We’ve said goodbye to the silence of pages, flipcharts, point-of-sale materials and most products. Savvy marketers realize those have been replaced by the audio-enabled world of mobile videos, apps, YouTube, and digital signage. And now, the Internet of Things, connecting the cloud to everything from refrigerators to projectors to vehicles to industrial products.
The concept of strategy originates in war, where the objective is to destroy the enemy. In business, if the enemy is your competitor, then the objective of strategy must be to crush the competition.
Branding is competitive. It’s about staking out the right to earn over others. But when that competitive streak becomes obsessive, brands lose objectivity and that can cost them dearly.
As humans, we are the product of thousands of years of tribalism. In the workplace, school or wherever, we coalesce around shared needs, desires and points-of-view. We form tribes. Tribes illuminate one thing above all else; you’re either in or you’re out. Some brands key in on this basic behavioral instinct to build their advantage.
It seems to be the question of the moment, in meeting after meeting: “If you were preparing a strategy for an American brand right now, what would you tell them to do?”
