Takuya Hikichi

How Are You Branding?

Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Non-Conformity recently published an interesting post. Chris first paraphrased from something he heard what the Applebee’s restaurant CEO said.

“What people want and what they say they want are different.” I can’t argue with that, either.

However, what’s also important to note is what a business thinks people want and what people actually want are different. The difficult part is to find what’s suitable for the most majority of your market.

For example, a website owner decides to publish video squeeze page. but a visitor wants to read the content instead of watching it.

How about Volvo or Porsche adding their stylish and sexy product line in addition to their safe and fast cars? The companies want to add them, but do their customers really want that?

Only the time will tell. But to keep its defining attributes, companies need to keep something aligned. That “something” is anything exclusive about the brand. So if Volvo adds something stylish, it also needs to be safe. If Porsche adds something new, it must be sporty also.

Imagine a horse – without showing you the picture of a horse, can you describe what a horse look like?

Think of HUMMER. Without looking at the picture, can you imagine what a HUMMER look like?

OK, try thinking about Buick, Suzuki, Isuzu, Oldsmobile… are there defining attributes to these brands?

Rarely.

And if there aren’t defining attributes to strike your imagination, no matter “how long” they’ve been around, people still can’t make connection. In fact, when there is no connection being made between the market and a product, there is no brand for that company.

It’s not even easy to be the “cheapest” because only ONE company is allowed to do while everyone else has to use branding. Sometimes a business has to give up large portion of market and look for somewhere else to compete in order to stand out.

In the 1980s, Subaru competed against Toyota, Nissan and Honda with sedan lines and they failed. In the late 1990s, they decided to ditch the big market and focused on “All Wheel Drive” segment of the industry and they dominated it — a new brand was born. They’ve always been around, but in the minds of consumers, it was a new (and much more respected) Subaru.

Sometimes, what a business thinks what their customers want and what people actually want are different. In Internet Marketing, it’s easy to be “all knowing” marketer, but don’t want to be the SEOArticleMarketingPPCVideo guy/girl. It’s better to have a focus while giving up something seemingly hard to do.

How Are You Branding?

Copyright by Takuya Hikichi © 2008-2009