Brand Management

Mercedes canceled its subscription service, Mercedes Collection. The two-year old pilot offering fee-based access to 30 different models, insurance, roadside assistance and maintenance had about 100 participants. Mercedes Collection gave people a car-driving option other than a purchase or a lease.

Brand revitalization requires finding and satisfying a new, important customer need. Brand success requires being the best at something relevant and differentiated. It means never taking your eye off of changing customer needs.

The chart shown above is an evolution of one that I helped create at Kantar. It is my attempt to summarize as clearly and simply as possible the process by which people choose between brands based on their intuitive and deliberative thinking. I would love to hear your thoughts about it, good, bad, or indifferent. But first, let me lay out my thinking behind the chart.

Sociologists refer to the set of individuals and organizations that create and market a cultural product such as a record album, a movie, a shoe style, or a football game as a culture production system (CPS).

“Soft power.” It is a weird combination of ideas, right? How can a power be soft? And yet, soft power can be credited with the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Arab Spring, and the allure that the United States still holds for many people around the world. For a business, soft power rests in its brand. That illusive, intangible something that makes people want to buy a product or service more than the alternatives.