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1-Page Summary of The Brand Gap

Overview

We need to understand that a brand is not the name of a company or its logo. A brand is an intangible feeling people have when they think about your company. We also need to realize that you can’t control how people feel about your brand; it’s just something you create and hope others will like.

You can’t control what other people think about your business, but you can ensure that customers know what to expect when they do business with you. When they have a good experience with your company, it will make them feel positively toward it.

In this article, you’ll learn about three key points. First, John Deere doesn’t offer real estate to its customers because they’re not farmers. Second, ducks should swim like ducks and not penguins because it’s natural for them. Third, Coca-Cola’s brand represents more than half of their actual value because people don’t buy soft drinks at the grocery store; they buy Coke or Pepsi.

Big Idea #1: Become a charismatic brand by closing the “brand gap” between strategy and creativity.

Coca-Cola is worth $70 billion. 60% of the total value comes from the Coca-Cola brand.

Companies today are judged by their brands. In fact, the value of a company is directly related to its brand. Therefore, it’s important for companies to create strong brands and close the gap between strategy and creativity. The problem with many companies is that they have a left-brain approach where people who like logic work together in marketing while those who prefer creative solutions work separately on their own ideas.

Meanwhile, the design department is exclusively populated by right-brained creatives with strong spatial skills.

Whenever there’s a conflict between two groups, it creates a gap. Perhaps you’ve seen this in your workplace where the strategy doesn’t connect with customers or investors. It could be due to the brand gap.

Ultimately, this poses a major problem for the company because customers won’t know what to expect. Therefore, they’ll be less likely to buy products from that company in the future.

But it’s different with charismatic brands. People have a solid relationship with the company and know what to expect from its products.

For example, companies like Coca-Cola and Apple have achieved this by establishing brands that communicate ideas of joy and beauty. Those things are appealing to people, so these brands want to communicate those ideas consistently.

Every brand today has five important elements that make it successful. They are:

Big Idea #2: Successful brands know what they do and why it matters, and importantly, they stick to it!

Humans are hardwired to pay attention to the unexpected. For our ancestors, this was a survival mechanism that helped them spot potential threats in their environment.

Today, brands can use people’s desire to be unique and different to their advantage. In the past, being unique was not as important as it is today. Therefore, today it is more important for a brand to stand out than ever before.

Differentiation can be explained by three questions. If you can’t answer these in a way that’s appealing to customers, then you don’t have a brand: 1) Who are you? John Deere makes tractors and related equipment. 2) What do you do? They make tractors and related equipment. 3) Why does it matter? It doesn’t really matter what they’re doing; people just want the products because of the company name on them.

If you say that your company makes important products, then you have nothing. It is not special or different. You have to find a better way of answering the question so that it sounds unique and interesting. John Deere would argue that they are successful because farmers trust their equipment and they’ve been around for generations. This gives them an edge over other companies who just sell “important” stuff. If John Deere started selling houses, it would be just another real estate company and lose its differentiation in the market place because there are others out there doing exactly what they do but with more focus on one particular area than the other company has done before.