Head of Srategy and Transformation at Trade School.
I’ve been writing and defining brand strategies for more than 25 years, well before the internet, social media and artificial intelligence. That’s the interesting thing about marketing and branding: The climate is always shifting. In marketing, in particular, we are seeing some major shifts right now. Here are a few of the forces shaping how brands are built today.
• Generational shifts: the emergence of Gen-Z, the most digital generation yet.
• Personalization: the expectations of specifically tailored messages and experiences.
• Social proof: the desire for validation and acceptance from one’s social circle.
• Growing distrust: a paradox born from lack of authenticity and expertise.
• Expanding media multiverse: the proliferation of social channels and streaming services.
• Advancement of technology: systems that allow marketers to personalize at scale.
• Artificial intelligence: automation, machine learning and now generative AI.
• Ease of payment and acquisition: ability to buy things with a tap or face ID.
Brands are no longer built with catchy TV ads. They don’t begin and end with big ideas. They are built through a highly connected network of content and experiences across an ever-expanding digital multiverse. This can build differentiation, relevance, connections, salience and loyalty.
And while the delivery of messages and creation of interactions are evolving, the fundamentals of brand strategy are the same. At its highest level, a brand still needs a clear purpose, a unique point of view, meaningful differentiation, relevant messaging, an interesting personality, a well-understood value proposition and a memorable identity.
In the past, that’s where brand strategy has ended. But today, that is just the beginning—the foundation. Now, brands must extrapolate into specific strategies and value propositions for a myriad of specifically defined audiences that can be defined through data signals and reach through personalized ads and experiences. Brands need dynamic personalities that can span social channels from Facebook to TikTok. They need design systems that can stretch across multiple platforms and formats. They need data engines and systems that can dynamically build creativity and serve it to the right audience at the perfect time. These systems are not easy to build and create the need for different systems, processes, skill sets and marketing technology stacks.
One of the largest problems I see is that marketers have the ability to target micro-audiences but don’t have the ability to effectively scale and produce creative that connects with them specifically. And while many marketers are beefing up their in-house agencies, they still need help with modular, scaleable content production that is on-brand and audience-specific.
From my perspective, many marketers struggle to build a brand that inspires loyalty in this new climate. It takes seed change, and it’s a journey. It involves people (capabilities), processes, structures, data and technology. It goes beyond bright, shiny advertising objects, calling for a more modern marketing infrastructure. Marketers need a brand strategy that can be applied in many different ways yet still ladder to a larger point of view and purpose. And they need the ability to scale creativity in a meaningful way.
Think of the ads you see in your respective daily feed. Which ones grab your eye the most? It’s likely the ones that recognize you as a human and what you are after at that moment. The pesky retargeting ads for the thing you already bought aren’t what resonates; it’s the truly insightful content that takes you one step further into your journey that gets your attention. That’s the holy grail. That’s how brands are built today. And that will soon be the new standard in marketing.
I believe the brands leading this space are brands that know how to harness customer data.
Starbucks, for example, uses its app to provide a personalized ordering experience, remembering customers’ favorite drinks and preferences and rewarding them with perks and freebies based on their preferences and past activity. The company sends more than 400,000 variants of personalized messages to customers to promote unique offers for each person.
Spotify is a master of personalization, as it can respond to and predict your listening preferences through its “Discover Weekly” playlists and allow users to personalize their own experience. The company even provides a year-end listening report with templated social graphics and custom playlists, which makes easy influencers out of Spotify’s 489 million users.
And finally, Coca-Cola showed that you don’t always need extreme amounts of customer data to use personalized messaging. The “Share a Coke” campaign started in 2011 in Australia (paywall) and has since expanded globally due to its huge success. Turns out people want to buy a Coke that has their name on it, as well as ones that have their friends and loved ones’ names on them. Who would have guessed?
Are brands built differently in the age of personalization? Yes and no. The fundamentals still apply, but the strategies have to go much deeper. They have to be more flexible and scalable while at the same time more specific and addressable. All this is to say, brand strategy has to drill down into specific audiences to be relevant and enable authentic personalization.
Many companies stop short of making brand strategies specifically addressable to all of their audiences. They leave it at a high level. But this can be overcome by doing two things. First, the larger brand platform must be big enough to matter to all audiences in some way. Second, the strategy should carry through to each audience and their specific needs. Why does this brand platform matter to them? What problem does it help them solve? What value does it bring to their lives? How does this make our brand different? These are questions that need to be asked and answered for each audience to guide more relevant and personalized communications.
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