20820007 Entry - 10

Build the Brand Friendship

To create a truly powerful brand, you need to establish a sense of belonging, friendship, and dependability between product and customers.

By Steve McKee

/Summary/
We are living in society and influencing each other. We continuously evolving stable of relationships and some of them last forever. This human dynamic is root of brand loyalty. Our relationship with brands also shares some same characteristics as our relationships with others. To have powerful brand assets we need to create a sense of belongings, friendship and dependability between our brand and customers.
Belongings
We are all members of different clubs. Our family, church, work place is all chosen clubs by ourselves. We always belong to something. Auto brands like BMW, Volkswagen and Saturn generate a strong sense of belongings around their brand. They could attract their loyalists by their unique culture and world class standard. Bloomberg does too. It means something to people who are working in the financial- service industry to be part of the Bloomberg Club. So most important factor in branding is relevance.
Friendship
Kerry Livgren said simply “The only way to be friend is to be one”. The great brands understand this. For example for many people Starbucks is like visiting an old friend every day. It is comfortable and familiar. Our chosen brand consistently gives us sense of trust that we are not trying to find another one. We can not force friendship but we can take steps to initiate friendship and show that we are doing our part.
Dependability
Friendships have ups and downs but true friend is someone we can count on. Brand is the same they prove themselves over time and takes time just as our relationships. For dependability know companies like American Express, Honda, and Toyota…
Awareness
If we do not continue to communicate with our new friends they will forget you. It is also same in branding. We should focus on what is our brand to whom it is meaningful then give our consistent attention in order to stay in customer’s top of mind. Think about Apple and eBay, they understood what are belonging, relationship and dependability and they threat them accordingly.

My Opinion

When we think about any brand we think about high value and high standard which makes sense of belonging, friendship and dependability- primary things described in the article. We do not choose everyone to be our friends and with brand is same as well. If brand is not relevant, consumers will not consider about it. Any famous successful brands are creating high values like high quality, unique service and etc. to satisfy customer’s needs and proving that over again they are doing their part well and staying long in top of mind. So I understood that it is very important to be relevant in branding because if we make particular product and services that not makes any sense it will probably fail.

It is impossible to forget true friends.

Reference: www.businessweek.com