A simple way to think about brand strategy

This article is a simple popular science about brand thinking, because I recently discovered in the process of communicating with some friends that many newcomers to the industry have not formed a standardized brand thinking framework (this surprised me), which leads to a lack of depth in strategic thinking. Often after a few words of conversation, you can find that they don’t really understand their company’s brand.

Let’s first talk about what “brand power” is?

As we all know, the earliest meaning of the word brand is related to "brand". The brand burned on a pig lets others know who the pig belongs to. Now, this meaning is more like a trademark logo or an IP symbol, but they obviously cannot cover the entire connotation of the brand we are talking about today.

Kotler defines a brand as a specific set of features, benefits, and services that a seller provides to buyers over the long term. But we believe that this statement does not describe the essence of the brand and is "correct nonsense." If we think in this direction, we may end up taking an inappropriate detour in brand strategy .

The definition given by Kotler is summarized from the perspective of the enterprise. In the actual operation process, it is easy for the enterprise to talk to itself and thus be self-satisfied in communication. What we really need is to discuss the essence of the brand directly from the user's perspective, because the user's perspective includes all the elements in the market and ultimately reflects the moment of payment.

I gave this definition in an article a long time ago: brand is the sum of all factors that make users buy your products instead of your competitors. This definition sounds confusing and not concise. Later, I met a senior who gave a more concise statement: brand is about choice.

What this senior and I wanted to express were similar. It is meaningless to look at the brand from the perspective of the enterprise. Thinking about the brand from the perspective of the consumer is closer to the essence.

In fact, I think all thinking about branding can be reduced to two basic questions:

• 1. Why do users choose you?
• 2. How can you tell users who you are in just one sentence?

These two questions are also questions that every marketer must answer quickly. If you cannot do so, it may mean that you do not have a full understanding of your brand.

To answer the first question, many people will directly list their own product advantages and corporate advantages, such as good product quality, strong R&D capabilities, and a sense of design. However, the advantages considered within the company may not be real advantages. If you can list four or five answers to this question, it is almost certain that you have not thought about it seriously, because in today's highly competitive business world, it is already very good for a company to have a unique advantage. You think your product is of good quality, but users may not think so because they have a large number of high-quality products to choose from.

So this question can be refined. Suppose your product and a competitor's product of the same price are placed on the table at the same time, why would users buy yours?

The process of constantly breaking down this problem is a bit like the control experiment we did in high school biology class. Only by controlling the only variable can we know which factor is at work. Answering this question can not only clarify one's own brand advantages and communication strategies, but also further extend the company's own competitive advantages and conduct a more macro-level competitive strategy analysis.

For example, assuming that users buy your product because of its design, you can then think further about how this design capability is built. Is it because you have signed contracts with a large number of designers and opened up the design industry chain, or is it because the company has a strong design team within the company and has the advantage of organizational processes? So is this design capability advantage a corporate moat? If competitors directly spend money to hire top designers, will your design advantage continue?

Even in the long run, sometimes we can broaden the definition of "competitors". Competitors are not necessarily competitor products that directly make users face consumption decisions. They may also be broad competitors that seize user scenarios and user time in different dimensions. For example, the competitors of Master Kong instant noodles are not only Uni-President’s Old-Style Pickled Cabbage Noodles, but also Meituan Takeout; for example, the competitors of iQiyi are not only Tencent Video, but also Honor of Kings, etc.

In summary, brand power analysis starts with the USP theory to find the unique selling point; competition analysis can start with Porter's Five Forces Model to find unique business competitiveness. We believe that the USP and Five Forces Model are the two most important marketing theories. A large number of other marketing methodologies and industry analysis methodologies are basically derived from them.

The second question, “How do you explain it clearly to users in one sentence?” is also something that every marketer needs to think clearly about. In the process of thinking about brand strategy, the final expression is actually brand positioning and slogan.

Positioning is a company's judgment of its own market opportunities, and advertising slogans are reasons that stimulate users to take action. What needs to be noted here is that positioning is not thought out by marketers, but is the result of strategic thinking, analysis and reasoning. What is tested behind it is the understanding of the industry, the market and the users. Advertising slogans often require more insight into the users. They either provide interest stimulation points, such as "Drink Wanglaoji if you are afraid of getting a sore throat", or hit the user's emotional soft spot, such as "Self-discipline gives me freedom".

Since I happened to have a brief contact with a company that wanted to diversify its product business a few days ago, I would like to talk more about this topic. Diversification or focus, brand matrix or brand focus are actually classic questions in marketing. However, if we look beyond marketing itself and from the perspective of corporate development and competition, diversification and the construction of a brand matrix will be the mainstream choice.

Diversification will bring two effects. First, brand positioning may need to be adjusted. Because brands can help users make quick decisions, users need to be aware of brand changes, which involves a series of actions such as adjusting advertising slogans and other external materials.

The second is that competitive advantages may change, because a company's advantages in one product may not be reusable in another product. There are several situations: for example, the logic of cross-border products is different from the original product logic, and the points that stimulate users are completely different. For example, high-end products can sell design, but low-end products may only sell cost-effectiveness. This transformation poses huge challenges to the mechanisms and capabilities behind the company. For example, the original product line does not have sufficient competition, and design can stimulate users to buy, but a large number of design brand giants have entered the new product line, and whether your design capabilities can compete with them is also a question.

Finally, I would like to recommend a very effective thinking method called the “ 5-question method ”, which was probably summarized by someone in the early days of Toyota. The general meaning is that for a question, you need to keep asking why five times before you can find the real answer.

Of course, in reality we may have to ask three, four or even ten times before we find the real reason, but the key to the "Five Questions Method" is actually to distinguish between phenomena and essence. Many times, the reasons we deduce through simple reasoning are just another phenomenon. Whether it is marketing strategy or operation management, what is often tested is the ability to grasp the key points. Only by finding the real core key can you achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran

Source: Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)