Of babies, books, lasers and lab rats.

Insights and learning from the ‘David meets Goliath’ session on brands.

It was an exciting Tuesday evening. Never before did I learn and enjoy a discussion on brands as I did, when we met for the ‘David meets Goliath’ session on brands.

The conversation, mostly jargon free, brought out some stark differences in approach to brand building by large established corporations vs startups. But there were also many strings of consistency. Both sides have merits and results to show. While the actual path to brand building has to be chosen by the person behind the brand, the detailed report provides a number of crumbs to follow your own path. Learning…

Well begun is half done

A consistent theme that emerged was how important it was to think about brands right at the beginning of the business. While companies build products, consumers buy brands. Therefore, it is imperative for all founders to start sowing the seeds of the brand as they build the product and the company.

This would include the brand name, the logo around it, colours, website, social media pages. Most of this can be done at low or even no cost, with some help. 

Story books as rule books

While startups felt strongly about the story behind their idea needs to be captured as the brand, corporates felt the need to write rules that could be passed on from generation to generation of managers to maintain consistency over time.

The best way to summarise would be to write your own story book and use it as the rule book. Having a written down story helps define the brand and the associated business much better for the founders and managers alike. It is passed on to employees to align them over time. But how do you write your story?

Write with Laser pens

While crafting the story for the business and the brand, it is extremely important to write with sharp focus, in as few words as possible, but make it come alive. Give it feelings. It should capture the passion of the people behind it. 

Experiments in truth

Should this story be about the truth of what your brand can do or create exaggeration, like we see all the time. 

It was almost universally felt that it is important to stay true to the core of what a founder is striving to build. The value proposition of the brand has to truly capture the benefit the brand would deliver – both the physical need the product or service is satisfying, and the emotional need the brand association offers. 

Regular, low cost experiments can help forge the right path. To arrive at the sharply focussed, true story for your brand, no better way than to experiment regularly with all aspects – design, content, messaging and medium to get the maximum bang for bucks.

Babies vs Centenarians

Startups liken themselves to babies and are very happy making mistakes, faltering and falling all the time. They prefer to admit to mistakes easily and move on.

Corporates on the other hand feel the need to be a lot more careful and rigid. They are like Octogenarians or Centenarians, having been around a long time. People behind large brands play a small, transient role in the life of the brand and have to be very careful so as not to cause any harm to something built with so much craft, over time, yet so fragile.

However, it was universally felt, ‘jo dar gaya samjho mar gaya’. Fear has no role in building a brand. Whatever age you are, if you work with fear, eventually the brand would suffer. 

Theory of time

This was possibly the most interesting difference in perspective of brands I have ever come across. Large brands tend to stay rooted to their past. They build on values and development done a long time ago and stay true to it. This allows them low risk, high consistency and longevity. A brand stays true its core values defined a long time ago but follows how consumer evolves that core value and changes along.

Startups work with a view of the future. They are working on where they want to be and not where they are. Their story of the brand is far bigger than their reality and they are comfortable with that. 

Customer vs Consumer

A key learning for a lot of business is to be able to differentiate between customers and consumers.

Customer is the person who provides the company its revenue. Consumer is the person who actually uses the product or service of the company.The brand always targets the consumer. If the consumer buys, customer will come.But how do we identify who the best consumer can be for our business?

Mom, Dad, Chintu, Neha, Nasty uncle, Rich uncle, Grandpa, Sandy…

The list of people around us is long. But look around. They all have different habits. They buy different things. They have different needs. Different personalities. No brand can appeal to all of them. There are some needs more common therefore more people can be addressed while other needs less common therefor fewer people can be addressed. 

It is important to understand and define who the core target consumer would be and focus all their effort on them. With success other consumer groups would follow. 

Successful people behind brands spend a lot of time understanding their consumers and customers and what would drive them. Be it with organised market research or personal observations and chit chats, it is imperative to understand who the consumers are and what would make them tick.

Money, money, money

No discussion on brand building is completer without someone raising the issue of money. That it takes a lot of money to build brands. 

On this subject there was violent agreement. That it is not about quantum of money, but what we do with it. Keep focus. Make use of freebies where available. Encourage word of mouth. Spend with care. Mistakes are inevitable. Overall, everybody agreed that investment in brand is a long-term investment in business.

10 takeaways

1. Make the beginning by thinking about it. 
2. Create the basics – name, logo, website, social
3. Write the story down
4. Make it sharp
5. Keep it true
6. Build it for the future, learn from the past and present.
7. Small experiments, everyday
8. Think about who will be the consumer and who the customer
9. Meet many consumers and identify the ones most likeable
10. Money does not make brands, imagination does

Happy brand building. Write in for tips and conversation.

Download the full report here