Strategy Guide » Five objectives for remarkable brand positioning in the Digital Era

Five objectives for remarkable brand positioning in the Digital Era

In a world of digital distribution where video game developers become more and more independent from publishers, marketing increasingly becomes something that ought to happen within the boundaries of the firm. Returning guest author Bart Hufen explores five objectives to pursue in positioning your brand in the digital era. His views are largely derived from his book ‘A Brand New Playground – Building brands in the Digital Era’ that can be downloaded for free here.

In the current era of digitization, an organization can no longer afford to produce products that do not meet brand promises. Almost two billion people worldwide are connected through the Internet, and stories from one side of the globe can reach the other side almost instantaneously. Also, communication nowadays is far more reliable than when we were still sending letters to each other through the mail. Once a consumer has posted something on his/her weblog or on Twitter it will stay there and will remain accessible and findable. This ‘forces’ organizations and brands to be more truthful in what they communicate (‘walk your talk’ and ‘practice what you preach’).

To support organizations and brands I have defined five generic brand objectives that need to be pursued by any organization in their marketing efforts. I have come to these objectives through reading, doing research, attending marketing events, and by conducting interviews in the course of the last five years. The five brand objectives are:

1. Be Real
2. Behave Righteously
3. Remain Remarkable
4. Remain Relevant
5. Reward Relationships

Be Real

To become distinguishable as an organization you should know: who you are; how to go about things; and, what you are (or could become) really good at. In terms of branding this relates to brand identity, brand personality, and key competences respectively. Reputation (actions in the past) greatly determines the authenticity of your brand since current actions will always be compared to actions in the past. Joseph Pine describes brands that excelled in this area in his book ‘Authenticity’.

As a brand it is important to know your strengths (key competences), but to know your weaknesses is even more essential. As you will probably not get everything right, it is essential to put emphasis on the right things. This will help to clarify your positioning in the market. You can then communicate your position in the form of a brand promise or pay-off to the outside world. For instance: “BrandNewGame – Directing Playfulness”. I value being honest and direct to my clients (to create trust and respect), and I care to define the best possible strategy using digital means to accomplish the client’s goals, mostly using games or game-mechanics.

Behave Righteously

You can no longer get away with selling nonsense to your clients and consumers. If you do, the (digital) consumer will correct your behaviour publicly. Rik Riezebos defines righteous brands as ‘personality brands’. These are brands that meet their promises through internal competence and do not promise more than they can deliver. It is also important to be consistent in running the business (actions). An organization or brand will thus build a recognizable reputation, which in turn, will form the basis for brand loyalty and recommendations (conversational management).

Model for brand positioning (click to enlarge)

Righteous behaviour further involves management of expectations. The guiding principle is: never promise more than you can do, and do more than you promise. Indeed, under-promise, but over-deliver. To be able to behave righteously it is important to have a vision of the future and to define a pathway to that future (mission, targets, and strategy). Also define what competences are required and how your current identity and brand culture can contribute to a described mission. Subsequently, this needs to be incorporated in the positioning and proposition.

Remain Remarkable

To be remarkable as a brand means the brand needs to stand out from other brands. If the brand is not distinguishable from others, the brand will become interchangeable and surely, that cannot be your objective. Correct positioning means, conquering a unique position amongst competitors in the market place. A brand can acquire a unique market position through its identity, culture, strategy, core competences, but also by offering a unique proposition. It is remarkable though that many brands do not seem to want to distinguish themselves but often just copy what their competitors do. This seems odd because firstly copying means lagging behind and secondly, it actually makes the brand more indistinguishable from others and therefore weakens the brand’s positioning. When the consumer finds it harder to distinguish one brand from another, brands become interchangeable and they will tend to go for the cheapest product. Low prices mean bad profit margins and eventually the complete business will be brought down in an attempt to achieve continued growth and therefore profitability.

How a brand can become remarkable by clearly focusing on one of the items in the marketing mix. Such focus is illustrated by looking at the following five brands. Every single one of them excels in one area of the proposition and is therefore unique.

Product: Apple (specifically in the area of user friendliness and functionality)
Price: Easy Company (easyJet and other propositions)
Place: Coca-Cola (focuses on an extremely sophisticated distribution strategy)
Personnel: United Airlines or Zappos (thanks to employees uniquely service driven)
Promotion: Red Bull (if you can actually put up entrance fees to a branded event and people actually come to the event you are doing a great job)
Planet: Innocent Drinks (sustainability and transparency are their core values)

Despite the fact that these brands seem to do more than just this right, their marketing focus revolves around one core element in the marketing mix.

Remain Relevant

Whether a brand is perceived as relevant or not is actually a consumer decision and is strongly context related. However, relevance is defined by the following factors:

1. Correct offer
2. Correct timing
3. Correct place
4. Correct context

To achieve relevance means we should be aware of what the decision maker or consumer is doing at the time we intrude his working environment or privacy with our brand message. Normally a consumer does not voluntarily choose to communicate with a brand, except when the consumer visits a shop or a website to find a solution to a problem, or to play a branded game. Digital means are very well suited to match the brand’s products with the target group, especially because there is the possibility to interact with the consumer (and therefore to measure any data). It could all start with a question…

To achieve a high score, a brand needs to enter into a continuous dialogue with the client or consumer and, although there are already several media available (such as LinkedIn or Facebook), organizations and brands are still lagging behind. The most important thing is not only to address the client or consumer when you want something of him, but consistently and regularly with customized content (news, information, images, questions) to keep the dialogue and mutual bonding alive. For the objectives to remain remarkable and relevant, companies need to innovate by having this continuous dialogue with the consumer. It is actually through the consumer that insights on product use and new consumer needs will emerge. Complaints, for example, can be a breeding ground for innovation as most innovative products are the result of dissatisfaction with the current situation.

Reward Relationships

It sounds so obvious but there are only a few brands that consistently reward their customers for their brand loyalty. Strangely enough, brands often invest in new customers by enticing them through completely branch-foreign products (a plasma screen when buying a car or a navigation system with the purchase of a digital TV or broadband Internet), but these rewards fail to create customer loyalty or customer satisfaction. If you want to achieve brand loyalty you must not only captivate the consumer continuously but you must also continue to reward him/her for his/her loyalty. In games, the reward system is a crucial part of the gameplay. Usually rewards are given in the form of points, premiums, and increasingly in the form of ‘badges’ or ‘achievements’ that can be subsequently shared with digital contacts on, for instance, Facebook.

The phenomenon ‘Four-square’ on the iPhone is geared towards collecting points by checking in at physical locations with the final goal of becoming the ‘mayor’ of a specific location such as a club or a restaurant. It is actually no more and no less than being a ‘regular customer’, the difference being in the digital recording of the visits through a software program. If that particular club also rewards the consumer with a drink on the house when bringing in his four friends, nothing has changed much compared to some ten years ago. Indeed, in my student years I used to visit the same bar regularly and, often, after the fourth round of drinks, the barman of the establishment would give us a free round of drinks.

In short: We should all consider becoming humans again that appreciate relationships and helping each other out a bit… You buy my game – I give you a wonderful experience… It should always be a win-win situation; it needs to feel righteous like the rules of any game – clear and consistent!