
There are two extremes operating in brand manager’s minds.
The really pathetic one is where they believe that advertising is what makes their brand happen. Their entire focus shifts to communication and they often forget that it’s the product or service that people spend money for.
Then there are those who take a more holistic view of branding but get carried away with how important their product or service is in people’s lives. Very often it isn’t. You can have a fantastic restaurant, or a really great soft drink, or a great whatever, but let’s face it, your customer can do without it.
And, let’s also face the fact that every competitor of yours is doing the same thing, trying their best to make their product or service better all the time.
So, apart from being great and fantastic, it also helps to work on your special relevance to their lives.
Your product or service can’t do it on its own. Conventional definitions of quality will take you thus far but will probably never take you all the way you need to go.
But if you put in enough effort to study the way your product or service is used, the circumstances under which it matters most, which aspect of it matters most and when, and get your customers to help you define how you could become more relevant to their lives, it is possible to discover how, through small steps, you can become a little more relevant to their lives than your competitor is.
Don’t stop at looking for that fantastic breakthrough idea. Those can’t happen every day. Look for small things you can do every day. Those slowly but surely add up into very meaningful differentiators.
And remember. If your move is a good one, the other guys are also going to do it. To stay ahead, work at it every day. One step at a time; one move at a time.
There’s a process called Kaizen that makes a science of this. Here’s a link to an interview with Masaaki Imai, the founder of the Kaizen concept.
As part of our effort to constantly make ourselves more relevant we’ve asked a very good friend (who is an expert on Kaizen) to fly in tomorrow and help us understand and implement it.