Mike OToole - The Unconventionals: How Rebel Companies Are Changing Markets, Hearts, and Minds-and How You Can Too

Do brands still matter in the digital age?

Its a puzzling question. But Ive been asked it more than a few times as I advise business leaders or as I teach senior executives at Columbia Business School about strategy and leadership in the digital age.

It seems obvious to me that brands still matter. Many of the most admired businesses of the digital erafrom Zappos to Apple, from Waze to Warby Parkerhave clearly built amazing brands that resonate with customers and earn their trust and loyalty.

What I think is really driving this question is that the traditional means of building a brand are becoming increasingly irrelevant. You know: add a novel feature or two (call it your unique selling proposition), capture it in a catchy slogan, script a simple story or metaphor, and pay to transmit a consistent message (brand positioning) to a targeted demographic audience.

This kind of narrow, unidirectional approach to building brands is simply less and less effective. In a world of networked customers, your potential buyers are constantly connected to information from every digital tool (search, social, reviews, and more) to learn, discover, and make up their own independent minds. Meanwhile, your competitors are using the same data as you (if not better) to reach the same customers, at the very moments of maximum interest and intention, to offer their own version of the same message. Why would your pitch win?

But all hope is not lost. More and more businesses are finding a different path to win the hearts, minds, and trust of customers.

This path doesnt start with another creative ad campaign. Instead, it starts with building a different kind of business, and it drives growth by building a very different kind of relationship with customers. This path may seem unconventional, but its the path being chosen by more and more successful companies today, across all different industries.

Mike OToole and Hugh Kennedy have been delving into the world of such unconventional companies for over six years now, researching case studies, interviewing company founders, executives, and employees, and digging into their stories to find out what makes them such magnets for devoted customers, employees, and fans.

Ive had the pleasure to join Mike and Hugh in several episodes of their podcast series, as well as onstage at Columbia Business Schools BRITE conference, which I founded over a decade ago, and in ongoing conversations about why and how these unconventional businesses create more value both for customers and their own firms.

What I have learned is that todays most dynamic new businesses do two things really well: First, they reinvent their category, whether in terms of the customer experience, the business model, or both. (Digital technologies are creating more opportunities for this reinvention every day.)

Second, these companies articulate an animating mission or purposefirst for their own employees, but then to their external customers as well.

When both of these things happen, they spark and feed a third phenomenon.

These companies have a different kind of connection with their customers. These customers dont just buy products: they act as ambassadors, advocating for a brand and defending it against criticism; they serve as sounding boards, bringing the customer point-of-view inside the business; and they volunteer as collaborators, helping to improve and innovate the next step in the business.

What Mike and Hugh have done here is dig deeply into these three ideascategory reinvention, animating purpose, and customer collaborationby exploring the stories of an extremely wide-ranging set of businesses that each illustrate this unconventional path to building a great business with, and not just for, their customers.

In the digital age, where every industry is open to transformation, where customers are more connected and empowered than ever before, and where employees and customers alike are looking to engage with brands around shared values and vision, this unconventional path just may become the new normal.

I know it is already the path of todays most promising businesses. I hope it is the path for your business as well!

David L. Rogers

Bestselling author, The Digital Transformation Playbook

Faculty director, Digital Business Strategy and Digital Business Leadership

Columbia Business School

www.davidrogers.biz