Brand Framework
1. IDENTIFY A SHIFT
2. CREATE A CATEGORY
3. REINFORCE A THEME
4. START A MOVEMENT
Why is branding so important?
Market leadership is more important than ever.
HERE’S WHAT HAPPENS
Barriers to entry lower
Competition increases
Market becomes commoditized
Supply goes up, demand goes down
You can compete on price (race to the bottom)
Or you can compete on brand (race to the top)
Case Study: Salesforce
1 IDENTIFIED A SHIFT:
On premise to internet software
2 CREATED A CATEGORY:
Cloud-based sales automation (SaaS)
3 REINFORCED A THEME:
Cloud
4 STARTED A MOVEMENT:
“The end of software!”
Brand is everyone’s business
CEOs/Founders — Create the Brand
Marketers — Drive the Brand
Product/CS — Deliver the Brand
Sales — Sell the Brand
Where to start?
You do have a story to tell — Identify it
Think about it, where did the idea come from?
How did it begin and how has it developed?
What difficulties had to be overcome?
People
Tell a story from the perspective of users or customers. Is there a goliath you’re competing against?
How are you helping improve the lives of others?
What about your personal story is unique?
Evoke emotion
Stories are simply a great way to make people feel.
Think about what emotion you want to communicate.
Understand Your Audience
Have you ever told a story and found that someone has only been half listening to you?
That’s probably because they weren’t interested.
And that’s probably because it was of no benefit to them.
Use visuals
A picture truly does tell 1000 words.
As Microsoft‘s Chief Storyteller Steve Clayton says
in relation to visual content : “Visuals and photography, my gosh, if you get them right, they are really remarkable.
Poor images won’t get picked-up on covers.”
Follow the money: CMO budgets for martech and marketing operations
As with crime and politics, if you want to reveal the real plot in marketing’s evolution, follow where the money is going. Hmm. That’s probably not the most flattering of metaphors. Okay, scratch that image.
Allocation of budget is CMO’s way of. “voting with their wallet” for what they think is most important.
inspired by Andrew Gazdecki
