Using content to create or re-create a brand
Good marketing and branding have always been about creating word-of-mouth, stories, and legend. Today with word-of-mouth spread so quickly and easily it’s more powerful than ever. Companies with the marketing gene, like Apple, have elevated WOM to an art form. The trick is, there has to “there” there. Your brand’s underlying value proposition, especially in B2B marketing, has to consist of a product benefit greater than the sum of the product’s adoption cost plus its price. The bigger the delta, the more compelling the value proposition.
Still, just as every generation wants to believe that it invented sex, new marketers assume that a brand “identity” or brand promise is something you can go out and buy and put on like trendy shoes. They soon discover that their brand is not their shoes. It’s their feet. It’s not the belt, it’s the waistline. It’s not what you put on your head, it’s what’s inside.
A brand’s value proposition isn’t a pitch, it is whatever is most relevant and compelling to a buyer. Think of a brand as a product’s or a company’s character. It has to stand for something. Which means that it cannot stand for everything. If it tries to, it will stand for nothing. This is part of the reason why great, leading brands, not unlike great people, are rare. There’s a natural inclination of the heart to be liked. To be everybody’s everything so as not to offend or alienate anybody. Your brand must stand for something…or nothing at all. What does your brand stand for? How do you know? How you convey it?