What do brands like Harley Davidson, Ryanair and Manchester United have in common?

Apple, Nike, Google, Ryanair, Manchester United, Innocent Drinks,Tesco, Hello Kitty, Brand Beckham, and Harley Davidson,
What do these brands have in common ?

* They are all brands that perform quite well, yes they are

* All of them create a deep emotional impact, yes

and

* All have a connection to customers in the marketplace , agreed

The real key in what these brands have in common is that they polarise opinion they evoke emotion.  Like or Dislike, Too expensive or too cheap, wrong values or right values, say what you like about them at least they stand for something and don’t encourage indifference. There’s  always a danger that one day they will lose their spark it’s not a given that it will always be the same, not in this ever changing world – the challenge for the brands above is to stay relevant, remain as brands people believe in.

Sometimes the killer of brands isn’t a lack of trust, or even a lack of communication. It’s simple indifference.-There are may be no customer complaints, arguments or nasty blog posts, so everything may seem okay on the surface, awareness may even be high according to your traditional insight measure.  Even Trust isn’t an issue when you come to measure that, the thing is though that’s because customers don’t care about earning or having your brand’s trust (or trusting your brand). See the demise of Woolworths in the UK if you want an example of that, awareness wasn’t a problem as we saw when their demise became apparent, trust wasn’t even a problem in the most part once again we saw the emotion return once it was too late, what was a problem was that people didn’t care enough about the brand, Woolworths became a commodity and it couldn’t compete at the bottom of the market.

High performing brands usually polarise opinion. Performance in this markplace is not about every one loving you that’s impossible,it’s about identity, competition and belonging.

Why do you exist?

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ~ Elie Wies

Orange, The Industrial Era, Brand and Love

It disturbs me that so many businesses are still so disconnected from the human spirit,  I think it’s the left overs of the industrial era that are primarily to blame for this, as good as it was for our society it’s time to move on. The Industrial era taught us to create systemised and mechanised businesses with little meaning or differentiation. That was then this is now.  It’s now time for brands to stop just doing and start being something for people.

Businesses that stand for something beyond products and services, and that articulate and deliver on their belief are the ones that inspire the high levels of loyalty.  It’s becoming more and more obvious that the best performing organisations of the 21st Century will be those who are able to build strong cultures and surround themselves with communities of customers who have a deep belief in the brand.

The Orange brand now part of the market leading Everything Everywhere business has always shied away from concentrating on it’s product and spent its energy on growing its tribe.  As Justin Billingsley, former brand director at mobile brand Orange, once said: “There is a big difference between ‘like a lot’ and ‘love’ – arguably, a customer in love will never stray. Interesting point, the very notion of love is human, quite unsophisticated and not very rational, it just is.

Check out the following video it was created through our NBT service affiliates The Alternative and features Justin talking about love in Orange.

Another tribal chief sent into the wilderness.

The story of Nokia and a Southern African Tribe illustrates why CEO’s and boards need to embrace new thinking.

Who would be a leader in turbulent times like these? There has been a few notable falls from grace amongst some of our top leaders in recent times Kia, LG, BP and Nokia to name a few.

Which made me recall the mythical tale of the Fah-Kow-Wii Tribe.  A very small indigenous tribe of people who once inhabited the savannahs of South West Africa – until they became extinct. The problem with this vertically challenged tribe had been that because they were so small and the grass on the Savannah plains so high: they kept losing each other.  The tribal leader at the time ignored the pressing need to bring fresh blood into the tribe so that better statured people would be able to see above the horizon and help them as a tribe respond to the perpetual call of “Where the Fah-Kow-Wii?” Hence the tribe diminished. The moral of that tale is sometimes for the survival of the tribe you need to introduce new blood and new DNA – it means embracing new attributes to survive.

Unfortunately no-one shared the moral of the tale of the fabled Fah-Kow-Wii tribe to Nokia’s  outgoing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.  If they had, he might have better seen the fate of his tribe instead of staunchly sticking to the notion that only Finnish senior managers were equipped to lead the tribe. This exercise in Nordic purity (and we all know where those ideas end up), meant that the board of Nokia for two decades was almost exclusively made up of males of a certain age, all Finnish, all from the same educational and managerial schools of thought.

The issue here is that for any business, particularly one which is (was) a dominant global market leader to sustain the vitality of their tribe, they needed to increase their diversity – not continually reduce their gene pool and stick to the same rigid thinking. Not only is this potentially somewhat colonial and disrespectful to the various territories it serves, but it is also stifling in terms of being in tune with the real world and the customers and markets a brand seeks to engage with.  The failure of Nokia senior management of ignoring the headlong advance of Blackberry, Samsung, Apple and Google Android et al was a serious folly in proportion to that of the Chief of the Fah-Kow-Wii tribe.

However, the good news is that before all hope against extinction was exhausted, Nokia shareholders finally saw sense and have enforced a change of regime at the top of Nokia.  This will undoubtedly herald a fresh influx of new ideas and DNA into the Nokia tribe.  And not before time; the calls of “Where the Fah-Kow-Wii!” were becoming too amplified around the organisation and customer base of Nokia of late.  So, here’s to the next generation of the new Nokia tribe.

Tim Bleszynski

Co-founder New Brand Tribalism

How brand can be a powerful tool in employee engagement and loyalty.

We’re in HR review talking about New Brand Tribalism and considering how a brand can be a powerful tool in employee engagement and loyalty.

http://www.hrreview.co.uk/articles/analysis/analysis-hr-strategy-practice/beyond-engagement-are-you-evoking-or-provoking-your-tribe/10610

Breakthrough Innovation and the status quo

The leaders say: “Let’s be more innovative.”

The staff says: “Bravo. When do we start?”

The mid-level managers say: “Wait a minute, let’s think about that. What about… and …? Have you REALLY thought it through? Does this mean I have to change?”   (Claude Legrand)

Much Rhetoric about change and innovation in the world of big business. There is no doubt most companies today are big believers in the idea of innovation in some shape or form. You only have to look at corporate visions, mission statements and corporate strategies to realise how important it has become. It’s near the top of almost every CEO’s agenda.

So despite technological advances and the vast resources on offer why does Innovation appear to be so difficult and so slow for so many of the biggest corporates?

A legacy of a bygone era perhaps? Many corporate cultures are risk averse and despite the chat aren’t really open to leading the way or breaking the mould. In pursuit of incremental improvement busy stressed out managers focus on doing and simply don’t believe they can make changes unless they have some assurance that a new comfort will result- Hardly the route to breakthrough innovation.

Seth Godin has a very nice list called ” Top ways to defend the status quo”.

One item on the list is “”It’s never been done before”… how many times have you heard that?