What Makes a Meaningful Brand?
When you think of a meaningful brand you might envision an organization that is philanthropic, transparent, socially and ethically responsible. While these are all pieces of what it means to be a meaningful brand, the relationship between the audience and brands are changing and in a nutshell, it means brands need to work a lot harder to be meaningful to their audiences. In order to beat the competition, a brand’s products or services not only must meet their customers’ needs, they also need to appeal to the things that their audience cares about and can implement into their daily lives.
More Than Social Responsibility
Beyond social responsibility, consumers want brands to bring something real, positive and useful to their lives. They want brands to give them something of value, a positive outcome, to allow them to do things easier or faster, or enhance their lives in some way. Family life, work, social life, overall health and wellbeing—these as well as financial management and philanthropy—are just some areas that consumers want to see brands touching on.
Study Yields Surprising Results
Recently, Havas Media did a study called Meaningful Brands and have deemed it a new metric of brand strength. The study was the first of its kind to connect human wellbeing with brands at a business level. Havas Media surveyed over 134,000 consumers in 23 countries about 700 different brands. The study shows that people don’t necessarily trust institutions and only 19 percent of brands are making a notable positive contribution to people’s lives. Additionally, people would not care if 73 percent of brands disappeared. The study also showed that the brands that are making an impact are providing more purposeful and functional aspects to day-to-day wellbeing. One of the more significant statistics yielded by the study was that a brand that is able to positively impact people’s lives outperform other brands in the market by over 120 percent on average.
The Brand-to-Audience Relationship is Changing
Umair Haque, the director of the Havas Media Labs believes that these findings are a result of a shift that is happening in consumer to brand relationships. In this Fast Company article, Haque advises, ”If you’re still seeing your business essentially as a giant factory producing outputs, instead of as a system that creates real, positive human outcomes—you’re still stuck in the industrial age, while the rest of the world, especially your customers, are beginning to take a quantum leap into what I call a human age—an era where a life meaningfully well lived is what really counts.”
B2B in the “Human Age”
During this shift, as Haque puts it, from the industrial age to the human age, B2B companies should react and evolve in a way that positively affects their clients. B2B companies should have an aspiration to deliver goods and services which provide a value and a positive outcome.
Deliver Something of Value
Create something of value for your clients. As a company, you should always ask, “What can we do better, and in a more personal, meaningful way that will positively affect our clients?” Can you customize the way you do things to fit each clients needs? Revisit your values and your mission statement. Does it resonate with your employees and throughout the culture of your company? Delivering something of value starts from the inside out.
Humanize Your Brand
For B2B companies, a take away from the Meaningful Brands study is to humanize your brand. One way to humanize your brand is to speak to your audience accordingly. In this article by marketer Pam Moore she notes, “Your customers are human. Your partners are human. Your employees are human. Even your social media fans and followers are human. So answer this question… why are you talking to them like they are a robot who wants to read your corporate speak?” According to Moore, a few ways to humanize your brand are to have a personality, to be available and to speak in your customer’s language.
Choose Your Communication Channels Wisely
To your audience, most traditional marketing messages are received as noise and blocked out, so brands need to reach their audiences through other channels of communication. One channel of communication is the brand experience which includes things like your web page and the point of sale. The point of sale for a B2B company is anything from a phone call, to a face-to-face meeting and everything in between that affects the client’s decision. Another channel of communication is social media. Social media should be used as a place to listen and discuss rather than talk at your audience. Discussions over social media are pieces of your brand’s overall online presence, an increasingly important part of your brand overall.
Constantly Aspire to Be More Meaningful
As a B2B company, you should constantly strive to be more meaningful through humanizing your brand, communicating effectively with your clients and overall, by delivering something of value that affects your clients positively.
– Tara Urso, Social Media and Marketing Strategist
Image via Havas Media
