After switching over to FeedBurner, I started reading their blog and I saw this post about offering schwag (a sticker of their flame logo) for people to mark their own goods (likely laptops). This got me thinking about other brands that people want to personally identify themselves – one of the best examples is Harley-Davidson, where customers literally “brand” themselves with tattoos of the logo very visibly on their bodies. Now that is true brand success. But how do you get your customers to the point where they want to tie their identities to the brand? I found this article on the 15 Most Important Things to Know About Building Winning Brands which also mentions the Harley example. Here are a 7 that stood out to me (since people can only really process about 7 things):
- Profound customer knowledge
- It must exceed customer expectations
- Relevant differentiation
- Evoke emotions and create sensory experiences
- Sense of community
- Constant innovation
- Stand for something – This pretty well sums it all up. If customers don’t see your brand as a corporate or product “brand”, but instead a way of life or doing something then you’ve build deep emotional roots. As long as you continue to reinforce and build on this “something” then you don’t necessarily have to have the best or most reliable products because people aren’t making their decisions on those objective parameters anymore. These diehards then become the evangelists you need to sell your cause and your products to others.
There are very few brands that have achieved this level of success, but another example is Apple and its legion of diehards. Harley stands for community, freedom, adventure, and rebellion. Apple stands for liberty regained through technology with a human touch. So, what does your brand stand for?
-JC
