THE FUTURE OF BRANDING IN THE 21ST CENTURY — ACCELERATED BY THE PANDEMIC
Branding has come to evolve right from the start of trade and over the centuries it has come to mean so many different things. There was a time when all that branding meant was a mark inscribed on the body of animals, today this is what we now call a logo. As it stands the brand is no longer a logo it’s something we can’t even see but perceive. Today the brand is like a human being with a promise, it’s a perception about a product in the minds of people.
The question is will the definition of brands and branding change & evolve yet again? This is a question that’s hard to answer. Unlike any other marketing trends branding is not a trend that comes and goes nor is it just a term for mainstream marketing, in fact, it’s a factor that dictates how we do business today.
This makes it very hard to see the definition of branding change but rather what we can do is to predict how people may go about branding in the future and what effects will it have on our businesses.
What we expect to happen is that branding will continue to grow and expand up to a point where people will put it side by side with the company itself. A good example is the Coca-Cola brand, the brand Coca-Cola has been estimated to be more valuable than the combined assets of the company itself.
Going back to the most recent evolution of branding in the 1950s headed by the likes of P&G and Unilever all it meant at that time was to put a human face on your products.
An example of this was the ad by Procter & Gamble of a little girl which started to tell a story rather than show the product simply being used.
Now it requires more than just a human face it requires an emotional connect and this is what we saw happen in the Nike ads back in the 1980s followed by Apple's emotional “think different” marketing video.
The brand was once before product-centric, all you needed to do was to create quality products better than your competition and put a logo on them, that’s it — Nowadays, a good product is just not good enough. One of the biggest impacts that branding brought to marketing is the making of the customer to become the hero rather than the product.
Another thing was that one of the reasons why brands like Unilever started putting a human face on their products was that they realised all of their competitors were slowly catching up on quality and so now it was time to be different, not better.
This is the second biggest impact that branding had on marketing; don’t try to be better but different.
So far these are the two biggest impacts that branding had on business. However, the question still remains, where does the future lead us to? As we’ve come to realise all of the evolutionary moments of branding happened because of a problem and so it was in the attempt to solve these problems & adapt that businesses end up reinventing the face of branding.
According to Forbes Digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day. This creates a big issue for brands struggling to stand out. It’s no longer enough to establish a brand but it’s important that you find ways to stand out. And because of this, the most important thing that brands look up to today is their brand differentiator. What is it that’s going to set them apart from people? This is the answer to our question. What will set brands apart in the future?
For those who are yet to wake up the pandemic has made them realise more clearly that their businesses are in need of finding relevancy if they are ever going to survive. Businesses who have got a strong online presence are proven to be the ones that are here for the future. On top of this not all businesses can easily move their distribution online and so how could they compete with their online counterparts.
One might ask, will physical locations such as rented workspaces, restaurants, brick & mortar stores, museums, and the rest remain relevant in the future? Only if they could offer something that’ll make them more relevant and see them standout.
And the answer to that is customer experience. It’s true that the biggest reason why we spend extra money on VIP tickets and services is because of the unique experience those services come with. The way experience works makes it easier for brands to be remembered and remain relevant.
With the increase in automation of most services caused by technology, there has been a drastic decrease in the number of steps taken by customers when completing tasks and an increase in the number of services they get exposed to at any given time.
This makes it harder and harder for them to remember all that they’re being exposed to. With the idea being, the more steps we take in accomplishing tasks the higher our chances of remembering those particular experiences and the more things we do in a short amount of time with a short number of steps the far less we remember those experiences.
For brands to survive in the future they’ve to offer integrated experience throughout the customer journey. The brand has to move from being felt to being experienced.
There’s a big difference between ordering a pizza online and visiting a 3 Michelin starred restaurant like Wolfgang Puck’s “Spago” to order a Spago Pizza.
Which experience do you think you’re most likely to remember and enjoy much better; the experience of ordering a pizza online or visiting a restaurant — without a doubt visiting a fine dining restaurant will come out on top. While the internet gives businesses a great opportunity to connect and stay relevant it also exposes many businesses to competition and the struggle to stand out.
While sitting down on your couch you can have access to more than 5 pizza places but when it comes to an experience like that of visiting a fine dining restaurant you’ve to consider the nearest options first.
It’s true that the number of enterprises worldwide is on a daily basis increasing and considering the fact that more and more businesses who are yet to make a footprint online in most countries and regions of the world have now been forced to do so due to the pandemic. This means that the competition is increasing every day and so is the pressure for brands to remain relevant, get remembered, and stand out.
This will fast-forward the need for brands to deliver more experience and truly live like a human being as we claim them to be.
As the brand grows and grows to deliver a better customer experience through customer service in many ways and communication mediums only then will the brand be able to withstand competition and survive in future pandemic environments.
In the future instead of brick & mortar stores remaining as they are they will turn out to be brand experience hubs where people can get involved in engaging activities that get them closer to the brand rather than just the act of shopping. It will be a situation whereby the customer pays a visit to his fellow human being which is the brand.
Another factor that’ll accelerate this is the immersive media consumption as we’re starting to see today with virtual reality. Businesses such as museums, galleries, and other attraction centers cannot survive with their current business model but with the help of online virtual experience, they might be able to connect with users virtually and monetise that virtual experience. This can happen through a 360 degrees real-life virtual reality gaming within the business environment setting serving as the main character or anything alike.
The brand will be in need of ways to build stronger connections with their customers to survive amidst competition and the only way they can do that is to bring the brand closer to the customers for them to better experience it. Companies will push for a stronger human presence in their communication and the customers will also rely on those unique communications to serve as reasons why they may like a brand or not, therefore, becoming a factor that differentiates most brands.
The only way we can know so many brands & remember them at the same time is if we start to see them like normal people we know of. The more human-like they become the more we get to know them and the more we get to know about them the easier we can remember them and differentiate them from the rest.
Given the fact that the customer experience is anything that the customer gets exposed to from all points of contact with the brand all the way to the end of the customer journey whether online or offline there will be a lot more room to deliver unique experiences.
Another thing that this will push for is the need for more human presence and less inclination to robots. Brands will want to maintain maximum human touch when it comes to customer service to enrich the customer experience and therefore emphasis will be more on real people when it comes to direct contact with customers.
In the end, to survive in 21st Century marketing as a business the challenge ahead of everyone is staying relevant and establishing a unique point of difference which could be distinguished from the 4000 messages customers receive every day. Brands will have to find creative ways for customers to know more & understand more about them through a unique customer experience.
People will use those unique experiences provided at the point of customer service by real humans to define the brand itself. In conclusion, we can say:
The brand will evolve from being just a promise and a perception to a real experience.
And this means that the attributes of the brand will expand as the brand tries to fully express itself not limited to brand personality, brand voice, and brand values. Great customer service & experience will decide who gets remembered and who doesn’t.
This is crucial if the brand will truly live to be remembered. This brings us to the end of this piece.
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