January 2017 How Healthy is your Brand Body ? affecting my ability to get up , get mobile and be ready to go home . A lot of attention to detail , but well worth it in optimising my outcome and their cost !
How different from the same operation 20 years ago . Western medicine has tended to be very siloed in treating pieces of us rather than thinking about us as holistic systems .
Applying this approach to brands
Managing brands today is not so different . We have so much more data and knowledge available to us now to manage brands holistically . And yet , the refrain we hear from many brand managers remains a desire for the one number , the metaphorically “ best way to cut ” surgery equivalent . It is simply not enough . We can observe basic rules about brand building and these have huge merit : Be salient , meet needs , come first against alternatives at the point of choice and make it easy to be chosen . These are the equivalent of saying , be fit , cut cleanly , avoid heavy general anaesthetic and get mobile quickly as rules for surgery . The desired elements are clear but real advances are made when we learn to manage the all the detailed variables that work together towards delivering that successful outcome .
For brands that means understanding the detail of what a brand means to people , the role it plays in their lives . It means knowing everything about how people make decisions about your brand , from how people notice , experience and store knowledge of your brand to maximising its likelihood to be available at the moment of choice .
Brand communications require similar attention to detail . Orchestrating all aspects of communication around the overall well-being of the brand is critical , not just in the short-term , but also in the longer term to ensure it remains healthy and growing . Not just emotion , not just surgical action , but also the right combination of cues for managing both reinforcement for users and disruption for non-users . Knowing how to put many cues together creatively across all touchpoints to make those messages meaningful for people in the right context .
In essence , it means using all the available variables and data in a holistic brand management system to identify where the best marginal gains are to be had .
It means thinking about brand management with the same level of detail we want from our medical professions . It means thinking about all the physical and mental aspects that need to be managed and treated to make brands as healthy as possible . And paying attention to co-ordinating the details as well as the big picture , rather than relying on a mythical silver bullet or generic set of rules .
Finally , it is worth concentrating efforts on the real objective . The most cost-effective and best medical systems are those that focus fully on how patients experience them and the outcomes they achieve , not simply on efficiency of medical processes . Similarly , brand management must focus on delivering the best brand experiences and outcomes for the people who use them and the rest will follow .
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