Seven Brand Rules for the 21st Century

As the CMO of an Air Conditioning company, I’ll be the first to admit that the HVAC industry is not best known for Marketing innovation. But when you think of memorable brands - it doesn’t really matter if the actual product is a hair dryer, a vacuum cleaner, or a biscuit. Whatever the widget, great marketing makes you feel emotionally bound to the brand.

Back when I was at Apple, one of the core values was that the product should speak for itself. That’s still true but for customers these days, great products are just the start. We need to understand how our own lives will benefit from choosing them, the lives of others and the world around us too.?

Finally, when a brand is positioned as premium and aspirational with great marketing, when we choose to buy in - we feel as though we’re becoming part of a community that’s bigger than one single transaction and we are proud to own that brand because it’s a reflection back on ourselves.

A Rich Heritage?

Hitachi was a very well respected, well known Japanese brand before it merged with the American juggernaut, Johnson Controls in 2015. The joint venture brought together “two rich, 100-year-old cultures and histories together to create one exciting new company” Today Hitachi Cooling and Heating serves its customers with the most diverse product portfolio in the air conditioning industry.?

This was no easy feat, but the result was a breath of fresh air for the Hitachi brand. With fresh, new thinking, diverse opinions, cultures and talent - the change process began with a Product-first approach. The result is best-of-breed engineering, and the finest Japanese-inspired “Duality-Design” philosophy: a fusing of opposites to create balance.

So when I joined in 2019, the products absolutely spoke for themselves, but the other elements that really make a brand memorable in the 21st Century, were, and perhaps still are, catching up. This led me to think about what I’d say about rebuilding a brand for the 21st Century and what rules I’m following to help me do so.

1 - Be Digital First

Number one is to have a Digital (and Mobile) - first approach for everything. These days, your website is the first port of call for a customer, so the top priority for any business should be ramping up the online experience and optimising it for Mobile.?

Previously, marketing at JCI-Hitachi was owned independently per country, with different websites and a different look and feel depending on whereabouts in the world you were. This is not consistent with what a Global brand should look like, and although the Hitachi name was known already, having inconsistent branding made it harder to achieve any kind of deeper connection and brand recall. So the first thing we did with my team was unify everything into one single domain with consistent positioning, and seamless branding, all over the world. This led to the birth of www.hitachiaircon.com.

When you pair a beautiful, intuitive and mobile-optimised website with robust analytics, you’re in a great spot because what you can measure, you can turn into revenue.?

2 - Data is Gold Dust

Following on from this point, the next essential part of the mix for a 21st-Century brand is being data-driven. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” I like to say. But with our web analytics, we’re able to understand more and more about our customers with each action they take on site, mapping out customer journeys, and learning more about their preferences.?

All these data points, we mine like nuggets of gold which we collect and use to enrich our constantly shifting and ever growing store of customer insights. I don’t use this analogy purely as poetry - the greater the insight, the more sophisticated our marketing can be.?

3 - Be Transparent

Privacy is a basic right for all of us as humans, so the quickest way to really p*ss off your customers and destroy your relationship with them is to deny them that. So I cannot mention the bright and shiny data we can unsurface with smarter tools, without acknowledging the moral implications of how it is being used. Modern brands who are leveraging these tools must tread carefully with the data they own, being transparent with what exactly they are tracking and how they are using it to protect customer privacy.

4 - Invest in MarTech

Ultimately the first three rules all relate to MarTech. ‘Invest in MarTech’ is the fourth essential rule for a brand of the 21st Century. Embedding and leveraging the best marketing technology you can afford is how to empower your talent to do their best creative marketing work.?

Every brand in the market will have their own stack, and each will look slightly different, but using the power of tech and AI to measure, test and learn, drive insights and constantly tweak and adapt your approach, is key to gaining any kind of competitive edge. The beauty of digital however, is that you will quickly gain ROI because you collect more insight with every dollar you spend.?

Ideally it will be a “Stack”, because what is important for one brand is never going to be quite the same as it is for another, so there won’t be one platform that can do everything you want it to. Being mindful and strategic about what matters, choosing the software that can meet those needs and making sure they’re all talking to each other is essential.

Since our website refresh, our web traffic has shot up and with the help of a marketing automation tool like Pardot, paired with a platform like Salesforce, we can start to identify our marketing qualified leads, which can then be nurtured and turned into a sales pipeline of opportunities.?

5. Be Socially Savvy

Another critical facet of a modern brand is Social Media. This is where the personality of your brand becomes tangible, and the only approach that works is genuine, authenticism and in real-time. It’s also the quickest way of fostering thriving communities. Communities are important because they build engagement, foster greater trust and visibility for your brand, and of course, attract more potential customers.?

And you can build audiences fast on social! Only 18 months ago we had little social presence. Today on average, each of our posts reaches an audience of around 10 million organically, with industry leading engagement rates. (Check us out on FB, IG or YT!)?

As a premium HVAC brand steeped in Japanese heritage, you might think this seems incongruous for us, but the people behind the brand are very future-focused so this is something we’re embracing more and more.?

6. Build Your Video Assets

A report by Wyzowl found that in 2018, people watched an average of 1.5 hours per day of online video. The 2021 survey shows this has risen to an average of over 2.5 hours per day. A picture can tell a thousand words and a video can show you them. Marketing and product videos are the easiest way for brands to capture lowering attention spans, and they allow your audience to identify whether they resonate in 10-30 seconds.?

When asked how they’d most like to learn about a product or service, 69% of respondents to the Wyzowl report said they’d prefer to watch a short video. This compares to 18% who’d rather read a text-based article, website or post, 4% who’d like to view an infographic, 3% who’d rather download an ebook or manual, 3% who’d rather attend a webinar or pitch, and 2% who’d like a sales call or demo.

A large part of a 21st Century brands’ budget should be allocated to video specifically, and the more you can create in house, the better. Raw, authentic, video content featuring real-life stories, real time customer insights or the actual people behind the brand (like this one featuring our very own Senior Designer, Tomohiko Sato) performs best:

7. Have A Heart

My final rule for 21st Century Brands is about Corporate Social Responsibility. Social and ethical responsibility initiatives that look to further social good beyond the interests of your own company or industry, and beyond what is necessarily lawfully required. These must be coherently aligned and integrated with your business model to be successful.

Hitachi seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment with aggressive targets and a sustainability plan that outlines all of the ways we are making active efforts to minimize our impact on natural resources by fiscal 2050, and realise a society in harmony with nature. Read our latest sustainability report.

Customers, Millennials and Gen Z especially, are much more likely to seek out companies that are taking action, concentrating their spend on brands that reflect their values. Because who you wear and what you consume these days, is becoming an extension of yourself, and all of us, as businesses and individuals, have responsibilities to protect the world around us and be kind. As a corporate sponsor of the recent COP26, I’m proud to be associated with Hitachi and finding solutions to climate change.

In Closing

While the HVAC industry may not be known for its marketing, I am trying to do my bit and I hope these seven rules I am following are helpful to those of you who read this article. They are helping Hitachi Cooling and Heating tell the really memorable stories behind the air conditioning units - the ones about comfort, health, convenience... and that results in the most powerful and emotional brand connection.