Building a new brand? Here are the 6 things that every successful company and brand get it right.

Talking about successful brands is something heart-throbbing to us. It is a real manifestation and living proof that what we believe in ‘is’ right and it is materializing right before our own eyes.

Whether it is branding, design, technology or all together, it is something we are always thrilled to talk about.

As a universal law, mother nature always favor the best, nothing gets carried forward unless it is ‘The Finest’ with an order of magnitude.

We, at Dynamics are firm believers in this and we are constantly working with these 6 core principles are in mind, and here they are:

1- Successful brand has an extraordinary product

You have no business without a great product. Ask Phil Knight.

There is not even one single successful brand without a great product, service, offering, or content.

You could bring back Picaso to design your packaging, hire Kanye to promote it and blow your entire marketing budget to let the Kardashians talk about it.

It. Wont. Fly.

Without a great product you have no business.

At the age of 14 , Yvon Chouinard, began mountain climbing and soon the sport became his life. Yvon began selling pitons for $1.50 each to support himself.

In1970 and on a trip to Scotland, Yvon bought a Rugby T-shirt, that T-shirt changed his life. The T-shirt was made of thick fabric that withstand brute force of the rugby match, he knew hewas onto something. He began buying and selling similar garment wear with the same quality.

In 1973 Patagonia was born, a clothing company that produce high quality products with the sense of global responsibility. Chouinard was environmentally conscious and he believed that should be the base of his brand.

Patagonia’s mission statement is:

‘Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.’

Talking about a great brand, that’s a great brand with an extraordinary product.I personally own many Patagonia’s products and if I ever want to spend my bucks on buying a product, Patagonia would be my first option. A company that demonstrate amazing utility, quality, and sense of global responsibility.

2- Successful brand is relevant to its audience

According to statistics: ‘A whopping 90% of the data we have today has been generated in the last 2 years.’

Yeah, read that again.

That data includes your emails, phone calls, Facebook posts, your uncle’s picture when he was 20, grumpy cat meme, even your lattes receipts. So if that doesn’t say something about how crowded the room is, we are not sure what does.

Coming up with a new product to the market is not that hard, it is incredibly hard and we are not talking here about having another Shopify store for a new T-Shirt business or asking people to download a free e-book on how to deal with mid age crises.We are talking about real genuine and life changing inventions.

Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Nike, lead the creation of new running sneakers which later called ‘ Nike Cortez’. Bowerman knew what it takes to have a great running sneakers, he was a runner himself. Bowerman was obsessed with trimming every last bit and piece of the shoe sole to the last milliliter to reduce the drag on the athletes energy. He knew exactly his target audience and what that audience wants: ‘Light weight shoes’ and Nike Cortez were flying off the shelves.

In this crowded day and age, knowing how & who are you talking too is critical. Defining your market is the only way to make relevant product that sells.

3- Successful brand is a game changer

In2009, Travis Kalanick, a computer science engineer along with his pal Garrett Camp were dwelling on spending $800 for a private driver and exploring ideas on how to decrease the cost of limousine service and make it more affordable. That year they released their first prototype which morphed later on into Uber.

The idea of Uber is very simple.‘Decentralized Transportation System’, regulated by one authority‘Uber’ and ran by everyone ‘The Human Population’. Uber now operates in almost every city around the world.But Uber got one fundamental thing right from the beginning: The Sharing Economy Resurrection.

Uber was built to share your personal car with other. You got a car, you can start driving people and make money.

Uber business model is universal and was the gateway and foundation to many other startups such as AirBnB, Lyft, to name a few.

If your brand:
1- Solve a real problem
2- Sustainable
3- Universal

Congrats, you’re on to something big.

4- Successful brand adapt to change and promote it

In my previous article, I have discussed how important is to act and adapt fast and how numerous companies failed to do so and faced a tragic fate.

Like it or not. Change is the only constant thing. It happens every second to everything.

Between1926 — 1932, and while the Alcohol prohibition act was about to go into effect, Adolph Coors, the founder of The Coors Brewing and Manufacturing Company started producing Malt Milk which is a Non-Alcoholic food additive that he started selling to Mars companyinstead of Alcohol drinks in order to deal with the market changes. Adolph Coors managed to survive the prohibition period relatively intact and hardly any loss as he later switched back to producing alcohol drinks.

When you have a long term strategy, nothing become of a surprise and everything becomes part of your plan. Even when you know things is about to fail, make sure you plan it well,it will make things less tragic.

5- Successful brand is consistent across the board

In his new book, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger ‘The ride of a life time’ talked about many things, one was about the process of acquiring Pixar, Marvel& Lucas Films and how complex and painstaking it was and he emphasized specifically on Consistency.

According to Iger, Disney targeted different audience and carried different tone of voice that the rest of new acquired companies. The challenge was how to bring all onboard without disrupting the life-time-die-hard-fans of all these companies which considered to be a cultural phenomena.

Imagine growing up with Darth Vader posters on your walls and suddenly have to change them to Mickey Mouse or the idea that the same studio that produces Iron Man is the exact same studio that animate Donald Duck.

Don’t get me wrong, there is absoulotly nothing wrong with Disney’s characters however when you build an entire fan base over decades you just can’t decide to change that overnight. Bob Iger decision was not to touch a thing, he kept everything as is, and it was a wise and strategic one.

Building your brand consistency across all forms whether aesthetically or contextually takes time and your audience will appreciate that. Delivering on your brand promise over and over make people favor your brand as they will know what expect no matter what and where your brand is.

6- Successful brand realizes the fine line

In a previous article, I shed the light on how challenging the coming decades will be. The amount of technological advancement we currently posses is astronomical and unfortunately that comes with great challenges.

Companies that appreciate this dilemma really invest heavily to to resolve this issue.

What if I told you that there are 35,000 people work, eat, play, and work under one roof in Suwon, in South Korea, the place called ‘Secret Lab Ideas’ and this is not another Manhattan project or such, it just a project belongs to Samsung.

People who work & “Play’ within that facility are responsible for one thing and one thing only which is to come up with ideas, test them,validate them and measure how could they impact peoples’ lives. From robots and codes to new materials and fabrics, all has one purpose of advancing Samsung technology ahead of its rivals one inch at a time.

Companies that appreciate that there will be very fine line between all products in the coming era do really invest in our present time in how to resolve this issue.

Future products will be just a hair different from each other. There will be tons and tons of technologies that are just the same but resolve life issues in different ways. Successful brands empower change and advancement and only brands are capable of that are destined to make difference and survive.

Photo by Uriel Soberanes

Dynamics is Dubai-based Brand strategy, design & innovation company with a mission to cut through the clutter and focus on what is relevant.