TELL A GOOD STORY — YOURS!
If a brand convinces a tribe that its consistent quality, unique value and special service is worth the money then the brand is on the sunny side of branding. Communication of identity is the key driving force behind efficiency. If customers cannot perceive a clear benefit for the premium paid for a brand it will get into real trouble. This is increasingly the case with brands run by inexperienced, short-sighted and quarterly result-driven managers and with companies that are not used to working with branding.
Think healthcare. For many years there were monopolies with no competition at all. Most patents running today were given in the 1970s and 1980s. But now, thirty years later, many of these patents are running out. That is why you now find, side by side in the same pharmacy, ‘me-too’ products with the same active ingredients as more expensive neighbouring brands. Healthcare companies just didn’t think it was necessary to mention who originally invested the money to develop the product — sometimes for decades — and who performed the safety and security tests to offer a 100% safe and secure product. It is also strange that few people are surprised by how these companies are valued so badly on the stock market. How can it be that pharmaceutical company shares are much cheaper on the stock market than those of companies producing FMCG? Here I mean fast-moving consumer goods, in other words frequently purchased goods such as snacks or soft drinks? Well, people just don’t trust healthcare companies. Too many people have a negative perception of them. Over the last decade they have started to use branding in order to differentiate themselves and communicate who they are, what they do and why that matters. They started well, but as a whole, the industry now seems to be more interested in M&A — Mergers and Acquisitions — so their identities are further blurring and fading away among employees, doctors and patients.
Your story, well told, will influence the perception of your product. You are communicating, even if you are not saying anything.
As Paul Watzlawick, the Austrian-American psychologist and philosopher, says about communication: ‘you cannot not communicate’.
Communication is really complex, and not even a lifetime is enough to master it fully. Words form around 7% of interpersonal communication, tonality 38% and body language 55%. Think about communication with your family, your husband or wife, your friends, your neighbours, your boss, your clients, your colleagues. Think about how they talk, the tone and the words they use, the message and content they convey. How many times have you said or heard someone say: ‘I really don’t understand you’. There is a big difference between being listened to, being heard and being understood.
For brands, communication is often a question of life or death. In our highly competitive environments brands need to behave and communicate as Scheherazade did to the Sultan of Persia in A Thousand and One Nights. Sultan Shahryar found his first wife had been unfaithful and, after deciding that he hated all women, he married and killed a new wife each day. Scheherazade, in an effort to avoid his previous wives’ fate, told him a fascinating story every night, promising to finish it the following night. The Sultan enjoyed the stories so much that he put off her execution indefinitely and finally abandoned the idea altogether. Successful brands work with the same method. Authentic, credible, exciting and relevant stories told well each day, at each moment, at each consumer touch point, are the secret to their survival.
