How can brand create novel value for consumers?
Brands are finding it harder and harder to position themselves effectively for the masses
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The Coca-Cola Co. strives to “refresh the world and make a difference”. In the past few years, the company has been embroiled in a number of controversies, from its position on new Georgia voting laws to its portrayal of immigrants in a commercial to funding scientists who shifted blame for obesity away from sugary drinks. Brands — and big brands, in particular — are finding it harder and harder to position themselves effectively for the masses.
Many of these controversies have occurred at the same time there is increasing interest in “brand purpose,” which is an element of branding that answers the fundamental question: Why should this brand exist, given all the other brands in the marketplace? Marketers frame this in the following way: “How can this brand create novel value for consumers (i.e., a unique position in the marketplace) such that it can sustain profitable growth over time?”
As described in University of Virginia Darden School of Business Professor Kimberly Whitler’s new book, Positioning for Advantage: Techniques and Strategies to Grow Brand Value,” brand purpose provides the North Star for a brand and helps align and focus an organization. It should help provide, if designed and activated correctly, important guidance and guardrails that can protect a brand from stepping into hot water or navigate those challenges when they’re unavoidable.
There are five ways in which successful brands effectively design and activate their purposes.
[This article has been reproduced with permission from University Of Virginia's Darden School Of Business. This piece originally appeared on Darden Ideas to Action.]