I have been working on a couple of brands recently and one thing that came often form the client mouth was: we want to be more ‘premium’!
As if being a premium brand was the ultimate achievement in life! Of course as Richard Huntington pointed out on his presentation about brands, operating in a monopoly allows you to fix your price and therefore to be more profitable. However there isn’t only one business model, no frills chic, premium brands, commodity brands, luxury brands and also unnoticed brands all have ways to stand out of the crowd and stand for something.
I guess this last thing is what most of the client I talked to are actually missing. It is not about being premium or low cost… you name it but it is about cre ating genuine values. Values that are meaningful for your audiences: people, stakeholders… Most brands are struggling to define what they stand for because they only stand for making more money!
As Marie-Claude Sicard pointed out in her book Les ressorts caches du désir, There are no more than10 to 15 brand values out there: Proximity, Confidence, Authenticity, Innovative, Dynamic, Quality, Passion, Transparency, Responsibility, Performance, Professionalism, Effectiveness, Ethical, Bold, Ambitious…
You won’t build your brand by being ‘more premium’ and stick a bunch of empty words next to it but by thinking in depth about what you believe in!
[Pic via]
