UNDERVALUED AS SOURCE FOR BRAND TRANSFORMATION. KNOWING LIMITATION AS VALUE
By Van Rais
Great paradox
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Business leaders traditionally undervalue brand as a cornerstone for growth due to its hard-to-measure / short-term impact. Instead, they focus on marketing conversions or short-term sales. Similarly, traditional branding practices undervalue people as the most effective resources for transformation. Why we are wrong is because business leaders are people.
And people are limited with time, resources, attention and ability to process an overvaluing amount of information. Understanding our limitations to undervalued what’s really important is to find a better way to business effectiveness. We need a better way to overcome our cognitive entrenchment to undervalue brands.
We need personal judgment as much as we need objectivity, intuition and imagination to run a business. To connect business and consumer we need magic of the brand. More emotions, more fun and delight the better it is.
For business to make money, is to understand clients' problems. To understand customers' problems is to serve them with brands. To understand customer' problems we need some form of psychological approach with creativity to serve it. Basically, we need science to make money.
What’s opposite
of science?
of science?
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Opposite of science is madness. Not using any form of psychology in business decision making is madness. Expecting new results but taking the same actions is madness. Looking for just plain economical MBA logic, and convincing others in its potential is madness.
Instead of searching for reasons why it should be right, consider reasons why they might be wrong. The crux is in deeper understanding of problems to overcome cognitive entrenchment. How? Consider new behavioral practice embedded in your current process that will uncover undervalue with ability to abandon bad initiatives in favor of better ones.
Instead of searching for reasons why it should be right, consider reasons why they might be wrong. The crux is in deeper understanding of problems to overcome cognitive entrenchment. How? Consider new behavioral practice embedded in your current process that will uncover undervalue with ability to abandon bad initiatives in favor of better ones.
What’s opposite
of brand?
of brand?
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Opposite of brand is hope, how things will work out somehow. Opposite of brand is liability. If a brand is not working right, it is working against you. But worst of all is not knowing, does it work or not. Business have to have brand and biggest risk is not knowing there is a risk.
Traditional business leaders often undervalue branding as a powerful growth tool due to its hard-to-measure short-term impact and then focus on short term sale instead. Or replace brand with marketing, that is relevant to brand but it is not going to solve problem. Preference is for immediate measurable rewards in marketing over long term brand results.
What's opposite
of risks
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Understanding we are risk averse is to know how we fear losses more than we value gains. Designing new behavior around this area is an innovation opportunity. Opposite of risk is not to avoid risk of innovation.
Opposite of risk is relying on reliable human behavior as only constant in the evolving marketing landscape. Relying on this evidence will help mitigate risk beyond marketing or business logic specially applied at organizational scale.
Opposite of risk is to take branding into a position where leaders can predict outcomes of investment, in short and long term. Leaders need tools to measure ROI and KPI through reliable science-based insights.
What we measure
is what we are
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Decisions are influenced by how information is presented. Measurements are the context of how we see things. But also measuring is the most reliable way to connect brand with business. To do this is to provide common measures that will align entire ecosystem of sales, marketing and brand in to one metrics system.
From hopeful
to helpful
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Help leaders make an investment in branding and not to struggle to understand and measure the ROI afterwards. Taking the guesswork out of your branding investment helps. Replace traditional strategy with behavioral strategy cuts helps optimize resources. Utilizing undervalued to supercharge revenue. Connect business and customers with brand helps.
Surprisingly, business logic is unreliable because it relies on facts often hard to sustain, human rationality. But that is accurately what is most reliable for us, is to be irrational. Paradox again. Things never go as planned. We love being deceptive with answers we love to see and hear because we are humans and we are limited.
Purpose of traditional strategy is not to solve business problems but to tell rational stories that we believe and take in to the action at scale. Purpose of stories is to justify our irrationalities that everybody agree upon◼︎
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Thank you!
About Van Rais
He successfully brings together strategy, high-end design, and applied Behavioral Science into a unified system for transformation. His expertise lies in business and brand development, leading Behavioral Branding initiatives for Microsoft, GE, Starbucks, and various scale-ups. His love for art and pop culture makes him feel alive, living in New York City.