Losing relevance can not only outthrow you from a leadership position but also throws you out of the Business. As much as we map out the attributes of a society at large for the target market of our brand, we do the same attribute exercise for the brand itself.
For a brand to be relevant, they have to adapt to the market trends, innovation and thus make changes with the changing needs of the audience. For example, Nokia that once ruled the mobile industry suddenly became unpopular with the advent of smartphones like Apple and Samsung.
So, what is it that keeps a brand alive and kicking?
Connecting with Consumer
It is crucial for brands to know their consumers. They need to analyse the buying behaviour of their consumers even before they start building a thought. Only then one can be able to build a product that a consumer would need or might long for in future.
Consumer’s preferences and buying behaviour with respect to fashion, has seen a drastic change post- COVID with the change in fashion, trends and emergence of digital channels as a mode of communication.
A lot of brands, post- COVID outbreaks have quickly adapted their game and made necessary changes to their product portfolios. Consumer touch points had been shut for many brands and instead of sitting on the same, many briskly moved to open new doors and started helping their consumers in need.
Lesser store visits, reduced purchasing power and more consumption of digital content has now pushed brands to track their consumer’s behaviour and reach out to their customers where they are present.
Read more about how top Retail brands are connecting to customers and leveraging sales : Click Here
Tracking the Trend
It often happens that a brand becomes a massive hit with a particular generation and creates a loyal customer base. However, it fails to attract the subsequent generation in the long run!Unless you are a heritage brand, you can’t be speaking a typewriter’s language when your consumer is on Instagram.
Trend tracking is a research focussed on trends that identifies the opportunities and threats for the brands. Once you can analyse the trends, you are able to calculate their influence on the brand over time, the possible direction for growth in future.
Have you seen Pepperfry’s new campaign- “Swadeshi is Great” encouraging customers to support local artisans by buying locally- made furniture, not because it is local but also is superior. Yes! They made great use of PM’s new movement ‘Vocal for Local’ triggering customer’s preferences and buying decisions.
Constant Evolution of Brand Identity
The logo is what everybody recognizes when it comes to a brand. It is also important for the designers to keep a logo sharp, memorable, outstanding, and timeless. When a brand creates an identity, it cannot afford to change it daily. The idea is always to preserve its essence and to make small but relevant changes.
For example A design-led lifestyle brand, Chumbak recently changed its logo and the idea of the new logo is to work across the brand’s digital as well as physical channels. The brand uses simple Serif typography that mirrors the brand pillar of wit, warmth, and authenticity and also bringing to the most beloved owl to the forefront that is known and recognized by its growing community
Earlier, the logo was designed to reflect the quirky, young brand positioning and also helped the brand to stand out in the “serious” retail landscape. Over the years as Chumbak expanded globally, it adapted to the new globally relevant design.
Evolution of MarTech and its timely adoption
Due to COVID, the scope to make mistakes and take corrective measures is very limited. Consumer behavior is constantly changing with the macro-economic changes.Most organizations would already have CRM, opportunity tracker, tools for social- listening and tools in place either for outreach, to position their campaigns or assess the lifecycle of a client journey. There is a need to ensure that the tools work efficiently and it becomes important to look at the data more seriously, triangulate the data among various other tools that we have and really assess how the customer pieces come out sharper.
Brands are now trying to assess their consumer’s changing behaviour through CRM and are now adopting new mediums like video shopping, mobile shopping vans etc to reach out to their customers. COVID has seen a great shift on how Marketing leaders at Top Retails have been focussing more on Retention than Acquisition.
Retention is the new Acquisition they say and this is how brands have been formulating their new marketing strategies!
Definitely not an anti-aging cream but vital elements to keep your brand alive and kicking!
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