Authenticity.
We crave it. In a world where everything seems fake, being real has literally become the real deal.
But authenticity has never been central to the branding playbook.
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Brands.
As marketers, it’s easy to get wrapped up in them. They’re our creation, so we set the rules. We just have to tell consumers about them.
But brands don’t exist in isolation. They don’t stand alone. Rather, they only thrive through connection.
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Brand reputation.
I’ve never seen the point. As Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”.
Where does that leave brand reputation?
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Habit.
It’s how we live our lives. Making most of our decisions on autopilot, based on past experience.
So it seems entirely logical to focus on making a brand a habit, an automatic purchase.
As a long time practitioner of customer loyalty, this can seem like I’ve turned to the dark side.
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Engage or die.
It was a much-used refrain accompanying the rise of social media.
Nearly two decades later, the precipitous decline in organic reach for brands, and challenges around false measurement and fake followers, make this appear just another example of marketing hype.
Yet ironically, engage or die is even more relevant advice today.
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Back in my days as a young, thrusting marketer, brand equity was all the rage.
It seemed only a matter of time that the value of the brand would be put on a company’s balance sheet. Once and for all, everyone in the business would recognize just how important branding is.
Thirty years later this still hasn’t happened.
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