![]() The three Cs model encompasses the divergent end of the brand-making process. Amid growing concern for climate change, that is a massive differentiator and a significant value proposition. But Brita neither depletes aquifers nor hurts the environment. The gap between how they present themselves and what they are actually doing is vast. Any claims to “natural purity” are, at best, bitterly ironic. But their weakness is your strength: not only are they depleting publicly owned aquifers to make their products, but they are also filling the oceans with discarded plastic. ![]() You’re competing with bottled waters from all of the world’s major beverage producers, most of which are pitched on the basis of natural purity. Do they do what they say? If not, is there an opportunity there for you?Īs an example, let’s say you are Brita, an innovator in the water filtration market. And you are looking for the gaps the competition is not addressing, even if they claim they are. ![]() What you are looking for here are patterns of similarity and opportunities for differentiation. In other words, you must consider brand image in the form of marketing communications, along with everything else. While a robust analysis of the competitive landscape would look at the strengths, capabilities, product portfolios and value propositions of your competitive set, for branding purposes, you also need to look at how they present themselves. Once you have made that decision, you have a key ingredient of your brand positioning. This is the essence of Treacy and Wiersema’s Value Disciplines model. Are you conducting your business with a focus on delivering operational efficiency and price leadership (like Dell)? Are you a service-oriented culture with a passion for putting customers first (Zappos)? Or are you an innovative culture obsessed with product leadership (Apple)? Most companies are some combination of all three, but to be strategic, you need to lead with just one. This is really about defining your strengths as an enterprise and a culture. This knowledge can be used to inform product development, marketing, messaging, customer experience design and brand positioning. Once you have those conversations, you are better equipped to shape an offer and a value proposition in response to customers’ real unmet needs, not just what you think they need. And the only way you are going to gain that understanding is through conversations with customers. It’s better to start with an understanding of the problem and then work on the product. This is the equivalent of a solution looking for a problem. The mistake most companies make is to start with the product in a “build-it-and-they-will-come” frame of mind. With that as a starting point, you need to define who your customer is and what their unmet needs are. The wisdom here is, if you have happy customers, you will have happy investors. Once you launch, customers will need to take centre stage. But even your investors want to know how you are going to compete and who you want to serve. And until you launch, that may be the case. Let’s start with the first C: your customer.įor Ohmae, customer-based strategies are the most important: “a corporation’s foremost concern ought to be the interest of its customers rather than that of its shareholders.” As a startup that is starved for funding, you may think your investors come first. It turns out that this is exactly what you need to do to lay the groundwork for a brand strategy too. Ohmae defines strategy as “the way a company uses its relative strengths to satisfy customer needs better than its competitors do.” To do this, you must examine your customer, your company and your competitors to determine who you are hoping to serve, what your relative strengths are and how you will serve them better than the competition. This article will focus on two of these in particular- Ohmae’s three Cs model, and Treacy and Wiersema’s strategy of value disciplines-and their usefulness within the context of brand strategy. There is great utility in the strategy-making frameworks contained in these books. The Mind of the Strategist by Kenichi Ohmae.The Discipline of Market Leaders by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema.Competitive Advantage and Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter.Any MBA student will be familiar with these: There is only a handful of useful texts on strategy.
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