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Brand that is driven by extraordinary culture

Brand

Company to a brand

As per MCA, there were 11,89,826 active companies as on June 30, 2018.  Not all are brands that deliver experience along with product and services. Brand is a simplest form to identify a company and further it helps to differentiate from another company in same industry.  It is essential for companies or an organization to create a brand out of services and products they deliver. It is not simple as it sounds to be. And it is not impossible to become a brand and recognized by consumers in the market.  However, the stakeholders of the company need to walk the journey to become a brand.

The first step to the endless journey to stay as a brand

Recently I was asked in a client meeting, “what is the single factor that makes a company or brand successful ?  With no hesitation or thoughts, I pointed out “culture” as the single factor that could make a company successful and hence makes it a brand. Though culture is not a visible factor, but it is the only function that determines the growth curve. Culture forms the single platform where marketing, HR, operations, sales resides. Without the concrete culture a company is not a brand and not a company that could pull itself for long run in the market (we are not challenging the exceptions as we deal with best practices).  The good news is 70% of the company stakeholders / business leaders we surveyed know the importance of organizational culture, 90% of them struggle to use culture as a key driver of performance. Business stakeholders acknowledge that they should create culture enabled brand rather than a brand which only markets product and services.

expandnext.com research shows Customer Relationship, Innovation and Accountability are the top priorities among the other parameters that brands are looking to invest and are investing. Fortunately, these are also part of culture management system. Example – Innovation is a culture which can be put into a business process or say a company can implement Innovation Process as part of culture.

Thinking extraordinary – as a part of culture

Brands need to institutionalized culture which could inspire the next generation of managers and employee at all levels. Company should groom people from being ordinary to extra ordinary for growth and innovation.

Challenges

Yes, there are challenges, specially when brands are part of the long value chain. B2B functions challenges are comparatively less than brands dealing in B2C markets. Retail brands which take the franchise route should re-think and re imagine the process and should explore culture as a key parameter. As in culture of training and development (and not business development ), culture of constant auditing, culture auditing. Brands should stop thinking their partners in business as another distribution channel, and should align them more to the culture that the brand promise.

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Why Brands need to stand out in Experience Economy

experience

What is Experience Economy

Experience Economy is the 4th phase of economy where service is no longer a benchmark product but customer experience is. Consumer will pay for experience while buying the product from the mall or just to be in the shopping center ( can you imagine).

Customer brand journey is influenced by the experience provided by the brand. As per B. Joseph Pine II , ” To create the desired impression, companies must provide cues that affirm the nature of the experience.”

As per India context, customer now has choices in abundance packaged differently both as a part of experience and non experiential offerings.  However, average youth is also in fear of job security ( thanks to fast changing technology), unstable relationship, and other social  insecurities which limit their long term investment plans such as housing, etc. Therefore more people are spending their money into experience rather than spending on buying house or gold, or an expensive car ( though it is subject to vary in different region or pockets of target segment)

The Characteristics of Experience

Business can no longer continue to offer service and products only. They need to go beyond to sell experience, and that comes with certain defined characteristics. They are:

Participative  ( active and passive participation of customers) – Imagine an event where user/ customers can participate by experiencing the even staged by brand , and those who are onlookers but are learning by watching the participants experiencing the event. Another example of passive participants could be customers who pay for rock concert to listen and enjoy the songs. While active participants are the one who pay for a tech event to use the newly launched products to get the first hand experience ( before they actually buy from retail stores at later point of time). Similarly participants of the midnight marathon race for cause or awareness campaign, however visitors who turn up to watch the event are not passive participants but equally contribute to the thrilling experience of the marathon event that others experience.

Connection –  This dimension of experience has to do with the environment of the event or stage of the experience. It connects the user / customer with the event or performance.  The sub characteristics of the Connection is absorption and immersion .  Brands need to walk this characteristics to define or stage targeted experience.  People sitting in Stands in the Budh International Circuit would experience differently from the people who are in the middle of the track/ circuit ( as officials, volunteers or otherwise)

Emotional – This dimension is non tangible effect of the experience. The experience can be felt while consuming a tangible product also. Such as eating a cake baked by a home baker. Cake is traditionally a symbol of celebration and instantly gives you a sense of taste and a memory associated with cake. Remember the last time someone got you a cake in our birthday!  Cake connects people with memorable occasions. It has to do with emotion and the experience of eating a tasty and creatively sugar crafted cake is one of the most fulfilling experience one can buy or gift.  Similarly a well decorated bakery shop with warm sitting corners has the potential to attract guest to pay for that experience + the cake!  ( compared to the regular bakeries which might sell similar cakes in less price).  Apnacake is one such online directory for home bakers in India which is creating easy search experience to help customer connect the nearest home baker.

We call it Positive Contamination of the Market in the Experience Economy.

If  you are up for growth then your innovation team should create Positive Contamination that should resonate with your brand offering. How you can do this in retail market ( is the next blog topic).

CONCLUSION

There is no end to creativity and brands should stage experience. Be bold and experiment enough…