Why this idea means business : We explore the benefits of building remarkable brands. Learn why it’s better to have customers talk about you than not talk about you. Read this to learn 3 ways to make your brand more remarkable.
How much is this idea worth?
Idea : To strengthen your brand by being more distinctive, relevant and memorable. Based on our standard business case assumptions, the value of this idea is :-
- Source of business – More customers
- Skill area – Creativity | Marketing
- Commercial hypothesis :-
- # customers = 1,000
- Spend/month = $100
- Est. new customers = +80 (+8%)
- Est. sales increase = +$8k (monthly) | +$96k (annual)
“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
So says Lord Henry Wotton in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
It highlights a common psychological tension many of us face. We want other people to notice us. To pay attention to what we say and do.
But being in the spotlight makes us uncomfortable. We fear being judged and ridiculed.
We all have a strong evolutionary instinct to protect ourselves. To blend in. To hide in the crowd, finding safety in numbers. Most of us hate being singled out for scrutiny.
Fine for you as an individual. Your choice. But not so much in marketing when you manage a brand. Brands must stand out and be talked about to succeed. Brands that blend in don’t last long. No one notices them, checks them out or buys them.
To hit your awareness, consideration, and trial targets, you must conquer your internal instinct to blend in and address the external requirement to stand out.
What's so great about being remarkable?
Why is people talking about your brand a good thing? Well, customers talking about your brand means they’re aware of it. It also means it’s more likely to consider or try it.
Which is what you want, right? Trial means sales, and sales are how you grow your brand. Customers don’t buy brands that no one talks about.
So how do you get customers to talk about your brand? Well, the best place to start is to ask yourself, what makes my brand remarkable?
This idea of “remarkable brands” comes from Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. He points out that most categories are crowded and noisy. Full of competitors with similar products and positioning. They all meet basic functional customer needs. Every car gets you from A to B. Every chocolate bar satisfies your hunger.
But if all your competitors offer the same base solution to a customer problem, then your brand has to do something more to stand out and grab attention. Which is what remarkable brands do.
Remarkable brands stand out and grab attention
The first step in becoming remarkable is to create a distinctive design for your brand. Something visually striking that compels customers to notice you.
That requires creating a visual element that’s unique within your category.
In psychology, this is called the Von Restorff effect. In simple terms, it means that we pay more attention to what’s different in a group than what’s the same. (See also this article). If your brand doesn’t have this, you blend into the background.
For example, it could be a unique colour or icon on the packaging. Godin’s Purple Cow is named after the distinctive Milka chocolate purple cow on their packaging and advertising. It stands out because a purple cow is unique and different.
So, a distinctive design grabs attention. However, holding that attention demands more.
Customers need to know that what you offer is for them. That it’ll help solve a relevant problem for them. Remarkable brands make this connection clear and compelling.
Remarkable brands are relevant and connect with customers
The second step of building remarkable brands is based on being relevant.
Something in your brand’s identity has to make the customer think, yes, this is a brand for people like me. You create a connection between the customer and your brand.
How this works varies from brand to brand.
Remarkable brands do regular market research with customers to work out what’s relevant for them.
In many cases, the answer lies in storytelling. Stories are one of the most ancient and fundamental ways that people connect with each other. When your brand tells a story in which customers can see themselves, then you’re immediately more relevant to them. The customer feels more connected.
For example, customers may prefer buying brands that help people, rather than purely feeding profits. This is the story that Who Gives a Crap tells. It makes them more remarkable in their category.
Netflix’s initial “hook” for people (part of their origin story) was that they didn’t charge late fees. They said their co-founder’s reason for starting the company was that he was fed up (emotional) with paying Blockbuster’s late fees. A story many customers could relate to, as they’d experienced the same frustration.
Remarkable brands are memorable because they stir emotions
So you’ve grabbed the customer’s attention with a distinctive design. Got them interested by telling a relevant story.
But there’s one final step in the remarkable brands’ journey. And it’s the most important in terms of building long-term loyalty and success.
If customers are going to talk about you, they need to remember who you are. And the key to building memorable brands is to stir the emotions.
Why? Because the brain area that handles our memories, the hippocampus, is part of our emotional brain. So the more emotion you add, the more likely your activity will be remembered.
Marty Neuemeier’s The Brand Gap shows that many brands fail to do this. He argues that most brand managers default to logical strategic thinking. But this means they often forget the need to connect with customers using emotional creative hooks. He argues the strongest brands (he calls them charismatic brands) bridge this gap between logical planning and emotional activation.
Being memorable
There are many ways to be memorable. For example, with visuals in your marketing communications activities that show people expressing the emotions you want to associate with your brand. Coca-Cola adverts are always full of happy people, for example.
You can also do it with music. A theme tune or jingle that makes people feel a certain way is more likely to be remembered. You feel like a Toohey’s because you remember the song from its advert.
It can even be part of your overall customer experience. From a simple interaction on your website that makes people smile to a totally immersive experience that customers will remember forever, e.g. a family visit to Disneyland.
No one remembers brands that logically make sense, but have no emotional hook. Remarkable brands get this and so build an emotional and memorable connection with their customers.
Being remarkable means being bold
You might be thinking this all sounds obvious. Why don’t more brands do these remarkable things? Well, it goes back to what we said at the start. Brands are run by people. And most people’s instincts are to stay unremarkable.
But for brands, that’s a first-class ticket to failure. You become a Me 2 brand. Interchangeable with every other brand.
Customers ignore brands that don’t stand out and memorably connect with them.
So you have to be bold. Take the right steps to put your brand in the spotlight. Be unafraid to be different. Make your design, story and customer experience remarkable and listen out for the deafening roar of customers singing your praises.
A few examples of Australian remarkable brands to finish
We’ve recently been doing some research on Australian innovation. We’ll share some insights from this (still ongoing) project in future articles. However, as a bonus, it’s helped us uncover some examples of what we would call remarkable brands.
First, Humpty Doo Baramundi. This distinctively named brand from the Northern Territory caught our attention because we’d assumed that the fish you buy comes from the ocean or inland rivers. But their operation uses a remarkable saltwater wetland system that’s 40Km from the ocean, where the water is cleaned using saltwater grasses and recirculated again and again. This smart way to sustainably farm fish in an unexpected place stands out and makes it remarkable.
Staying with seafood, another remarkable brand we looked at was Blue Harvest. They mainly sell mussels, oysters and prawns. For human consumption. But they also produce a pet food Omega 3 supplement made from the ground-up mussel powder. Taking the by-product of something humans eat and creating a new use and “customer” for it made it feel very relevant to our search for more boundary-pushing innovations. Again, a remarkable idea.
And lastly, still with water-based foods, there’s Luv-A-Duck. As fans of cooking shows will tell you, duck isn’t an easy meat to cook well. So, their bright idea was to set up a cookery school and offer cooking classes using duck-based dishes. There’s something about this different and memorable experience for customers that feels remarkable. No other company in their category offers anything remotely like it.
Conclusion - 3 things that remarkable brands do better
It’s a competitive world out there. Especially for challenger brands. So it’s important to get past any initial fears you have about being remarkable, as there are so many business benefits when you decide to act that way.
You’ll stand out more. You’ll make stronger connections with customers, and they’re far more likely to remember you. Put all that together, and customers are far more likely to buy you.
This can lead to some remarkable results.
For more on this, check out our memorable brand article. Or give us a shout if you need help with making your brand more remarkable.
Photo Credits
Distancing : Photo by Chris Greene on Unsplash
Shout : Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash
Red tulip / Yellow tulip : Photo by Rupert Britton on Unsplash
Disneyland : Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash
I am bold : Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash
