Before the internet, companies built their brands through a top-down approach, with consumers operating as recipients rather than participants. Today’s digital age has reversed that paradigm. Consumers now hold the remote, and when brands ignore consumer needs or just shout louder, audiences flip the channel.
Take, for example, the demise of Nokia. Ten years ago, Nokia was a leader in the mobile phone space — an innovative company with a lot of brand love and a strong stock presence. But Nokia failed to anticipate consumer demands and adapt the way Apple and Samsung have, and by the time Nokia recognized this shortcoming and attempted to change, consumers had moved on.
While data-driven personalization through customer relationship management may have once been an optional bonus for brands, it’s now the marketplace norm. New technology, data, and connected analytics mean that consumers expect personalized advertising, content, and experiences across multiple channels. And the term customer managed relationship (CMR) itself means that customers hold the remote and navigate how and when they opt-in to these messages and experiences.
Still, changing marketing and investment models to maintain authentic engagement and relevancy isn’t easy. But marketers who attend to data and consumer feedback can help brands develop successful strategies and fortify their positions in the marketplace.
Why Digital Builds a Stronger Brand
To sustain relevance like successful CMR businesses Amazon, Google, and Airbnb, we have to treat consumers as individuals by recognizing previous interactions, sales, pain points, and moments of delight, and by inviting them to test new innovations. They derive value from the “me-conomy,” giving individuals a seat at the brand table.
For instance, to maintain relevance and share of the urban clothing marketplace, adidas took a unique approach to brand ambassadors. It gave up creative control in its partnership with Rita Ora. She designed the collection based on what she would wear — simple but authentic apparel in a way no other adidas design could duplicate. This allowed the company to reach a previously untapped consumer base and deepen its consumer engagement. To push the initiative as much as possible, adidas then ran online marketing campaigns and transformed Ora’s endorsement into a full brand experience using her voice. Audiences responded, seeing themselves reflected in these new designs and campaigns.
In today’s digital age, there is a real need for brands to reinvest in consumers, with the proliferation of technology, the ability to merge data sets in real time, and the ability to develop and serve content and experience while driving commerce. While no company can keep up with every technological advancement, brands should embrace a digital-first DNA to even begin to try.
How to Innovate With Digital DNA
How a brand behaves, where it activates, how it surrenders control to its consumers, how it fights to understand the individual, and how it redefines data points are all traits of a modern brand DNA that can help organizations reflect on their innovative goals and lead them to the next successful strategy.
For example, even though Under Armour was founded on its synthetic, quick-drying undershirt for athletes, the company didn’t stop innovation and development with that single product. It capitalized on its initial success and expanded by providing app-based services, investing in and acquiring digital companies like MyFitnessPal, and tracking and analyzing consumer behavior to grow its user base to 165 million people — a number that continues to climb.
Brands wanting to remain viable and innovative in this digital age, then, should likewise identify and build their platforms around their own digital DNA and the principles of CMR: data, analytics, changing behavior, and engagement over time, which gives birth to deeper connected engagement between brands and consumers.
To deliver on this, marketers and leaders can follow these steps:
1. Unlearn the art of marketing to meet higher expectations. Stepping outside of your industry to become a student of business and marketing across categories can help you examine how other brands are campaigning, activating, and reimagining themselves to sell core and adjacent products and services. This outside-in examination also helps you recognize the control consumers have (and exert) over their buying options.
Consumers expect the same level of service at a car dealership as they would with Apple, wanting personalization, simple choices and ease of use. Once you understand this, you can stop making excuses about how your brand hasn’t caught up to consumer standards and instead become the market leader by using your digital DNA to establish a larger consumer base.
2. Partner smarter and then put your people first. Many brands can’t build custom digital systems and can’t afford to hire a digital team, so consider partnering with another company that specializes in marketing technologies. Hundreds of new and innovative companies are eager to help clients win the digital war.
With your partner onboard, let your employees flourish by encouraging them to use and explore these platforms and technologies, even if it means they procrastinate on their daily operations or, ultimately, fail in their attempts. Giving your people room to experiment and think can stimulate creativity while reassuring them that they are still essential to the organization.
3. Act quickly in the marketplace, but listen closely to consumers. While it may be tempting to test every technology platform or digital approach before deciding on the best course of action for your brand, avoid that propensity. It can stall any momentum you have. Instead, act quickly but moderately. Launch your new products, partnerships, and services in small doses while listening to consumers and allowing their feedback to help guide your decisions.
What are people saying about your brand? About your competitors? About the market in general? Stay informed about what’s happening in your industry and beyond to identify where new technologies are disrupting the status quo and to prepare to meet new expectations. Empowering customers to provide feedback — especially negative feedback — directly to you or through open and public feedback channels can help you measure, learn, and iterate on new solutions that allow your brand to scale as it grows.
As companies seem to rise and fall faster than ever, brands can fortify themselves in the marketplace by honing their digital DNA and following a sequence of studying, implementing, and executing. The digital age is upon us. While today’s solution may be tomorrow’s problem, the only brands that will be able to keep up with dynamic consumer trends are those that learn to embrace (and then re-embrace) this connected world.