Brands are constantly evolving to meet their customers’ expectations, surprise them, inspire and help.
During a blind test, customers prefered the taste of Pepsi and not Coca-Cola. After revealing the brand and getting the product packaged – they pointed on Coca-cola as a better in taste. That’s how important branding was and still is.
The current challenge which brands are solving is related to technology and changing societies. Nowadays there are more sim cards than people on earth and we have access to information at our fingertips at any time. Brands carefully navigate through the 3 fields of challenge. here are some short examples. What can we learn from them?
First – Globalisation
Brands compete on both local and global level. Look at McDonald’s, the global brand enhances its locality in every single country. It plays on the local tastes, builds loyalty by offering ‘local-like’ products (as avocado pure in Chile or Maharaja Mac in India)
Second – Social media
Customers influence the brands – instead of using complain forms they use social media to express disappointment or even anger. Look at the situation with GAP brand, when the company has introduced a new logo and was widely criticised by consumers.
Third – Physical shops
Consumers habits changed. Instead of visiting shops, they are likely lookup the product, the price and availability to order for in-store collection or delivery. Amazon disrupted the market greatly by offering the ‘prime’ option so there is no stress on the consumer side on the returning of the items.
To ignore or to adapt?
This is the question! From the points above we can see 3 focal points – emphasise – look around, what is needed? Be humble – take the lessons from your customers. Disrupt the market – discover solutions to everyday problems.
Source: Disruptive Branding: How to Win in Times of Change Kindle Edition
by Jacob Benbunan, Gabor Schreier, Benjamin Knapp
also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_Inc; and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Challenge
