Over the past few months, I have been deep in introspective thought about the state of affairs in “branding”. The most over-used and ambiguous term in marketing today. Everywhere I turn, I run into the word “branding” and I am finally at a point where I feel the word has little or no meaning anymore. Branding doesn’t add any value to people in and of itself. And by the way, branding is not advertising. Seemingly when a word looses its meaning, it’s time for a new word. In my opinion, a better word to describe the activity and the result is “love”. Love is the end game.
Love creates value, and growing the value of business is the metric marketers are all trying to increase. Logic would then lead us to a further assumption that love is the activity we are really engaged in. As marketers, we must love what we do and what we provide to our customers. In turn, our customers must love what value is provided to them. Love is present on both sides of the exchange. To love is passion. Passion for what you offer to the world makes the offering far easier and less complex to communicate. When customers share with equal enthusiasm a passion for your offerings, greater value is perceived and thus created. Branding isn’t any more complicated than that. Many in my profession want to make it rocket science. Not to say qualitative and quantitative metrics aren’t useful tools to measure love for an idea, products and services. I am of the opinion that creating an experience people love is the surest way to get them to love what you are offering. To go one step deeper, creating experiences people love is an expression of service. And leadership in any endeavor is really all about being of service by adding greater value to people. The love you have for your own enterprise is reflected in the quality of experiences you provide customers. People know when it’s the real deal and when it’s not. One need not look to far to find inspiring examples of companies who do the love thing right.
Pretty simple stuff.
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In a seemingly materialistic, hard-hearted, demanding, fast-paced, overpriced world – - – LOVE stands out in its soft perfection, its complete attention to what’s really important, and indeed moves mountains. Not rocket science. Right on.