New year has started and I am back in school. But this time I am not only studying. I am working a few times a week in marketing company. And the days when I am not working, I am digital coach in digital business course. It is the same course that I attended last fall, but now my duty is to help students to get most out of the course.
Last fall was the best term in my school career's history. I enjoyed a digital business course a lot, and I learnt a lot more than ever before in few months. I was highly motivated which helped me to study and learn a lot more. I was already interested in the subject digital business, and attending the course made me realize that this is the field I want to be working in my future. I was really interested in branding even before the course, and I thought that I know something of it already. I even wrote that branding is "polishing the turd". How wrong was I. No brand gets its recognition without work. Customers are not willing to pay for bad products. Company's products should satisfy customer's needs. If it does it well, the brand is being trusted. But when customers are getting emotionally attached to company and to its products, then the brand is really getting big. But how to make customers your brand's number one fans?
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This is the question almost every company is fighting with. If it was easy, everybody would do it! There are many different ways to same ending result. Emotions are the key in branding. Like I wrote earlier, emotions influence decision making a lot more than we'd like to admit. It is important to build emotional connection between the customer and product. How did for example Apple, Nike or Louis Vuitton do it? Nike has in its football gear commercials Football stars. All the football players admire Cristiano Ronaldo. Seeing him wearing Nike shoes, his fans buy same products that he uses. "If Ronaldo uses those shoes, I want them too" they think. Role models are one way to get customers emotionally attached to your products. We tend to act like our role models. This is strongly linked to observational learning.
I follow few classic menswear bloggers and seeing them wearing the shoes from same brands all the time makes me think that those shoes must be good quality, since they are wearing them too. The role model doesn't have to paid by company. In this case, the company has earned the trust from the blogger and he is showing the product proudly for free. Happy customer is the best kind of advertisement for your brand.
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| My menswear inspiration |
The design matters a lot more. It is not coincidence that for example, cereals are sold in colorful packages. Nice design attracts customers. We rather buy clothes that look good than those ones that are made to last. When was the last time you heard somebody say "wow this dress must be really durable"? I have never heard anybody saying that. The most expensive products are usually very well designed. Design furniture costs so much that most of the customers can only dream of having them. Apple phones are sleek and beautifully designed and people are willing to pay for a phone that is more expensive than their fridge. And they do it happily. Don't underestimate the power of design.
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| Different kind of sneaker designs |
To me, brands have always been important. The way I look at different kind of brands has changed a lot in recent years. At high school it was important to wear t-shirts that had certain logo. Nowadays to me it is important to buy products from brands that have same kind of values as I have. Design is still important, but in a different way. I find myself watching unique commercials and advertisements for a long time even if I could skip them. To me it is a way to learn from professionals. Advertisements are also a tool for branding. My goal is to make myself a brand one day and this blog is one of the ways to achieve that goal. I hope that I am able to buy my own domain and start to practice search engine optimization with it. Not now, but hopefully very soon.
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