Based on a friday afternoon twitter discussion with Ralf Beuker and Patrick Lerou plus some recent experiences with clients and previous discussions with Guido Stompff and Ralf, I decided to add some depth to the model that we @Zilver have been using for a while now. The model basically depicts our way of looking at corporate brands: they represent the relationship between the organisation and the user (or customer) on the one hand, and between marketing and product development on the other. (See also our Design Management Review ’08 article)
What’s been added in the model is a set of layers (concentric ellipses, if that makes sense geometrically). These layers help us define what it is were talking about, and go from intangible and implicit (on the outside) to tangible and explicit (on the inside). The model again has four quadrants,
1. on the left, in magenta: the organisation/company/brand owner
2. on the right, in orange: the user/consumer/customer
3. On the bottom, in blue: brand reflection, meaning the brand as instrument to help generate vision, guide thought, facilitate internal discussion, and direct communication
4. On the top, in green: brand action, meaning the brand as driver for creativity, interaction, design, and innovation
Each quadrant has three layers, that are connected to the three layers of the neighbouring quadrants. Branding is about relationships, therefore it is very fruitful to look at the relationships between the quadrants on each layer. It is especially interesting to look at how the relationship between organisation and user can be established through the layers of the top and bottom quadrants.
So for example when you are talking about branding in the context of organisational culture, you will want to be connected more to the user’s values and norms than to their behaviour. The relevant question in this case is not so much what do we do, but why do we do it? And it will inspire the building of relationships, much more than the creation of artefacts.
Moving in one layer, on the organization’s side we encounter the ‘embedded brand’ (Guido Stompff, 2008). This is the brand as it is found in organisations with strong unwritten rules and a strong sense of organizational culture on the work floor. The embedded brand shapes ‘how the organization does things’, it shapes processes and methods. And relates to the end user’s attitude and opinions. This layer of branding can inspire the creation of experiences.
Moving in to the centre layer we arrive at the brand in a more explicit form, the brand promise. It drives what the company does, and thus connects to the end user’s behaviour through the creation of artefacts and tangible touch points.
The vision behind the model is not that one layer of branding is necessarily better than the other. But it does point out this: for the brand to function as the basis for building relationships it has to be rooted deep within the organization. It has to answer the question ‘why are we here as an organization?’ On the other hand, when working on a brand that drives short term new product development in a practical and tangible manner, a compelling brand promise that everyone understands, and can work with, may be perfectly suitable. A nail needs a hammer and a screw needs a screwdriver.
What the model also does is help define the topic of the discussion. And that’s always crucial when talking about branding and design.
So please help me refine this thing, and feel free to comment and add to the discussion, your thoughts and contributions are more than welcome!
Next up: adding time to the equation: How can brands drive long term innovation, and what kind of brand does it take to explore long term future brand interactions?
Hi Erik,
this is an interesting discussion indeed!
I would like to add to this that looking at Philips where I currently work, the brand value(identity) is being communicated into two directions, one is towards the end-users, the other is within the company towards the employees; the employees that in the end have to translate the brand message in the products they create.
The first is done in a structered way in which the Simplicity brand message is translated into concrete product requirements, and they are verified throughout the product development process making sure the brand is communicated.
The latter, spreading the brand-feeling within the company is done by multiple actions of which most interesting to mention are the Simplicity day. At this day world wide on all sites of the company, everybody stops working and focusses in workshops on the brand message. Also, besides this one-day event, each site has its Simplicity team, which is responsible to energize, and make sure that the site actually lives the Simplicity brand message in their daily work
So, looking at this beautiful model from this view, it would mean that the magenta part of the model would have a two way split or two Dimensions: one that translates the brand promise in the product (features, shape, etc), and one that “lives” in the attitude and mentality of the employees.
Actually the latter is quite critical, since they are the ones, the employees, that have to do-the-thing, translate the promise into products.
What I also expected in the model is the brand identity (=is that the brand promise in the model?) the way the company aims to be seen by the consumers, and how the brand is being perceived by the consumers (=brand image= behaviour in the model?)
With this in mind, I would expect the green part to be the actions to realize the brand identity, and the blue part the overview of how the brand is interpreted and sen in the eye of the consumer.
What about the environment in which this is all set? the competitors? the price? country, culture?
The level of relationship (green), I would expect it to be at the level of attitude and behaviour (orange), instead of norms&values
It could be interesting to fill the model with a case. I am very interested to see the concrete outcome. What would the communication look like? the information streams? Design is about relationship indeed, what is that relationship exactly?
Affinity with products (or product category) is another topic. For me as a female, clumsy consumer a Black & Decker brand might not be interesting, since I have a low interest in (let’s say) drills. however Nike would be very appealing, since it reflects my life style, I wear Nike every day, and maybe even want to make a statement wearing it…
The final topic I want to adress is: I am very curious how this model would look like for a Business to Business Brand, e.g. what would a supplier (have to) do? Graduating at Corus for example, I made a show model how the steel supplier could contact customers by focussing on the brand (of the customer) and its end-user.
Note for the topic of next u”:
I believe that experiencing the brand (the emotional part, the appeal, the affinity, the authenticity) is becoming more and more a hot topic. By enhancing the affinity factor, the attraction and with that the loyalty to the brand can increase. it seems that nowadays there is a shift from purchase intention towards product use (usability, experience, ergonomics,…). With this focus, there could be an oppertunity to organise the product development process in such a way to generate innovations on a longer term, with tools like co-creation, contextmapping, and more…
hope this helps refining this interesting and inspiring model!
hi Gunay,
that’s a very constructive and complete comment you’ve placed there. It’s worth discussing point by point:
you start with stating that the brand (within Philips, but I believe we can generalize) is directed in two ways: outward towards the end-user, and inward towards the employees. Since I find both equally important (and in this sense I am critical towards too much user centeredness) I place the brand, in its deepest essence, in the middle of the model. It embodies the relationship between in- and outside. So rather than splitting the magenta organisation side in two, the magenta side is the internal side of the brand, and the orange user side isthe external side. The brand itself is what connects them.
Then you’re talking about sending the brand inward and outward but I think we both agree it’s better to build it from the inside and the outside (rather than build it in the middle and then send it out). Of course this organically grown brand would also require some missionary work, but obviously much less than a fully ‘constructed’ brand.
Regarding the brand identity vs brand image discussion, this model is really about the ingredients one needs to create and build a usable and inspiring brand. In that sense it does not deal with how the brand might be interpreted afterwards (image). But it does answer the classical identity/image dichotomy in that it tries to build the brand based on a deep understanding of both the organization’s and the end-user’s needs, desires and aspirations. This will certainly decrease the risk of claiming something that is understood differently by the outside world. The green action part of the model can be used later on to decrease image-identity gaps.
The model also purposely leaves out competition, market trends, technology trends etc etc. Not because they are not important, but because they are -in my opinion- overly stressed in the positioning game. As I said once on twitter “user centered design methods don’t provide you with real answers if you don’t have the vision to ask the right questions”, the same holds true for market research, trend analysis, competitor mapping (yea, five forces…) etc: it starts with developing the vision to ask the right questions. And this vision stems from a clear understanding of what connects you to your customer or user and why. It is the development of this vision that the model is after.
That leaves -for now- your last comment to reflect upon. And here I couldn’t agree with you more: the brand in its purest, most purposeful and most inspiring form is found at the product experience stage, not -in my opinion- in the pre-purchase communication stage. Brands in my book are much less about promising stuff than about actually making things come true. That is why we use context mapping, design ethnography, cultural probes, scenario building, personas in our work at zilver. They are design research techniques that we use to build brands that are platforms for long lasting relationships around meaningful interactions and fulfilling product experiences.
I would love to discuss this further with you…over coffee!
Hello Erik, Gunay,
Erik, your model integrates various aspects of brand development into one clear and easy-to-read overview, in my opinion. Especially the connectivity between the ellipses of the different segments expresses very well how organisational and consumer aspects of the brand touch each other. All in all, it is quite an elaboration of your former model.
Maybe it is an option to replace ‘values and norms’ (which have my particular interest too) with ‘concerns’ as in the model of Desmet. http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/66/15#3 Concerns are norms and values as well as needs, motives or goals, so that would possibly make the model also more applicable in b2b environments, as Gunay suggests. I was just pointed out to this option in another discussion on meaningful relationships in social networking. http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/02/discovery-vs-creation-relating-to-social-media/#comments
I do believe however, that it are these norms and values of consumers that make the relationship with the brand meaningful. Gunay’s question about what relationship the model talks about might ask for a more precise description of a certain relationship: isn’t it ‘bonding’ that you mean?
Another remark I have is they ‘implicit-explicit’ scales at the organisation and consumer segments. Are culture and norms and values really that implicit? I would say that is sometimes not that difficult to investigate (or be aware of) and describe organisation culture or human values. Wouldn’t it be an option to call them ‘abstract’ instead, using an abstract-concrete scale?
I am curious how the model will develop, I’ll keep an eye on it!
This is a beautiful visualization, and an enlightening discussion, both! I’m reminded of the German philosopher Gadamer’s famous position on hermeneutics: “Who asks the more beautiful question, the more beautiful answer.”
I’m interested in how a corresponding model for brand engagement might look. This is a brand-centric view of the brand, and you’ve incorporated the customer into the brand’s brand. Which would suggest to me that the norms and values (as Peter draws attention to) are as seen from the brand’s view, not from the user’s experience.
And as you say Erik, the brand’s ability to take a user centric position towards customers is constrained by its clarity of vision.
Since I come from the interaction and social media perspective, which involves the communicability of brands, their representations, images, appeal, reputation, and so on *in online speech* and online cultures — it would be interesting to do a model that adopts a user-centric position of the brand.
Using the approach you’ve taken– the brand here has “internalized” the user — the user centric position would include a quadrant that is user’s internalization of the brand. Could be the user values brand values, brand reputation, brand products, life-style messaging, and so on.
I like the idea that in a brand-centric view, the user is internalized; and that in the user-centric view, the brand is internalized.
A third step would then be to construct a communication and interaction model. What are the touch points, the images, messages, and the interactions and encounters between brand and user. And which become highly communicable within a community of users? Not a market or customer base — for there’s no presumed interaction between their members — but connected users (social media users).
One might then be able to identify the disconnects — between how a brand sees itself and its customers and how customers relate to the brand. And one might see the opportunities for better cross-fertilization and exchange (if the brand wants to go social).
Perhaps we could get some social media types to work out the user-centric view?
cheers,
adrian
Ah, nice point of view Adrian!
Sure, Erik’s model is brand-centric. I assume (but I suppose he will let us know himself) that is because, as he states himself, he is “critical towards too much user centeredness”. I can also imagine another reason, that is that this model should be of use for the ‘brand owners’. So that is their point of view. I am not afraid that the consumer values are not represented correctly here. However, one pitfall for this model will still be that the brand owners remain with the idea that the consumer is as ‘concerned’ with the brand as they do themselves. Example: when working for the ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment I noticed that the policy makers were very focused on sustainability issues and expected more or less that citizens would do so either (but these didn’t). This ‘professional blindness’ is a very common thing amongst all of us professionals and then we are disappointed when we see that consumers/users care about lots of other things. Rephrased in another way: As a consumer, I can think of some brand sometimes, but I can’t think of all the brands all the time.
So that is the interesting point Adrian makes here. From a experience branding point of view I am aware of the fact that in daily life people experience thousands of things (situations, signs, information, interactions, brands, etc.) and that my brand is just one of those encounters. It is up to the brand to think how it will be positioned in this busy mesh-up. There is again this one principle: the more the brand adapts to the consumers concerns, the more the consumer will be engaged with the brand. And my thought is that adapting your brand to the consumers values will have this result. And maybe there we find the power of social networks in which people themselves have created the brand: the brand ownership belongs to them instead of an external manufacturer. Or at least, they experience it in this way.
At the end, that is what we all aiming for (brand developers and designers): the user experience which takes place in the mind of the user. All we can do is design the stimuli to let this experience appear. And for that, we might use brand-centered as well as user-centered models, as long as they acknowledge the users concerns.
hmmm I like the discussions above very much, very inspiring *^_^*
Peter suggest to replace norms and values by concerns…however that sounds really negative to me (the word concern itself), altough I understand his point. norms and values are cultural dependant, and very “general”, however sometimes brands focus or aim at sub-groups (e.g. female, teenagers, musical preference, etc). Those su-groups off cousre have their own values and norms perhaps, but that is just a matter of wording whether it is a certain life style, or vision of that end-user…
Peter also asks if I refer to the bonding to a brand by relationship, indeed1 This could be linked to loyalty, brand heritage (e.g. my dad always drove an Opel, so do I), but also the reflective-characteristic of a brand, reflecting the lifestyle of the user, the affinity level to that certain brand. The busg of brands are a “bush” because the user simply doesn’t care whether it is a Dreft, Dash, or Fleuril, but for cars this might be “slightly” different (e.g. or different in the eyes of the type of user: one that only cares about the price, only interested in design of car interiors)…
indeed I agree that brands and users go hand in hand. Depending on what you want to show with your model it can be either brand focussed, or user focussed. But in the end the user makes (or kills) the brand, and sometimes even the brand makes the user (e.g. Mr.Bean and his Mini car).
Interesting to read is that User experience is almost always mentioned in one sentence with online/smart products; I believe that user experience is also a differentiator in tangible products, where the challenge is even bigger. Brands are becomming more sensoric (e.g. Virgin airlines has a specific odeur), and exploiting that to enhance the experience in their products.
what about calling the norms &values at end-user side needs & wishes, or is that covered in the layer below called attitudes & opinions?
Then we could keep it the same as the company culture in magenta, replacing the norms & values of the user by culture (either sub culture or culture as in country…)?
What a great discussion folks, thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas with me and the readers of this blog. It took me a while to find time to comment back: my son turned 6 and this weeks festivities were an experience no branding model can describe
@Peter, to replace norms and values with concerns (that is, major goals, motives, well-being, or other sensitivities) works from a theoretical point of view (concerns as explained by Pieter Desmet cover the exact meaning I wish to convey) but I am also looking for those words an entrepreneur of an SME might relate to. More tips are welcome! @Gunay, Needs and wishes fit in the middle ring I think. I’m sticking to values and norms for now. Call me stubborn.
I love this from a brilliant post by Adrian by the way: ‘Human relationships aren’t build on similarity or identity of attributes. They’re a result of interaction, of understanding, of the things we do that move us and by which we move one another.’ That is spot on!
And Peter is also hitting the nail on the head when he says in his comment on Adrian’s post ”Because what we value gives meaning to life, these shared values result in meaningful relationships. When brand owners provide the opportunity to people to use the brand in this way, I (peter) speak of Experience Branding”
As to the nature of the relationship Gunay is asking about and Peter is commenting on: I can’t tell you. That’s the whole point of the model. I often open branding discussions with my clients with exactly that question: ‘what kind of relationship do you have with your client/customer/user? Is it open, hierarchical, experimental, indifferent, adventurous, respectful, buddy-like or does it depend on context? And how does he/she see that relatonship?’. The discussion this question opens tells me a lot about the brand.
And Peter: as to the extent to which norms and values are implicit: from a branding point of view, they are, since in my experience they are often excluded from branding discussions. But to use an abstract – concrete scale is a good idea, especially since that works for both scales, thanks for the tip.
@adrian: you are right that the model is brand centric, but I like to see it as leaving both the organisation and the user open to see the world (and each other) as they see it. In other worlds, it is not trying to see the user from a brand point of view, rather, it is trying to build a brand based on the user’s and the organization’s shared point of view. But Peter and you are both right, I make part of my living by building brands for clients, not for end-users.
Adrian also makes a lot of sense when he says that it’s valuable to look at the organisation’s side of the brand form the user’s point of view and to look at the user’s side of the brand form an organizational point of view. It is exactly this subjective approach that I miss in a lot of user centred design discussions. It is not about what the user does/feels/thinks, but it’s about what you (as an organization) are going to with those insights.
And, Adrian, the construction of meaningful interactions happens in the artefacts quadrant, which I will change to interactions, since that is what I mean (I suffer slightly from product designer myopia).
To Adrian, Peter and Gunay: I am excited about what social media could (and will) do to branding, precisely because the ownership of the brand is no longer contained within the organization. If the brand represents a relationship rather than the projection of an identity on to an ‘outside world’ some exciting stuff is bound to happen! And I completely agree with Gunay that this kind of thinking is inspiring for us product people because it invites us to adopt the same kind of social thinking in the context of product design and product branding. A meaningful product experience takes place when a user has something of value to add to the equation. I hate flagship store experiences that give me the feeling that they don’t need me to function.
To conclude, I like to see the brand as a city square: the building blocks surrounding it and its pavement may define its identity (the constructed part of the brand), but it’s the use of the square –and the interactions that take place on it- that shape its meaning. The identity may trigger the interaction. It may even guide it in a certain direction. But it doesn’t in itself create meaning. Needless to say, the users of this brand as city square in my mind are the organisation and the end-user.
—sorry rik, again a little more text than intended—
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Just stumbled on this blog, and what a discovery!
I really like the model and the discussion is really great.
Having a brand equity2.0 perception, I try to place the relationship central and more I look at the visual, more I find it could reflect the same thing – that the brand is not really at the center.
I think that rather than the organization, it is the brand action and brand reflection which should be at the center.
We talk here about positioning, but with the rise of social media, it’s just a matter of time before traditional branding models evolve (and my big project will hopefully support this idea).
Today with social media, prosumers have more and more opportunities to share their thought and some famous bloggers get to become more than just influencers. We tend to see more and more people become brand advocates (or detractors). The term “personal brand” is nowadays commonly used and the relationship “company brand” vs “personal brand” will gain in importance.
Today’s trend is that if I use a cool mp3 player I like, I most probably will share this information somewhere on the net. There is an immediate relationship between the company’s brand and my personal brand (doesn’t matter the size of my network). This means that my behaviour can have much more influence than the one I had before the coming of “social media” such as blogs, microblogs and social networks.
Therefore I would suggest that the two quadrants related to the brand should also be related to the people and that the “behaviour “should be replaced by something such as “personal brand promise”.
At least that’s if you would like to have a model ready for the coming 5 years (or something like that)
Great info graphic.
I have been looking for new ways of visualizing brand and consumer; this is the best I have seen. It is a real trick to create something with enough meaning to bring clarity, but enough flexibility to apply to specific situations. A real test is if it helps clients/agency or not.
At the root of my thought is whether or not the in-out relationship between a brand and consumer is through the brand action. The brand action being the expression of the brand in symbols (identity, buildings, etc.) instead of relationships as the outer ring. Then, the brand experiences as you have it. Finally, the product/service as the center of brand action. I fully believe in the power of a brand, organization and reflection components, as shaping brand action.
If you buy the action as the primary way a brand interacts with a consumer, then I would place it to the left, across from the consumer. This would result in the organization moving to the top position.
Placing the organization at the top works for me. It implies the dynamic between the organization and how it shapes and drives motivation and action.