A brand is nothing to do with your logo or your mission statement. A brand is the perception of the person you are dealing with before the next interaction happens about what they expect will happen. The brand expectation and promise are the things that saves us time. Most mission statements I have read could be swapped from one company to another and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference – apart from the logos. One of the few mission statements that means something is Patagonia’s. Patagonia says we are going to reduce the number of items we sell, or we are going to stop selling this profitable item because it leaves too much of an environmental footprint. I think these are not mission statements, they are mission actions and if you do enough mission actions the statements get made by itself.
Strategic insights into audiences
Many organisations are awash with data but do not know what to do with it. I hear from many business leaders that leading consultancies are guilty of not giving clear, concise advice for some reason. The business leaders bring in consultants and they will give a really good blueprint, but what they need is clear actionable advice that they can use immediately.
I take a more holistic view of research, after studying the Law of Large Numbers, I know the algorithms work. The ability to take huge amounts of data from people who think that they are acting independently but actually you can start to predict what they want by using the Law of Large Numbers, for example, Spotify predicts quite accurately your music and Amazon are excellent at predicting products that you also need. The more information you give to AI the better it will get.
A good example of a company who looks outside of the data for their competitive advantage is Patagonia. Patagonia have a genuine interest in their customers and what their customers want, what inspires them and what's affecting their lives. These things are becoming more and more of a competitive advantage, and I love Patagonia’s value-based business model and the fact they say “No!” to Black Friday.
Purpose before profits
I recently bought my son a winter jacket and even after looking at Arc’teryx (my second favourite brand) and North Face, our unanimous choice was Patagonia. Patagonia is an heritage brand, famous for their outdoor climbing equipment.
Patagonia have a clear brand identity and knows exactly what they stand for - global sustainability - and they lead from the front. Action speaks louder than words and I always remembered that Yvon Chouinard (founder) said, “Every time we do the right thing, our profits go up.”