Some thoughts about branding

I’d like to believe that there is always a simple solution to the complicated problems. People just tend to make things much harder than they actually are. I read one Harvard Business Review article about marketing and branding – Marketing Malpractise: The cause and the cure. The article argues that some of the fundamental paradigms of marketing are broken: the ways we’ve learned to segment markets, build brands and understand customers. Instead of segmenting markets and trying to find out what are the needs of the customers, we should focus observing what are the problems, the jobs, customers need to get done. Like Marko Parkkinen told us we should look for a problems. It’s much easier to find a solution when you know the actual problem. And that’s where the branding part comes in. To build strong brands we should connect the brands to the products with the meaning – the purpose. The best way to start building a brand equity is to connect the brand to the products that are made to solve customers problems.  In the other words we need to design products that do the job.

I think this idea is simple enough. Funny part is that it’s actually quite hard to find products these days that actually focus doing the job right. Or at least the products are not marketed like that. For the some reason there always need to be that one extra catch to get the attention. But in the end it doesn’t matter. If the product can’t get the job done, it’s a bad product and people move on. The catch might sell the products – getting the job done builds loyalty. What you think matters more in the long term?

One other thing that always disturbs me is that when people speak about building the brand equity they always come up with some advertising activities. And that’s the part new brands should be more careful with. Because it’s not what you say your brand is, but it’s what they say it is. If you build your brand around the meaning – the job – then with the advertising you can help communicating the job to the people. Brand building is all about fans. Every brand these days should have fans – whatever the product is. Fans make brands. And your brand is what they say it is. The image below is from the Marty Neumeier’s book Zag. Read it.

Idea – refined

I want this! – The Shopping Application.

My idea was to make an application to help shopping. I think that most of the time people actually know what they want. They don’t want to choose between two items that are almost like they want, but instead they really want what they want. And that can be really time consuming when it comes to shopping. Some people enjoy spending countless of hours shopping, but some do not. So the problem is that there are specific items we’d like to purchase but quite often there just isn’t time or energy for that – shopping.

I want this! solves this problem. It’s an application where people can post/write that they are looking for some specific item. Then the other people and also shop owners can answer them if they know where that item can be found. It’s that easy: just post and get answered. And stop wasting your precious time with unnecessary shopping!

There are lots of possibilities with this kind of application or service. It would of course help people to find what they want, but it would also make shop owners life easier. They could for example add items in their store to some database and get alarmed when somebody is looking for something that they can offer. There could be things such as adds, promotions and campaigns in the application. Maybe even some games, like when you help somebody to find something you can get some discount from that store that you just helped directing foot-traffic in. One possibility would also be location based services like advertisement targeting etc.

But most of all, this would help people use their time better. That’s THE WHY people could get interested in this. Not just help you find what you really want, but in the end this would allow you to spend hours used in shopping to do something else. Of course there are some people, women, that likes to do some hard-core shopping but for the men this application would do it just right. Who the hell actually enjoys shopping?

Manual of Me

Things to consider when working with me:

In the first workshop, based on the FourSight evaluation, I seem to be quite flexible when it comes to different types of personalities. I got nearly equal scores in all four preferences. I do also feel that it’s quite accurate. I’ve always felt that I’m capable of filling any role when it comes to working (team work). Though the role of Clarifier is the one I would most likely prefer. It just feels right.

When working I like to ask questions “what if..?” and “why..?”. So please don’t get too frustrated with me. I like the know the reasons behind the actions. Sometimes I do get some spontaneous moments and like to do some spur of the moment kind of things, but most of the time I like to analyse and look and solve problems. I have to be diverse, though. Otherwise I just get bored and move on to other things.