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The connection to consumers is the key competence for building stronger brand bridges. It requires an end user orientation to evaluate everything you do. This means that the brand planner must become the internal consumer lawyer who always takes into account the consumer perspectives in meetings and evaluates how all new products and ideas can be perceived and better used to improve them, ideal brand perception and performance.

Here are 14 considerations and questions to help you build a successful strategy for your brand.

1. Be realistic

No brand or product is at the center of consumer life. However, this assumption is often made in consumer research projects where only a few options for research and validation are presented. A realistic context for understanding consumer participation and interest in the category is a prerequisite for effective brand planning.

2. Be analytical

Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing program annually to determine how well these programs work for consumers. What worked? What failed? What has to change?

3. Uncover assumptions

Very often there are unspoken, hidden, but effective assumptions about how things should be "done". It is important to uncover these hidden assumptions so that they can be checked and tested. Are we making the mistake of being more concerned with driving transactions than with the quality of contact with the consumer?

4. Discover opportunities

Where are the opportunities when we look outside at the market? Where do the threats come from? Have realistic scenarios been created that reflect the forces that are changing our business model and marketing effectiveness? The appearance of the problems that arise is sometimes referred to as "problem analysis". Every marketing plan should include an element for open design reviews of problems, and creative alternatives should be suggested to address those problems.

5. Be mindful

Where is the emotional level in this category? Are we anywhere near? Do we really understand the moment of consumption when "it is as good as possible"? Are we talking to this moment? Which situations, attitudes, moods and feelings really define the moments of truth around consumption? Sometimes transaction speed, efficiency, and convenience are the greatest leverage points. (Amazon found this out clearly). In addition to these basic values, are there any other values ​​that are waiting to be integrated? Are there long-tail product options?

6. Be curious

How can we change our value proposition more cheaply? How can we improve the brand personality / image? How can we generate buzz? What new groundbreaking ideas would change the experience or benefits of this category? Across categories? Which positioning approaches from the past have prevailed? Does one of the earlier works contain deep insights that can be reinterpreted in a new light today? You have to be curious to discover ideas that lead to a bigger future.

7. Be careful

Are competitors with groups that are important for the growth and success of our brand better positioned? Who do we turn to most? (Age, gender, education, income, relationship status, behavior, psychography) How do these consumer groups interpret our brand? Do channel partners present our brand in their best light? Is our storytelling in contact with the zeitgeist? How do our views differ from the views of the people we want to reach?

8. Be human

All brand impressions contribute to building an image. Is the approach we take to project a human face, or is our communication approach focused on a profane, material or product positioning? Are we seen as good citizens? As a company that is interested? As a company that uses its superhuman strength forever? Does our brand have a conscience? Are there warm and human characteristics and connection points in our brand history? Is our company involved in the community, concerned about the environment, involved in human drama? To create a more human brand, human relationships need to be strengthened. Does your mix of messaging sell functional benefits, emotional benefits, values, or personality? Which of these positioning options have the greatest impact on consumers? Which creative approaches leave people with the most positive feelings for your brand?

9. Be resourceful

To create a brand vision, you have to go beyond the logical and the imaginative. Creative teams tasked with imagining the future need the freedom to make imaginative leaps, and the essence of this aspect of creativity is recognizing new connections between things that previously had no apparent relationship.

10. Be expansive

To expand the brand concept, expand your perspective and think about new brand opportunities. Early generation workshops can be productive. A few simple guidelines help you get the most out of idea workshops: Get away from the construction site, have fun, think like a child, relax old rules, keep the group small, invite a number of creative thinkers, use creative ones Exercises and pre-planned suggestions to generate lots of ideas and do not allow ideas to be killed during idea generation. Review the ideas later to find the ones with the greatest potential, build on those ideas, and then guide them through a rigorous new business development filter.

Learn how you can give your brand more meaning. What stories, images and myths would add great chapters to your brand story? Which new products and services combine with the essence of the brand? Explore ways to take advantage of properties that increase the perceived value of your product and imagine how you can better connect with important subcultures or consumer activities.

11. Look for integration options

Can communication be improved by linking positioning issues across company divisions or the product mix? What creative options are there to expand brand activity in cooperation with co-brands or partners?

12. Be patient

Moving the brand image into a mature category may seem icy slow, but a steady stream of groundbreaking advertising can accelerate emotional change by engendering cultural excitement. Affinity and image measures can move in a shorter period of time.

13. Monitor for impacts

If the original insight that connects the brand with the consumers is unique, cheap and strong and this insight drives your communication, an improvement in the brand strength can be expected. Measuring brand value with sensitivity in designing brand image descriptors is the best way to track efforts to reposition the brand over time.

14. Enrichment of conversations

When I worked at Nike, the Brand Guardians, the core team of Nike directors with responsibility at the brand level, went to an external location for a few days a year to think about and learn from our successes and failures, and we would have lively ones Strategy discussions about what could be done to advance the brand.

I originally wrote these principles down after thinking about the many different perspectives this group took when reviewing the brand strategy outside of the on-site meetings. These brand planning principles were in the background for Nike and influenced how we tried to achieve the radiant qualities of the brand by helping us to have lively debates and enriching strategy discussions.

Such a change of perspective may be helpful if you are doing the annual process of tearing down your brand and business model in the past year. Key questions for you can be …

"How can you and your team do your best work?" and "What group dynamics are important to cultivate to get the really good things that increase the potential of your brand that your team considers worthy and achievable?"

You can find these and other key ideas in my latest book, The Brand Bridge – How to Make a Deep Connection between Your Business, Your Brand, and Your Customers.

At The Blake Project, we support clients from all over the world at all stages of development. Redefine and articulate what makes them competitive in critical moments of change. Please email us for more.

Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy that specializes in brand research, brand strategy, brand growth and brand building

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