Obsessed
I read this book as a part of our book club at HDco.
Below are the key take aways from the book. Most are quotes directly from Emily Heyward’s writing that help me remember important points.
This book for me explains how comprehensive and emotional ‘brand’ is. It’s important to ask ‘why’ to determine the depth of a brand’s existence and importance.
Chapter 1: Fear of Death
As long as there are shortcomings or pinpoints, there is always space for disruption.
Brand is not a logo, it’s not your name, it’s not a tagline. Those are only effective if you’ve done the hard work of knowing what your brand stands for and why it matters in the first place.
Brand is the ‘overall experience’. It includes all touchpoint even physical space.
To build an award winning brand today, you have to start with your customer and the problem you are solving for them.
The business idea should be embedded into the brand.
When building a brand, it’s important to think about the problem you’re solving for. These pieces help ensure people will care.
3 key pieces are identified when determining a brand
Identifying the ‘Brand Champion’ (Who is the brand for?)
Identifying the key problem
Identifying the answer to the key problem via the brand.
The best brands tap into deeper human needs; the core drivers, the universal things that people care about.
The Why Test: Go deeper than the obvious to uncover the brand through the ‘why test’
Keep asking ‘why’ all the way down to the element that gets us thinking about our own mortality.
Insert AirBNB Image to help remember
Don’t confuse functional benefits as the brand. The benefits are what a brand communicates, but they are not the brand idea. It’s important to move beyond the obvious or the mundane when you think about the problem you’re solving for people.
The consumer need identifies the problem; the brand idea is the solution.
Consumers don’t need to be told every detail of why a company makes a brand decision, as long as the effects can be felt.
Chapter 2: Elevate to the Emotional
When launching a new product, there needs to be a balance between the rational and emotional. Thinking about what the brand does and how it makes people feel.
You need business and brand, not one or the other. The brand will attract and needs to uncover a business that has meaning and meets your customers promise.
Great branding needs to start from the inside and work it’s way out.
Creating a brand strategy requires going deep into a business reasons for being and crafting a story around what naturally flows out of the products benefits.
Find ways to connect product benefits with the emotional story vs. ways to balance them.
The story that brands tell and the feelings they evoke should be supported by what the product actually does. The emotional supports the functional.
In modern brands, the brand idea extends throughout the entire experience (from CS to packaging to product).
Brands can exist and should exist beyond the idea of ‘better price’ and ‘more convenient’.
Good brands determine what they are providing beyond the rational.
‘It’s about recognizing that every time you are communicating with someone — whether through ad, website, DM’s or most important, the experience of your product itself— you have the chance to make them feel something positive, or to make them feel nothing at all.'
People are compelled by brands that go our of their way to tell a meaningful story about why they exist and back it up with a product experience that’s better for people’s lives.
‘The brands people love the most all stand for a clear emotional idea that’s greater than the product’s benefits.
Start with the problem we’re solving for
Define the idea a brand stands for
Define how it should make people feel
After we have those three things outlined, can we think about tonality, design, and language.
Think Nike: Nike is never just about the shoes; it always ladders up to the idea of performance, that there’s an athlete in all of us.
In Namestorming;
Find something that’s not literal or obvious, something that sparks people’s imagination. It can take weeks of discarded ideas. It may make you a little uncomfortable.
Aim for something curious and unique.
Lean into a feeling vs a functional benefit.
Remember in the real world, consumers are rarely if ever, encountering a name out of context.
Choose a name a feeling can be built around, a canvas for the brand.
Something that doesn’t limit growth.
Name is just the beginning a piece of the branding puzzle.
Brand should never be a deception; it should be a delightful expression of a product’s truth, and ultimately a positive force in people’s lives.
Chapter 3: Sense of Self
The most successful brands recognize in order to create meaningful and lasting relationships they need to find new and positive ways to tap into people’s sense of self.
Meet consumers where they are vs. forcing them into the self-serving story you want to tell.
Branding should be more about creating a shared identity with your customers vs. establishing your own identity.
Values are important. Brands are putting values, not their logos front and center.
Those values tell a powerful story that’s less about the company and more about the people who choose them. (Everlane example).
Everlane tells a story that puts it on the same side as its consumers. By showing the pricing transparency they create unity between the business and it’s customers.
People want to choose brands that align with their values and uphold their identity.
Brand should be a tool for conversation, a way to expose values so consumers can make informed and intentional choices.
With service based clients, ‘we’ are the experience.
Transparency, performance and the emotional lift all need to work together to create a brand that people want to identity with.
Sometimes a brand re-do isn’t needed. Instead, find ways to sharpen the story by better articulating the values of the brand through language and design as well as reimagine experiences (like e-commerce int he example of Ursa Major)
A brand successfully taps into people identities and creates a movement that’s about more than the brand.
A brand functions as a connective tissue. I see you in the same sweatshirt = I see something of myself in you.
Chapter 4: Creating Connection
Effective branding is all about creating connections. Tapping into consumers sense of their own identity, brands build a connection with their audiences.
For successful branding, community doesn’t need to be formed on digital platforms or physical spaces, community is built from creation unity around shared values from the beginning.
Community is created when brand is infused throughout the entire experience (in-store experience, digital experience, all brand activity).
Being human is important for connecting, think of Spotify campaign examples: recognizing the humanity of its member base makes used feel closer to each other and the brand. Feels more like a club than a global tech platform.
Find ways to create community, every brand is targeting people who share a set of needs or preferences or who are at a specific stage in their life.
The brands verbal language is a valuable community-building tool.
Through language a brand indicates who it’s for and as importantly who it’s not for.
Brands build successful communities when they create a powerful feeling of inclusion.
When people know what a brand stands for, and they agree with it, that creates an intimate bond.
Build a brand that stands for more than just a product story.
Chapter 5: Strength in Focus
Successful brands today aren’t afraid to home in on a clear point of view, traitor then attempting to cover all the bases.
The initial brand champions fall in love with a brand because they know exactly what a brand stands for and what it stands for speaks directly to them.
A laser focused product strategy enables greater breadth of vision, because it’s not about features of a product, it’s about the idea as a whole (suitcase vs. travel in this case).
Having great focus on one thing, doesn’t mean you have to sell that one single product forever. Starting with one allows you to grow with an already established brand (you have trust).
There are times you will sell more than one product at once (Snowe example). Breaking it down in an organized way makes the differences clear for consumers (Bathe, Eat, Drink). Choices only exist when necessary for the consumer.
Overall, when choice is more of a burden than a gift, the brands that don’t force people to think too much win.
Its’ more work upfront for the brand to zero in on a vision from day one, forcing a hierarchy of benefits instead of trying to say everything at once.
To drive obsession, brands need to be comfortable leaving some sets of consumers and opportunities behind. (Think Drybar).
Have purpose behind the offerings.
Day one focus sets the stage for deliberate, purposeful growth over time, and lasting obsession.
Chapter 6: Redefine Expectations
Brand changes everything.
Companies are looking to change the perceptions and behaviors within a certain category or invent a new one (think prose for shampoo or casper with mattresses)
At times it may be necessary to create a brand that breaks the rules of what has been done before.
Naming & Design
It’s important to remember that consumers when asked will choose a name or logo that is most literal to the function of the business. This is limiting and doesn’t always connect with the brand emotion.
When your goal is to transform a category or create a new one, you have to start by asking: What can you stand for that no one else is owning, but that people actually care about?
Brand thinking: what are you selling the mattress or the sleep?
Brand Equity defined: the love that people have for the brand because of all the ways in which it set out to delight them.
Marble approach: When a business runs a transactional ad (something driving sales), take a marble out of the jar. Fill the jar with brand equity and delight.
Brands need to create an emotionally driven connection.
In order to drive obsession, differentiation is critical, in both product and brand. But differentiation needs to be purposeful.
Ask: what can you do better for your consumers than you’ve ever done before?
Chapter 7: Embrace Tension
Tension can be used to build brand personalities because it plays with the power of surprise.
When talking about consistency: It’s important to have a clear sense of purse, and a single minded idea of what you stand for. But we need a 21st century update. Clarity and focus (internal consistency) are not the same as external consistency in messaging and marketing.
External consistency: how you show up to your audience should be based around the platform you are on.
With so many channels of communication, each acting differently in people’s lives, it doesn’t make sense to behave the same way everywhere.
Each channel has their own set of cultural expectations, calling for different types of behavior and people respond accordingly.
The most beloved brands understand how to adjust their message to the medium, from the beginning.
Having a clear, single-minded strategy is what enables a brand to adapt its behavior depending on where it appears.
The brand can take multiple paths in the direction of the same North Star.
When a brand is clear about what it stands for it can emphasize different facets of its purpose and personality without diluting its identity. (Dress different for the BBQ than the cocktail party).
The brands that challenge people’s expectations are the ones that stand out.
When defining the brand personality, table stake words are not allowed to be used. (Trustworthy)
Try to find terms that contrast with each other, creating combinations that have never existed before.
Seek moments of tension that will lead to a memorable experience.
Pioneering and lovable (Casper), charming and white.
Chapters 8+ Coming Soon