Mind your business & consumers, too!
As a brand owner, you would want to communicate all the possible strengths of your brand. The logic in your mind would always be, What if I focus on one benefit while the customer is looking for the other? Let me list down all the possible benefits so that when the customer comes looking for one, he gets it on my list among others. Seems like a good enough logic… right!
WRONG. When you are writing a whole long list, lets say 10 benefits; you are giving the power to the reader (read customer) to decide what he wants to remember out of the list. Now if you were to put such 50 people in one room and allow them to scream the one word that best defines your brand’s benefit to them, you can imagine the noise – different voices uttering different words. Deafening it would be.
These 50 people will have different expectations- different yardsticks for the effectiveness of your brand and don’t you think it would be tough, really tough for you to make everyone happy at that stage.
Which brings me to the very fact, for creating a successful brand, you have to build it around one singular key benefit.
ONE BIG IDEA! USP! Key Promise!!
And see it is all around you. A Salman Khan movie is a Salman Khan movie! The actress, the director, the production house… Do you care? Really?!.
Lets have some practical tips on how to CUT THE CLUTTER.
- LIST DOWN! Oh yes!
Being the brand owner, yours head is where it all actually started, right. So why not jot down all the possible features /strengths / key points of your brand. All of it, on one sheet, maybe multiple sheets of paper!
- Continue… for a week or did you hear, month(s)
However weird it sounds, sleep, eat, drink, go potty with the list. Make amends; add more, and more to your hearts delight. There should come one point when you should feel that the brand that you are going to build, has never existed before, will change the face of mankind, animalkind (is there a word like that??) and every single kind that has ever existed, even if it was just a container to hold eggs in your refrigerator. That should be the point, the precise moment when you stop.
- Start eliminating
Easier said than done, after all the hard work of adding on the list, it would be tough to let go off- especially since all of these traits are SO very intrinsically YOU. So here the logical side of your brain has to start acting in the real world. And the real world is full of competition and repetition, even for a container to hold eggs in your refrigerator.
To be able to eliminate, you have to research, in the real world,
- Search on Internet
- Watch TV
- Listen to Radio
- Read Books
- Go mall hopping & street shopping
DELETE:
- Any trait, which appears for more than 5 times, a day, across categories
Example – Value for money, Beautiful, Long lasting…
- Any benefit already owned by competition
Example – 500 sprays- Fogg (for Deos), 2 mins – Maggi (for noodles)
- Any benefit, which sounds to have first appeared a decade back
Example – Maa ke haath ka khana
Even after deletion, Im afraid you will still be left with a substantial list, potential winners to help you win the war.
- Sit with your one hand on calculator and other on your heart.
I know, the brand that you are going to build should be able to outlive you, sustain itself, make money and yes, change the world. But it has to start with YOU.
This is the time to carefully evaluate both the financial and emotional implications of what you choose as your USP. If at all you were to build a brand of handmade, handcrafted egg containers (yeah, why not?) it would mean,
- Higher cost of production
- Higher cost to maintain consistency
- Higher cost of manpower
- Limited production till you sell big numbers and are able to hire more craftsmen
- Requirement of VC funding (will they buy the idea)
- No Funding (how long will you sustain if no one bought the idea)
- Higher Advertising / marketing cost
Even if you are able to withstand all financial pressures attached to the key benefit, it would be good to ask,
- Would you be able to live and imbibe ‘handcrafted’?
- Would you be able to handle tantrums of craftsmen versus machines?
- Would you continue even if people made fun of your idea?
- Would you be able to inspire and motivate the best of people to work with you?
- Would you be able to create an office culture such that ‘handcrafted’ becomes a word no less than GOD?
Unless you can tick a YES against each of these questions, the USP is not compelling enough. So you have to move on to the next benefit.
- Identified? Come, fall in love.
I hope you still remember your first love affair. Doing lots of crazy stuff just so that love of your life is truly impressed, head over heels in love with you in return. Anything and everything seemed logical, possible, and attainable, just because of the fervor. Do the same favor to your brand and its USP. Ensure that everything you do, be it hiring people or creating the look of your office or creating packaging or POS, there is only one key message- your egg container is Handcrafted!
- Care and nurture your love
As today’s youth will tell you, love is not enough.. you need a car, mobile phone, credit card & possibly much more!
Don’t forget to create a genuine product, true to its promise and use all the marketing, financial, business knowledge to enhance the viability of your brand. Just because you have professed love is not enough, you see. You got to spend on cozy dinners together too and so you need to do all that it takes to pay.
- Believe in it.
Just because everyone says that world is moving fast, and you got to quickly succeed or die… don’t be impatient.
A handcrafted egg container is still an egg container! Give your USP sometime to get registered.
People might not want a handcrafted egg container but you have got their attention and one hook to remember, when they see handcrafted anything. And it would result in more lasting glory for the brand than 50 people in a room screaming 10 different things.
2 Tagged with: Blog, Branding, Business, Consumers, Customers, Design, Designing, Marketing, Pineapple Consulting, Strategy