Brand Strategy – A beautiful responsibility | Osborne Pike
A brand is one of the most powerful innovations in the history of commerce.
It can change a commodity into a heroic beacon of quality, trust and desire.
The very engine of consumer capitalism.
It’s not rocket science.
It’s neuroscience.
But don’t think for one microsecond that makes it rational.
(Economists might want to stop reading now.)
Our brains are amazing.
But we have no idea what’s going on up there.
(Apart from neuroscientists, obvs.)
As Mr. Ogilvy said:
We don’t think what we feel.
We don’t say that we think.
And we don’t do what we say.
Maybe we should stop asking: “Would you buy this?”
Positioning, as we once knew it, is dead.
There is no USP.
Byron Sharp proved it: ‘Consumers do not notice the communicated differences between brands’.
Far better to have distinctive brand assets that are easily recognised.
Recognition is a brand’s superpower.
It creates the currency of brand success: mental availability.
Here’s the formula for that:
Advertising X Branding.
Just one small problem.
Availability isn’t the same as buying.
Buying is a decision, a choice, an action.
And the currency of action is emotion.
Gut feelings drive actions: “I want this one”.
Marketing’s moment of truth.
People don’t get their feelings about brands from advertising alone.
They come from everywhere.
Packaging (a big one); Price (changes everything); Where you can (and can’t) buy it.
Daryl Weber calls it ‘The Brand Fantasy’.
“a primordial soup of fleeting images, abstract thoughts and nuanced emotions”.
That sounds like a bucket of steam.
Hard to catch.
But expert marketers and their agencies know how to capture their brand’s fantasy.
Here’s one we’re very proud to be a part of.
It’s a beautiful responsibility.
Or as you could say in Dutch: “een schone taak”.
We hope you enjoyed this special brand strategy edition of Unpredictable.
If you did, please pass it on.
It will make us (and you) look insightful, curious and effective.
That’s our kind of brand fantasy!