While driving my almost teenage son to school the other morning, a song came on the radio that took me back to my school days – Snap’s ‘I’ve Got The Power’. In an instant, I was transported to the ‘90s. I immediately ‘pumped up the volume’ (another classic tune – if you know, then you know) and proceeded to ‘dad dance’ and sing along in the car.
Enthusiastically, I turned to my son expecting him to be doing the same, only to find him looking at me with an expression that can only be described as 50% confused and 50% disappointed. Shocked, I turned down the volume and proceeded to spend the next 5 minutes convincing him that this is a song you have to know and have in your playlist. However, the more I spoke, the less he was convinced.
Alone in the car, with a slightly bruised ego, I tried to unpack why I considered that song to be a timeless classic and my son didn’t. Then it clicked, it’s because of meaning and relevance. That song is meaningful to me and relevant but not to him.
We often have clients who come to us with brands in hyper-competitive categories who want to improve their brand consideration. Brand assessment research using the Brand Funnel gauges Awareness, Consideration, Usage, Favourite Brand scores, but mostly it’s the Consideration score that causes the Brand Pyramid to skinny rapidly.
This sparks discussions and even RFPs asking for new and stronger brand purpose statements, a fresh and impactful design, customer journeys that put customers at the center, or even employee brands that attract and retain the best talent. These are all important, but to build consideration, be it with customers or employees, the brand needs to be relevant.
We believe that after Awareness and before Consideration, there needs to be a score where Relevance is gauged. Supported with qualitative research that uncovers what the brand means to customers and employees. Trying to improve consideration without this can lead to lots of effort that has very little impact.
There are a number of strategies to improve brand relevance. All aim to answer a simple question, which is – why does the brand matter to people? Most of the time the answer isn’t that simple and that’s where we step in.
The point I’m making is when thinking about improving a brand’s power, we should use relevance as the lens – crafting a relevant purpose, creating relevant design and relevant customer experiences, and even relevant employee propositions.
As brand builders, brand relevance should be at the core of how we assess, position, design, and build brands.
Relevance is the ‘gummy berry’ juice (again if you know, you know) that brands need to focus on to be able to sing ‘I’ve got the power’.