Matt Johnson - Branding that Means Business: How to Build Enduring Bonds between Brands, Consumers and Markets

At the time of his arrest, hed lived a life few could dream of. He graced the covers of magazines, married supermodels and chummed with world leaders. Aged 40, he became the youngest vice-president of General Motors. His DeLorean sportscar was cemented as a cultural icon when it appeared in Back to the Future.

But a career fuelled by a grand vision for the future ultimately crashed and burned, punctuated with an arrest for smuggling $27m of cocaine. Legal fees and lawsuits ultimately bankrupted him and his company.

John DeLoreans insatiable fervour for the future produced the highest of highs and lowest of lows. On the one hand, his story is a Greek tragedy: a classic cautionary tale of flying too close to the sun. Few business leaders even those who, like DeLorean, consider themselves visionary leaders aspire to such volatility.

But on the other hand, theres an element of DeLorean that is central to every business: trying to understand, predict and shape the future.

Firms and business leaders go about this in a variety of ways. Companies rich in data create algorithmic simulations of how future scenarios play out. Futurists employ complex trend analysis to project years and decades ahead. Some, like Sony co-founder Akio Morita and famed designer Diane von Furstenberg, use the services of fortune tellers. John DeLorean himself regularly consulted a psychic.

With all the obsession with the future, its worth exploring another perspective that may be even more powerful than prediction. Instead of trying to predict what will shift, its worth asking what is most likely to remain. Over time, and especially in times of intense transformation, what stays the same?

Jeff Bezos is fond of this perspective. He once remarked, People are always asking me, whats going to change in the next 10 years? But a much more powerful question is whats not going to change? For Bezos, his bet was that, whatever future may come, consumers will always value convenience. Its impossible to imagine a customer saying, I love Amazon but I wished they delivered slower. Its a bet on which his brand strategy was built, and which, in hindsight, was spot on.

Capitalising on enduring elements of consumer demand can be a powerful strategy. Bezos made the bet that efficiency was going to be a constant. Nike has bet that people will always want to strive to be greater than themselves; Spotify believes that, with the right platform, people will want to stream music more than theyll want to steal it.

That brands often find success orienting their strategy around a constant truism of human nature points to a greater point about branding: much success can be found by harnessing the fundamentals of human nature. The precise character of the future is unknowable. Technology will change, geopolitics will shift and commerce will grow in new, unforeseen ways. But whatever the future holds, humans will still be humans. That is what this book is about: branding fundamentals built on the fundamentals of human nature.

Make no mistake, this is a business book. But as well see, the branding world finds itself at a crossroads, and it cant afford to get by simply with the fundamentals of its own industry. In constructing this guide, we draw not only from the business literature but also from the social sciences: psychology, sociology and even anthropology. While the brand has a business purpose, the mechanisms that enable it to be a business asset are about connecting with human beings.

This approach is not only advantageous, its crucial. Mediocre branding is quickly becoming a thing of the past. If the brand isnt excellent, it may as well not exist. In order to understand this, we need to unpack how, specifically, brands mean business. And how, in the current era, the bar has been raised.

Clearly, a strong brand can be a tremendous asset to a company. Often, its the most important asset. But when does a brand have this kind of influence? How does a brand mean business?

Brands matter when, and only when, they matter to consumers. Theyre an asset to a company when, and only when, they hold meaning and carry significance within minds and lives. This is how brands mean business.

But as well see in more detail throughout this book, the threshold for endearment has never been higher. We find ourselves in a fast-paced world of immediate gratification where consumers can, with the touch of a few buttons, listen to any song, watch any movie or read any article. Consumers are peppered with hyper-personalised targeting for products that can be ordered seamlessly and arrive within hours. All this value can be delivered to the consumer in the absence of a known, trusted brand.