Resilient Brands:

A framework for
brand building in
the digital age
Contents
Introduction 2

What is a resilient brand? 4

Brand as belief 8

Brand as strategy 16

Brand as experience 21

Conclusion 28
1 Resilient Brands:
A framework for brand building in the digital age.

Introduction:
Resilient Brands.

“I can’t think of an industry not touched by technology.

Technology has turbo-charged disruption, lowering
barriers to entry and making it possible to scale
new ideas quickly because of the way in which our
world is now so interconnected. So why are so
many established businesses not waking up to the
opportunities and the threats?”

Jonathan Mildenhall,
Chief Marketing Officer, Airbnb1

1
https://magazine.contagious.com/articles/do-the-wrong-thing
The rules of branding are changing radically. Established brands are
taking too long to adapt. Born and raised on image, message and
surface, they look at the new winners in the digital age and try to copy
surface, when they need to copy substance.

Even smart marketers do it.

Let’s make an app…

Let’s make a viral video…
Let’s do a Red Bull space jump-style stunt…

It’s not about the app, the video, the stunt. Resilient brands, brands that
endure, are ones where the brand’s truth runs deeper than a strapline
and a campaign.

We are living through a time of radical change. Digital technologies

have transformed the way we communicate, learn and shop. They are
disrupting the way we consume news and media.

Our relationships with brands have changed as a result.

We increasingly demand responsive, engaging brands and authentic
brand experiences.

As businesses transform to adapt to the digital age, there is an

imperative to reimagine what brands are and how they behave.

How do we build brands that are relevant and resilient in a time of rapid
change?

This book explores this question and outlines:

• The three elements of a resilient brand

• The strategic models needed to create a resilient brand
• How to apply this to your own business

Introduction
5
2 Resilient Brands:
A framework for brand building in the digital age.

What is a
resilient brand?

“We live in a world that is changing so fast… a VUCA world: volatile,

uncertain, changing and ambiguous… Therefore, there is a
constant need to re-evaluate the way we adapt to this changing
environment.”

Marc Mathieu
Unilever in Contagious,
Issue 40, Q3 2014
Brands aren’t working as hard as they could. They are too often
symbols of reassurance rather than agents of change.

Why is this? Resilient brands are able to adapt, to change direction, take
knocks and setbacks and come back stronger. They are able to extend
to new products, new business models and take their customers with
them.

Resilience comes by moving away from the idea of a brand as a sacred,

designed thing, guarded by high priests in agencies or internal brand
teams, dispensed for use in sales marketing materials with instructions
of rituals of layout and language to be strictly observed. Look and
feel, brand iconographies and colour schemes and grid layouts are
important, but they are not the sum of the brand.

Resilient brands run far deeper than fonts, logotypes and tone of voice.
They are truths about how the company goes about its work.

The context: disruption.

As technology transforms markets and creates new opportunities,

incumbent and disruptor brands are battling it out for audience attention.

The incumbents - the established market leaders - are defending their

position, using their scale and legacy brand loyalty to maintain their
market share. They are aware of the changing market, but because
of their governance, size, leadership and culture, it takes them time
to transform and adapt. Their brands are used as symbols of trust,
credibility and emotional reassurance. They are built around vision,
positioning, personality, values, names and logos.

Disruptors - a new set of digitally-led competitors - take advantage

of changes in customer behaviour and business models to re-define
markets to their advantage. They are disrupting established brands by
uncovering new market space.

What
is a resilient brand? 7
Characteristics
of incumbent and
disruptor brands

INCUMBENT DISRUPTOR

DEFEND ATTACK

CUSTOMER IS AN ABSTRACT CUSTOMER-OBSESSED

PERSONA/DEMOGRAPHIC

DATA IS FOR MEASURING PERFORMANCE DATA FOR INSIGHT & DECISION-MAKING

REPORTING REALTIME

VISION PURPOSE

FAIL LESS FAIL FASTER

DETAILED BUSINESS CASE LEAN PRODUCT CANVAS

PRODUCT LAUNCH MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT

HISTORY NOW & NEAR

FOCUS GROUP USER TESTING

MARKET RESEARCH LISTENING, LEARNING

BEST PRACTICE & CASE STUDIES COPYING OTHER INDUSTRIES

OUR OFFER CUSTOMER PROBLEMS

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE MINIMUM HIERACHY

What
is a resilient brand? 8
Brand as a tool for transformation.

Many incumbent brands are carefully crafted monoliths - impressive

but only if you decide to pay attention to them. Otherwise they become
part of the background, things you work around and live among without
worrying too much about them, like the fountains and lions in Trafalgar
Square on a busy, hot day - designed as icons of power, they become
paddling pools and playgrounds.

Brands were designed to be unchanging, certain, stable and not

ambiguous. Brands were decrees, carved in stone, inviolable - holy
books were created and handed around agencies and media about
how to treat the brand, venerate it, use it sparingly and in accordance
with strict laws. There was faith involved in this magical thinking - that
the brand was something that could be owned and prescribed
and controlled.

Resilient brands have three elements:

Brand as belief.
A common purpose that provides a platform for meaningful expression
and conversation. The place where the business and customer beliefs
meet.

Brand as strategy.
A framework for use that creates competitive advantage.

Brand as experience.
A brand is only as strong as the last experience in a customer’s eyes.
What can take years to build can take seconds to destroy.

What
is a resilient brand? 9
 3 Resilient Brands:
A framework for brand building in the digital age.

Brand as belief.

“Be interested in what people are interested in.

Compete for their attention on their terms, not
on yours."

Gareth Kay,
Chief Strategy Officer, Goodby,
Silverstein and Partners2

2
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/brand-new-with-gareth-kay.html
Common purpose.

Common purpose moves brands from messages to relationships with

customers. It unlocks a whole new set of interactions, creating value,
differentiation and advocacy.

Resilient brands are born out of a belief that is shared with customers.
They recognise and value common purpose.

A common purpose is credible and meaningful for both customers and

employees. It appeals to both heart and mind, creating a relationship
that is both emotional and rational.

To create value from a common purpose, brands need to get close and
stay close to what their customers need today.

One exercise that Cynthia Montgomery, Professor of Business

Administration at Harvard and author of The Strategist, suggests is to
think about the death of your business. What would the world be like
without it? Would it be the same? If you don't make a difference, nobody
will mourn you when you're gone. And if they won't miss you then, how
much do they need you now? Knowing what makes you matter to your
customers is critical.

A brand with a common purpose owns a space where value is created

for both the business and its customers.

Brand
as belief 11
Patagonia: from a founder's belief to a business mission.

Patagonia founder Raymond Chouinard has built his company’s

brand on the ‘responsible economy’ purpose. Its website states:

“We at Patagonia are mandated by our mission statement to

face the question of growth, both by bringing it up and by
looking at our own situation as a business fully ensnared in
the global industrial economy." 3

The brand’s Worn Wear campaign is an example of brand as belief.

Customers voices demonstrate how the business acts and what its
values are.

“What is also powerful about a shared value

lens is that it creates a north star for the
future development of the brand and its
businesses, and with that, a compelling sense
of accountability.

How impactful it will be for both brands and

the world when brands adopt their shared-
value north star and begin to ask themselves,

‘If this is true of our brand and business, and if

this is true of where we started, then where do
we go from here with what we endeavour to
put into the world?"

Kirk Souder,
Co-Founder, Enso Collaborative4

3
http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=3351
4
http://adage.com/article/guest-columnists/future-brands-creating-shared/296046/

Brand as belief 12
Finding a common purpose.

Common purpose emerges when we consider how customers use,

advocate or connect with our products and services. It doesn’t come
from considering how to message customers.

Common purpose goes beyond messaging. It allows brands to have

relevant, meaningful interactions with customers at each step of their
decision journey.

Brand as belief 13
 WHAT YOUR COMMON WHAT YOUR BRAND
CUSTOMERS PURPOSE BELIEVES IN
BELIEVE IN

How does it work?

On the left side, list what customers believe and need. This can be
informed by analytics, customer research and social media monitoring.

On the right side, do the same exercise with the brand.

Consider brand values, vision, products and promise. This can be
informed by stakeholder interviews.

Once both sides are full of ideas, keep the common elements and
decide on the strongest idea that is meaningful to both sides.

Brand as belief 14
 I WANT MY COMMON DO YOU REALLY NEED
THINGS TO LAST PURPOSE TO BUY A NEW THING

BUY THINGS THAT DON'T

CAUSE UNNECESSARY HARM

Looking back at the Patagonia example. Both brand and customer

agree to produce/make things that don’t cause unnecessary harm.
This provides a platform for campaigns and communications.

This isn't revolutionary. It's customer-first marketing.

Brand as belief 15
Chipotle: putting the customer first.

Chipotle has been reimagining its brand and how it engages with a new
generation of customers.5 It developed a common purpose that was
unique in its market: fast food can be sourced responsibly.

This common purpose answers the needs of Chipotle’s audience

and is communicated through actions and content that are true to
their lifestyle.

These include its Back to the Start and Scarecrow campaigns, which
questioned industrial food production methods; its Cultivating Thought
author series, curated by Jonathan Safran Foer and featuring the work
of Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell and Sarah Silverman; and its free
Cultivate Festival, which takes place across a number of cities in the US
and focusses on food, ideas and music.

In Q3 2014, Chipotle’s revenue increased 31.1% to $1.08 billion,

compared to Q3 2013.6

The way the brand communicates is grounded in an understanding

of what its customers believe and how they consume media. In the
old advertising days, planners would call this an insight. A common
purpose is an insight on steroids, because of the volume and
granularity of data we have access to.

Common purpose builds a bridge between what customers are

interested in and what your brand is good at. It gives your business a
strategic roadmap that no competitor can claim.

5
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottdavis/2014/06/06/beyond-the-burrito-chipotles-next-big-move/
6
http://ir.chipotle.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=194775&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1979465

Brand as belief 16
 I WANT GOOD COMMON WE BELIEVE IN
FAST FOOD PURPOSE FAST FOOD WITH
INTEGRITY

FAST FOOD DOESN'T HAVE TO BE BAD

Brand as belief 17
4 Resilient Brands:
A framework for brand building in the digital age.

Brand as Strategy.
The second element of a resilient brand is ‘brand as strategy’.

In a hyper-connected world, brands can’t rely on being proxies

for quality.7 Customers are always a click away from online reviews
or comparison sites that scrutinise a brand’s ability to deliver on
its promise.

In The Strategist, Cynthia Montgomery defines effective strategy

as a ‘system of advantage’. She argues that the advantage cannot
be realised unless there is clarity and purpose at the core.

She uses Gucci as an example. The brand was able to re-establish

itself in the market and challenge its competitors after enduring
a challenging period when it lost touch with its values and its audience’s
needs. 8

Gucci started by understanding what people thought of the brand.

Based on this data, it reconstructed the business’ design process,
production, supply chain, marketing and retail. In 2013 Gucci took
the lead on mobile sales for a luxury brand.9

Resilient brands drive business strategy.

Netflix: using brand as a tool for change.

Netflix has been through constant transformation since its

inception. Understanding customer need has been part of Netflix’s
business model since the days of DVDs by mail. Its recently released
Netflix Long Term View highlights how people no longer enjoy the linear
TV experience - something the company is primed to exploit.10
As such, Netflix has made its product distinctive by creating a
customer-first business.

7
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/twilight-brands
8
http://cynthiamontgomery.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FT-Review.pdf
9
http://www.warc.com/News/Default.aspx?ID=31118
10
http://ir.netflix.com/long-term-view.cfm

Brand
as strategy 19
 LINEAR
IMPRESSION-DRIVEN
COMPANY CENTRIC
MESSAGE
ON-OFF
Downstream ONE-TO-MANY
Actions
Pilots

COMMON PURPOSE

Upstream
Advocacy
Support
ITERATIVE
DATA-DRIVEN
USER CENTRIC
NARRATIVE
ALWAYS-ON
SOCIAL - MOBILE

The hourglass model: brand as strategy.

The challenge for marketers is to drive consideration of a brand’s

product and services, while maintaining a consistent experience
across all touchpoints.

The hourglass model helps to organise brand activity around

common purpose.

It is a framework to make decisions and respond to customers

and the market. The model provides a resilient framework that
enables a common purpose to inform all interactions across all
communication channels.

It also provides a framework for rebalancing the role paid media

plays in bringing the brand to life.

Brand as strategy 20
How does it work?

The top-down approach is the traditional world of advertising,

where messages are linear and delivered at scale and where brand
communications are delivered through campaign planning.

Top-down is on-off communication that focuses on messages about

the company and its products. It typically gathers little knowledge
about the customer. The main purpose is to create brand consideration.
The message is focused on benefits for potential buyers and is geared
to deliver against awareness and acquisition targets.

Bottom-up is an always-on approach that is connected and iterative.

It supports a narrative that builds over time, that feels fresh and
in-sync with what’s happening in the world. It supports dialogue with
the customer. It has personality and supports personalisation. The
goal isn’t always to push a product, but to build trust - to create a
meaningful relationship with both existing customers and those who
are considering the brand.

Bottom-up activities are geared to engagement, acquisition and

advocacy targets. It allows brands to try new initiatives and new
service development.

Ideally, the top and the bottom of the hourglass are in balance,
creating constant value around the common purpose for both
customers and the business.

Brand as strategy 21
Why does it work?

No brand can shift away from a campaign mindset overnight.

The effect of traditional campaigns is understood, comfortable and just
about measurable. However, it is unsustainable to carry on using digital
as just another messaging channel.

The hourglass model provides the balance between a traditional top-

down campaign mode and an always-on bottom-up activity stream.
The dynamic between the two creates value when the data and lessons
learned from bottom-up programmes feed into the top-down ones and
vice versa. An example of this is the recent campaign from Nike, where
the company turned its audience’s running data into 100,000 different
videos, dubbed Your Year.11

When this happens, the brand owns a unique platform in which

predictability is higher and benefits are more measurable. This
is a system of advantage organised around a common purpose.
This is ‘brand as strategy’.

11
https://youryear.nikeapp.com/

Brand as strategy 22
5 Resilient Brands:
A framework for brand building in the digital age.

Brand as
experience.

“A great digital experience is

no longer a nice-to-have; it’s
a make-or-break point for
your business.”

Forrester Research 2014,

Top technology trends for 2014
and beyond12

12
https://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES104141
The term “customer experience” has become increasingly
commonplace. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty about what
customer experience actually is, and – crucially – how this emerging
discipline can produce positive value for a brand. Forrester Research
cuts through a lot of this uncertainty by defining customer experience
as simply:

“How customers perceive their interactions with your company.”13

A key characteristic of resilient brands is that they are obsessed with

how their brand is perceived by their customers because, to a great
extent, brand is perception. All brands would naturally wish their
customers to like them, to respect them, to have a good perception
of them – and of course to buy from them again and again – but is this
wishing enough to invest in true customer experience improvement
efforts?

A recent survey, conducted by Accent, found that customers that have

a positive experience with brands are:

• 80% more likely to make additional purchases

• 27% more likely to join a loyalty programme
• 79% more likely to tell family and friends
• 36% more likely to write online reviews
• 32% more likely to subscribe to email updates. 14

The key takeouts from the research is that in order to maximise return
on investment, organisations need to understand and engage with
customers across the entire lifecycle, not just pre-purchase.

13
http://blogs.forrester.com/harley_manning/10-11-23-customer_experience_defined
14
http://www.accentonline.com/wp-content/uploads/ACCENT-Beyond-the-Point-of-Purchase-Survey.pdf

Brand
as experience 24
 CONSIDER

ADVOCATE

BOND EVALUATE

ENJOY

BUY

How to create a positive branded experience.

The traditional way of viewing how customers make a purchase –

the so-called “purchase funnel” – is dead and gone. Resilient brands
embrace new ways of understanding their customers, and how their
customers engage with their businesses.

At Brilliant Noise, we have adopted McKinsey’s “Customer Decision

Journey” (CDJ) model to visualise customer-first brand experiences.
The CDJ details the different phases a customer goes through with
a brand, from consideration to buying, bonding and advocating.

There is a natural point in the customer decision journey model when

a customer decides whether or not they will use a brand’s products or
services again. The single factor that most influences this decision is
the quality of the interactions experienced by the customer. Forrester
research shows that good customer experience also correlates positively
to the most potent business metrics: willingness to consider another
purchase, likelihood of making a recommendation, and also likelihood to
switch to a competitor.15

15
https://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113421

Brand
as experience 25
Resilient brands know that a brand is a fragile thing and that it’s at risk from
the most empowered generation of customers ever known – customers who
have instant access to always-on instantaneous broadcast channels (e.g.
Twitter, Facebook) to make their true unfiltered feelings known when they
have a poor experience with a brand.

One disastrous example comes from Vodafone Australia. Vodafone

was a well respected global brand with a solid market share in Australia,
but in 2010 its mobile phone network became unreliable. Customers
experienced dropped calls and outages for hours, sometimes even
days at a time. Out of nowhere, a website and Twitter hashtag appeared:
#vodafail. And then a class action lawsuit from customers whose
complaints were largely ignored by Vodafone. Customers fled Vodafone
in their hundreds of thousands. And Vodafone Australia has still not fully
recovered - five years on, #vodafail is still alive and well – and still racking
up very public complaints.16

Heeding instructive stories like this, resilient brands move beyond

brand image management to “customer experience management.”
They identify brand interactions at the customer level and convert these
into a series of branded moments. They focus on creating experiences
that build both short-term connections and long-term relationships. They
understand that every customer interaction will either reinforce
the brand image, or risk damaging it.

One such resilient brand is First Direct, the UK’s “most recommended
bank”,17 winner of the “Which? Best banking brand 2014”, and number one in
Nunwood’s Customer Experience Excellence League.18 No small feat.

16
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/19/vodafone_au_network_stalked_by_new_vodafail/
17
Source - Charterhouse Research Customer contact survey
18
http://www.nunwood.com/the-customer-experience-excellence-centre/2014-uk-experience-
excellence-results/

Brand as experience 26
How do brand and customer experience connect for First Direct?
They are one and the same. First Direct’s brand proposition is a better
customer experience than you would find in high street banks – despite
having no physical branches.

In its television advertising, for example, we meet a talking lizard

character chasing a pizza delivery guy down the street for delivering
the wrong kind of pizza. “I flipping hate bad service!” he yells.

No mention of interest rates, or financial products, or special offers.

The message is: if you want a good experience, do business with us.
This is emphasised on its website, where it says: “We offer you all
the usual banking services, like a current account, savings, cards,
mortgages, loans and insurance, but where we're different is the way
we offer them. We listen, we have a conversation and we recognise that
it's your money, not ours.”

In another example, ASOS identified the need for style advice to drive
the purchase of fashion products. It sounds obvious, but not easy for
an online retailer to offer. ASOS was able to leverage the opportunity
via a new Google product called Helpouts.19 It allowed customers to join
video chat sessions with ASOS stylists to get free style advice.20
During the launch campaign, there was a 243% increase in traffic to
ASOS.com and 84% of Helpouts attendees were new customers.21

Shoshana Zuboff, in her book Creating Value in the Age of Distributed

Capitalism, writes:

“The old logic of wealth creation worked from the perspective of the
organisation and its requirements. The new logic starts with the
individual end user. Instead of ‘What do we have and how can we sell it
to you?’ good business practices start by asking ‘Who are you?’ ‘What
do you need?’ and ‘How can we help?’ This inverted thinking makes
it possible to identify the assets that represent real value for each
individual. Cash flow and profitability are derived from those assets.”  

This is the essence of brand image and customer experience being

absolutely inseparable. And, judging from First Direct and ASOS’s
numerous accolades, a very powerful combination indeed.

19
https://helpouts.google.com/103410992963919123763/ls/b4b8db03a7e7bc3a
20
http://www.asos.com/discover/personal-stylist
21
http://www.slideshare.net/lovieawards/lovie-white-paper-2014

Brand as experience 27
How does it work?

In a connected world – or what Forrester has dubbed the “Age of the

Customer”22 – a brand is judged on its actions and the experiences
it provides. In order for your brand to become resilient and customer
obsessed, you need to think about brand interactions at a granular
level - as a sum of many experiences, starting with customers and their
needs.

How can you translate traditional brand assets into a brand experience?
One approach is to extrapolate values into distinctive aspects of
the experience. By matching brand manifestations and customer
expectations, you can create value for both sides throughout the
decision journey.

Building brand through customer experience is not exclusive to the

marketing function. It also requires commitment from the leadership
team to support the necessary cultural shift throughout the business.

It requires an expanded way of thinking that goes beyond single

channels or campaigns. Resilient brands need to start thinking in
terms of a larger “ecosystem”, in which they live and operate. Forrester
defines this “Customer Experience Ecosystem” as:

“The complex set of interdependent relationships among your

company’s employees, partners, and customers that determines
the quality of all customer interactions.”

Kerry Bodine, Principal Analyst Customer Experience,

Forrester Research.

22
https://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES103702

Brand as experience 28
 VALUE CREATED FOR THE CUSTOMER

CONSISTENT EXPERIENCE

EASE OF USE, FEELING OF ACHIEVEMENT

RELEVANCY (PERSONALISATION)

VALUE CREATED FOR THE BRAND

BUILD TRUST

STRONGER CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

MARKET DIFFERENTIATION

Why does it work?

Resilient brands don’t over invest in the consideration phase.

They are present throughout the customer journey. Moving away
from brand messaging and starting to use the brand as a customer
experience design tool can be daunting. When achieved, it creates high
levels of consumer engagement. The business can ultimately deliver
growth through customer loyalty and advocacy - essential
for success in the digital age.

Brand as experience 29
6 Resilient Brands:
A framework for brand building in the digital age.

Conclusion.
Managing brand identity is not enough to create and maintain a great
brand. A resilient brand.

If you were to assess your brand health tomorrow, many branding

consultancies would provide you with a report that looks at the
messaging and consistency. How does the brand look in different
platforms? Is the identity consistent? Are the messages and the
narrative coherent and differentiated?

This branding method asks “Are we saying the right things?”, when a
better question is “Are we doing the right things?”

Every customer touchpoint matters. Every interaction is an opportunity

to create a branded moment.

Successful leaders create resilient brands. Brands that share

a common purpose with their customers, that build a system of
advantage, and deliver a consistently outstanding experience.

Where are you in your market?

Are you an incumbent or a disruptor?
Do you share a common purpose with your customers?
Is your brand a tool for transformation?
Does it provide a system of advantage?
Is the brand experience good enough?
It’s time to build your resilient brand.

Conclusion 30
Brilliant Noise:
fast change,
lasting impact.
The digital revolution changes everything. It’s the force driving shifts
in markets, customers and organisations. To survive and thrive,
businesses face a dual challenge: staying ahead of the competition
while transforming their own organisation.

We’re a digital strategy agency. We create fast change with lasting

impact in four critical, connected areas: experience, brand, content and
culture. We do this through strategy and a bias for action.

Improvement in any of these areas delivers fast, measurable benefits,

but we see the greatest impact when they’re aligned and working
together.

To find out how Brilliant Noise can help you see and make your future
get in touch:

[email protected]

Conclusion 31
www.brilliantnoise.com