Branding Strategy Insider

More To Learn From Steve Jobs

It's been more than four months since the passing of Steve Jobs. Much has been written and shared in that span about one of the greatest innovators and marketers of our times. In the flurry of remembrences I missed this opinion piece in the New York Times by his biographer, Walter Isaacson. For me, Steve's lessons continue to surface. 

The Genius Of Jobs 
One of the questions I wrestled with when writing about Steve Jobs was how smart he was. On the surface, this should not have been much of an issue. You’d assume the obvious answer was: he was really, really smart. Maybe even worth three or four reallys. After all, he was the most innovative and successful business leader of our era and embodied the Silicon Valley dream writ large: he created a start-up in his parents’ garage and built it into the world’s most valuable company.

So was Mr. Jobs smart? Not conventionally. Instead, he was a genius. That may seem like a silly word game, but in fact his success dramatizes an interesting distinction between intelligence and genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical. They were sparked by intuition, not analytic rigor. Trained in Zen Buddhism, Mr. Jobs came to value experiential wisdom over empirical analysis. He didn’t study data or crunch numbers but like a pathfinder, he could sniff the winds and sense what lay ahead.

The Life Span Of Brands

Like people, brands don’t live forever.* They’re born into the marketplace, grow and become successful, then iconic, and then stale as week old bread. The driver underpinning all these phases is unrelenting and rapid change. Seemingly, the forces driving our global economy are getting harder for brand owners to keep up with. Brands are dynamic. Brands have their cycles and they run their course. What’s difficult for brand owners and managers to grasp is when to continue to invest precious capital into a tired under-performing brand or move on. 

This is particularly true if the brand was once a leader in the market. Market success always creates size, power, and breeds a false sense of security (think arrogance). Over time, this creates an unrealistic view of the marketplace reality, and a lack of urgency to correct course in maintaining relevancy among consumers the brand serves. In the US, both Sears and Kodak are stunning, real-time examples of this dynamic. (Kodak founder George Eastman pictured on the left)

Danger lurks when brand owners and managers of iconic brands become inwardly focused and miss new opportunities or competitive threats. Complacency by brand owners becomes the norm, and endless advertising messages, brand extensions, and ultimately commoditization blur the brand’s compelling meaning in the minds of consumers. 

Often, the key to lasting brand success -- longer brand life spans is an internal push to evolve and repel complacency. Leaving weaker brands and their brand managers to fade away and take their rightful place in brand history. 

*Unless they continue to meet human needs, the ultimate reason for a brands' existence

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Branding Lessons For Entrepreneurs

It is never too early in the process to understand who your brand’s customers are, what motivates them and how to reach them. Doing this at the end of the product development process is usually too late. You will have developed a more unique and compelling solution if it was based on these insights earlier on in the process.

Your solution needs to deliver greater value (that is more functional, emotional, experiential or self-expressive benefits for less money or effort) than competitive offerings for it to break through and gain share. Make sure you understand what your brand’s unique value proposition is. (brand positioning is a process that will define what your brand stands for/what it can 'own' in the mind)

Customer insight will help you create a brand message that resonates with your customers, one that is unique and purchase motivating. Effectively articulating relevant differentiation is key to building a strong brand.  In addition to advertising copy, this message can be translated to a pithy brand “tagline” and a brand “elevator speech” (typically 40 to 70 words) that you and your company’s employees can use when talking about your brand.

Marketing your brand and its products should not be underfunded. If you offer superior products backed by outstanding service at very good prices delivering an outstanding value but no one has ever heard of your company, brand or products, how many sales will you get? Zero. No awareness = no sales. Awareness building is perhaps the most important component of building a strong brand.

Brand Marketing And The New Consumer Profile

Future circumstances, already manifest and surfacing, will demand something wholly new of consumers, and thus of marketers, too, something more than a clever new look to rehab an old approach. Indeed, already, consumers are finding themselves forced to mastermind ingenious solutions to unprecedented, newly emerging states of affairs. Going forward, this outlook of ingenuity will carry over into consumer expectations of marketers and will suffuse every aspect of consumer engagement with the marketplace.

The global recession was so severe that it easy to suppose that its repercussions will utterly define the future of the global consumer marketplace. That supposition is wrong. More is at work than that.

Three major cycles are coming to a close nowadays, only one of which is economic. One is technological; one is demographic. And all three are opening onto something new in the face of unprecedented resource constraints.

Consumer aspirations find root in the possibilities afforded by the economy, technology and demography. These comprise the ocean in which people swim. Any shift sets people on a different course. The future is found by navigating the flow of these currents. Based on where we see these three dynamics headed, the macro consumer trend to watch will be the emergence of lifestyles reflecting an overarching outlook of ingenuity.

There’s A Little Steve Jobs In Every One Of Us

In thinking about the passing of Steve Jobs, it’s inspiring to be reminded there's a little Steve in every one of us. All it takes is a personal decision to pursue a vision that matters to you with his level of unbridled passion and belief. And once that decision is made, never accept the status quo.

There is a great lesson and legacy gifted to us all by the life of Steve Jobs. No doubt, in the years to come, his incredible accomplishments will become mythic legend. But Steve Jobs was not special. He did not possess anything that is unavailable to any other human being. Perhaps even he would acknowledge this.

There’s a Steve Jobs in each of us. To celebrate his example and his legacy, here are some lessons from his life most noteworthy for our own brands and businesses:

Think different.
This mantra was the force that gathered all the necessary molecules that formed themselves into the greatest technology business the world has ever known. It’s more than an advertising slogan or a clever brand positioning idea. If you think like and follow the status quo, you’ll never discover the inner voice of your own true genius. More importantly, you must believe in your different thinking. Believing is seeing, not the other way around.

Be curious.

The key to innovation and business growth is curiosity. You have to appreciate and practice the discipline of being curious, asking questions, and questioning the answers that come up. To be innovative requires you bring things into the world that no one is asking for, but once realized, become the very things the world was waiting for. No one was asking for an iPad, now millions can’t live without it.

Brands And Story Telling

Yesterday, I was drawn in again by a street person’s story. It is not the first time. If the story is good enough, it tugs on your heartstrings. While, as a brand marketer, I am always leery of being taken in by total fiction, at the same time, if the story is good enough, it doesn’t even matter if it is true.  It has entertained me.  I give the person some money. Several times a week my wife and I get phone calls from various not-for-profit and political organizations asking for contributions. Again, there are stories. What will happen if they don’t get enough money. What will happen if they do. The telephone solicitors are scripted to paint a compelling picture with words. Don’t religious leaders do the same thing? How many of Jesus’ parables are recounted in the Bible? And there are Hindu and Buddhist parables and stories.  I can’t think of a religion that doesn’t have its stories. I even hear stories from people who want to sell me investments. Stories of people getting rich. They paint a picture of how I will significantly increase my net worth too if I invest in what they are selling. And how about the stories told by places? Come to our country or city or resort and have this type of experience.

Story telling is a strong selling tool. Every brand should have its stories. The stories should be unique and engaging and admirable and entertaining and purchase motivating. Does your brand have a story to tell? If your target customers heard it, would it be enough to get them to purchase what you are selling?

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Farewell Steve Jobs, Your Brand And Vision Live On

No doubt in the days ahead much will be written about the life of Steve Jobs. His passing will indeed leave a void for many. Like the classic hero’s journey, his extraordinary accomplishments in life will be long remembered by devotees and detractors alike. So it is with great genius. 

Steve Jobs life provided an illuminating example and a reminder to us all that most of what we think is too difficult, unacceptable or impossible, is in fact quite the opposite. His vision was simple - create powerful tools and put them in the hands of everyday people who value creative expression and they will change the world. Surely our world is changed.

As for his legacy and its impact on the future of the Apple brand, who can know these things? There are many incredibly smart, talented and dedicated people within Apple who will carry on with the work of Steve Jobs vision.  The Apple brand will always be grounded in the “think different” mantra that has made the world different and far better indeed.

Sponsored By: The Two-Day Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Leadership Through Radical Innovation

When thinking about product and brand innovation– what seems to elude many executive leaders is a that people do not buy products, they buy into meanings.

Maybe the reason for this is simply the physics of most organizations inhibits radical innovation and the competitive advantage that results. What matters the most to people is not the function of a product, but their emotional, psychological and cultural connection to what a product means to them. The key to sustained competitive advantage for companies is to innovate around meanings rather than function and performance.

Radical Innovation does not happen when you bring people an incremental improvement of what they already know. Rather, radical innovation (and market leadership for that matter) is the result of  “proposing” an unexpected meaning. This meaning, unsolicited by user needs, once discovered, turns out to be the very thing people where waiting for!

There are countless examples of companies who have mastered this. Of course, Apple is an easy one. And there are other compelling examples. Back in the early 80’s, Seiko and Casio were driving technological innovation in quartz watches, believing people wanted technical precision. However, a Swiss watchmaker realized people cared more about self-expression than technical precision. Swatch was born and proved to be a radical innovation of meaning that created radical market success. While Seiko and Casio were closely observing user needs and existing meanings, Swatch created new ones.

A Lesson From Steve Jobs

Throughout his tenure as Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs would often send personal messages directly to his customers.  Whether he was expressing admiration towards a nine-year-old girl who used her iPad to combat a vision disorder or defending himself against a harsh critic, the message was always honest, clear, and  humorously succinct. To a 300-word diatribe on a new app that measures mobile radiation levels, he responds: 'No interest.'

Contradictions like these explain his allure.  He works tirelessly to please his customers but has no patience for them.  He led a company many would kill to work for but operated it like an autocratic micromanager.  He changed the way human beings interact with technology but (allegedly) can't program.  He made no corporate contributions to charity but ran what was, for a few moments, the most valuable company on Earth. 

I don't know what Jobs' departure will mean for Apple.  I suspect that enough of his vision has permeated its walls to ensure continued success for a very long time.  But when Steve Jobs moves off-campus, Apple will have lost something far more important  than a 'visionary leader and CEO' - it will have lost its biggest fan.  And if there is one thing to learn from his success, it is that we cannot afford to be doing anything but that which we love.  Whether we are brand-builders or school teachers, we must strive for congruence in who we are, what we do, and why we do it. 

To anything less we must respond, simply: 'No interest.'

Contributed to BSI by: Eric Tsytsylin, Millward Brown Optimor

Roughly three years ago on Branding Strategy Insider we pondered whether Apple depended on Steve too much. Here's 'Apple Brand's Dangerous Liaison' from August of 2008.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Consensus: Critical Component In Brand Strategy

A key component in any brand strategy effort is consensus among the brand’s key stakeholders. Without it, the risk of failure increases if full support for the strategy is lost later on. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I was working with a client that had a number of key stakeholders at odds on several issues. Knowing this going in, I opened the workshop with a story that has stuck with me about advertising legend Bill Bernbach. Maybe it will inspire you as it did me. 

Bill kept a small piece of paper in the breast pocket of his jacket. When he was in the middle of a meeting with a client who had an opposite point of view to his, he would pull out this piece of paper and read it to himself. On the piece of paper were three words: “Maybe he’s right.”

Bill’s wisdom and these three words helped us achieve consensus that day.  More importantly, I find it a valuable reminder that in our professional and personal lives it’s wise to take a moment and remember those words when viewpoints clash.

“Maybe he’s right.”

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop