My buddy, Brian Solis, released a new book called The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution. The inspiration for the book was the need for organizations to not only recognize the voice of the customer and the employee, but to finally do something about it.
In the book, he talks about the importance of brand and brand essence during an era of what he calls Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to adapt.
With businesses chasing the great “friend” grab in social networks, brand and brand essence are more important than ever before. A brand is recognized as the unique identity of a product, service or company. Brand essence, however, is felt.
To help make brands socially relevant, he created the following steps for brand managers to review. It was inspired by his experiences navigating businesses through similar landscapes, and it includes input from brandSTOKE’s “9 Criteria for Brand Essence.”
Focus: Attention is a precious commodity and to earn it, the brand must make an immediate impression in order to capture attention and convert it into curiosity. Identify a list no more than five words that contribute to the brand, especially in a social setting. Your job is to deliver a unique experience and document what it is you want to evoke through engagement.
Feeling: Social networks are emotional landscapes that are populated by human beings, not consumers. Describe in two or three sentences what it is you want a consumer to feel when she comes into contact with your brand and how she would communicate that feeling through her actions and words to her friends.
Individuality: In these communities, brands are people, too, and they require a persona, character, mannerisms and everything necessary to stand out. Illustrate the persona of your brand. Who is it? What does it stand for? What are its characteristics and mannerisms? The key here is to create a unique and desirable impression. As my good friend Guy Kawasaki says, we must be “enchanting!”
Experiential: When a consumer experiences a product or service, what is that each encounter eliciting? Articulate in a sentence or two the experience you wish your consumers to feel or associate with the brand.
Consistency: Consistency is what a brand conveys every day across all networks, social presences, content, apps, and engagement. List three attributes that must be communicated through all things social.
Personal: Brand essence must carry meaning, something personal that people aspire to become, embrace, and be part of, something that resonates with them. List the top three emotional hooks that will convey why and how people will be drawn to you in social media.
Portable: Networks cultivate unique cultures and how people connect with brands is different within each. Brand essence requires scalability and portability to extend brand value and resonance across each network while still creating a holistic experience. Clearly define in two sentences how brand essence will be communicated or expressed at the top level and within each network.
Longevity: Is the essence designed to last? Is it something that can stand the test of time and patience regardless of medium? At some point a brand must become an extension of the culture of the organization, and now’s the time to put into words how the culture will transfer from the real world into each network. In one sentence, two at the most, capture your culture and describe how it will be enlivened in new media. Define what people are aligning with and representing to their networks.
Credibility: People walk away with an impression based on how a brand is portrayed and enlivened. There must be an alignment between these nine steps and the experience people actually do have. Understand where the disconnect may exist today, list the gaps, and take actions to fill them. Without this step, the brand will lose credibility through engagement and that’s not an option in today’s digital economy.
Now assemble the pieces in one place to communicate the brand and brand essence so that the team can bring it to life. The result should read like a manifesto that clearly and passionately expresses the brand persona, its soul, and the experience that consumers will have and share through each engagement.
Everything that we do including the words we choose and the imagery we use is instrumental in the definition of brand essence. Thus, our words, and actions, contribute to the last mile of customer engagement. If you’d like to learn more about brand essence and the end of business as usual, be sure to get Brian’s book.
