t be afraid to rewrite your plans if you find audience needs are different across your customer base. Some may just love your product right out of the box, some would love you to collaborate with another brand and some may just use your brand in a way that you’d never expected. Just embrace it and you’ll soon be winning.
So, every brand out there plays a role to many people in many ways, own that story and you get closer to customers.
