Brand Biology (Define your species).

Brand Biology

“Brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.”

Marty Neumeier

Brand biology is a metaphorical term that I will be using during this series of articles, to refer to different types of elements, factors, cognitive phenomena, and components, that gives a brand life and help the brand survive in the different environment of the market.

Your brand biology is your customer’s categorization, your brand’s DNA is your audience perception, and your clients market is your future environment.  The target market defines your species and their thoughts shape your organisms.

There is more than one element to the idea of brand biology and customer categorization, in this article I will review two elements, the first is related to customer perception and the second is cognitive behavior.

Customer’s perception is manipulated and persuaded by factors like brand color, name, personal experience and campaigns.

In a paper that was published by California State Polytechnic University, titled the Effect of theForeign Brand on Consumer Perception.  The paper empirically examines the influence of brand names (foreign versus national) on consumer perception.

The results support the hypothesis that the national brand elicits more positive consumer perception than the foreign brands. In this study, consumer perception is operationalized by four constructs: attitude toward the brand, purchase intention, advertisement feeling, and attitude toward the advertisement.

This is important in terms of brand biology; just the awareness of your species as mentioned in this study affects your survival. In future articles we will look at your brand survival tactics, brand environment, brand biotic and abiotic.

The second element that affects the categorization of the brand is cognitive behavior, as humans we tend to create mental short cuts, especially in the age of the digital worlds the choices of any product or service could be overwhelming.

Within social psychology, cognitive miser is an umbrella theory of social cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attribution biases.

 The theory suggests that humans, valuing their mental processing resources, find different ways to save time and effort when negotiating the social world. The term cognitive miser was first introduced by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1984.

 We tend to crate mental short cuts to ease the process of digesting, transforming and exploring data of any kind. The brain activity of categorizing data lies at the heart of cognitive economy. We treat things as being of a kind so we don’t waste neural processing cycles in details that are irrelevant to the core o the process itself.

When we go to the beach we don’t remember every grain of sand, when we look at the forest we don’t name every tree that we see.

And there is a very good evolutionary reason or this, it’s to prevent our brains from getting overwhelmed with data, making sure we don’t have too many brain tabs open at the same time or too many labeled products on the same shelf because too many choices are paralyzing in most cases.

The process of categorizing data in three main ways

the first one is the Gross or partial appearance which means if they look the same they are the same.
The second form of categorizing is functionality; appearance in this case is not the major concern if it can be used for writing it belongs to the writing tools section and sometimes we might call it a pen.
 Finally the third way of categorizing is conceptual and a perfect example of that is the tool box “If it fixes things it’s in the box”

In order for your brand biology to be compatible in such a harsh environment, in order or your kind to survive, the brand must master the skills necessary to stand out among your species.

First Study the industry before entering the market, understand the audience reactions to the existing, past and future products and services in your industry.  That will provide some needed input and insight into the customer’s perception.

Second define your species if your brand is serving an appearance, a function or a specific concept. Make sure you highlight those features build your campaigns based on how unique and authentic your brand is.

The elements of brand biology are many. Customer’s perception and audience cognitive behavior are two essential components of determining the DNA of your brand biology. 

What are some psychological facts that people don't know?

We don't see with our eyes

There are a lot of interesting psychological and behavioral facts that most of us are unaware of,  like the fact that we tend to over estimate our abilities check out the tapping experiment "Tappers and Listeners" ... An Excerpt From One Of My Favorite Communications Books and a Story I Tell Clients Often - Rassak Experience.

or the fact that we tend  to confirm whatever beliefs we happen to have in a phenomena known as the confirmation bias check out http://bit.ly/21wk53b. In other words different people could be looking at the same scientific solid results and come up with a totally different conclusions in support of believes that already have.

Yet to answer your question the fact that we don't see with our eyes is for me a psychological trick that never gets old, one of the good reference on brain effects is a book titled Brain rules http://bit.ly/1YXtNWH, in the book one of the experiments that proves that we perceive with our minds instead of seeing with our eyes is the wine experiment.

"a group of brain researchers in Europe. They descended upon ground zero of the wine-tasting world, the University of Bordeaux, and asked: “What if we dropped odorless, tasteless red dye into white wines, then gave it to 54 wine-tasting professionals?” With only visual sense altered, how would the enologists now describe their wine? Would their delicate palates see through the ruse, or would their noses be fooled?

The answer is “their noses would be fooled.” When the wine tasters encountered the altered whites, every one of them employed the vocabulary of the reds. The visual inputs seemed to trump their other highly trained senses".

Here is a reference to the wine experiment We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains. Another interesting article on the same matter is this Eye/Brain Physiology and Why Humans Don't See Reality But a Translation of It

As a final thought i think a couple of years ago it was the age of the atom and nuclear power then it was the age of computers we now live in the age of the mind, the more we research about neuropsychology and cognitive behavior the more we will reveal the mysteries of the self and the universe that is the human mind.

we can talk more on
twitter : @fouad_khafaga

Cut to the core ( Creativity and innovation thought process)

Cut to the Core

“I am a perfectionist; I look at things from each and every angel possible”. If I had a million dollars for each time I hear this statement I would have been a billionaire.

The idea that we need a thought to be perfect in order to express it , or wait for a business model to be perfect in order to implement it, or wait for a musical riffs to be perfect in order to put it down into an album. That is, sometimes, a destructive idea.

Because waiting for the perfect time, perfect place, and perfect people to achieve a perfect goal never happens; it’s too perfect to be true.

It is never a perfect time to start a technological revolution; it is never a perfect situation to start your business. In truth, most of the time it is not even a good idea and you will face huge obstacles on your path and those who are strong enough, creative enough and consistent enough are the ones who cut through.

Here are a few examples for people who didn’t wait for the perfect moment:

•        The co-founder of John Paul Mitchell Systems and Patron Spirits was actually homeless twice in his life. The first time, DeJoria was 22 with a 2-year-old. The second time, he slept in his car for two weeks while starting the now $900 million-a-year haircare business. Today,

•        The investor, founder of Micro-Solutions and Broadcast.com and owner of the Dallas Mavericks is now worth $2.3 billion, but Cuban wasn't always wealthy. In his book How to Win In the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It, Cuban candidly reflects on all he had to do to make his billions. Before he started Micro-solutions, Cuban was fired from a PC company for not telling anyone he was going to lunch to try to close a deal. At the time, he was living with five other guys in a three-bedroom apartment and didn't even have a bed.

•        Before Walt Disney died in 1966, his studio had released 81 films resulted in winning 32 Academy Awards. Today, Walt Disney's company has a market cap of nearly $104 billion and 166,000 employees. But before all of this commercial success, Disney was struggling to survive. He was fired from the Kansas City Star in his early 20s because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas".

 It was never perfect for Lincoln, Tesla, Jobs or Honda for that matter (who would sell Japanese motors to American markets after World War 2?). However, these examples and many others ask one question in the mind of creative individuals; if we don’t wait for perfection in our action, our thoughts our plans what should we do?

The answer to the ultimate perfection question can be found in Silicon Valley. They have cracked the code for answering this question. The answer is a model they developed which is called MVP.

In product development, the minimum viable product (MVP) is the product with the highest return on investment versus risk. The term was coined and defined by Frank Robinson, and popularized by Steve Blank, and http://bit.ly/1JnzRVi . It may also involve carrying out market analysis beforehand.

 A minimum viable product has just those core features that allow the product to be deployed, and no more. The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible

Customers, such as early adopters that are thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information.

 It is a strategy targeted at avoiding building products that customers do not want, that seeks to maximize the information learned about the customer per dollar spent.

 "The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."

The definition's use of the words maximum and minimum means that it is decidedly not formulaic. It requires judgment to figure out, for any given context, what MVP makes sense.

An MVP is not a minimal product; it is a strategy and process directed towards making a product and selling it to customers.

 It is an iterative process of generating an idea, prototyping, presentation, data collection, analysis and learning. One seeks to minimize the total time spent on iteration. The process is iterated until a desirable product/market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed to be non-viable.

Steve Blank typically refers to minimum viable product as minimum feature set.

Purposes

•        Be able to test a product hypothesis with minimal resources

•        Accelerate learning

•        Reduce wasted engineering hours

•        Get the product to early customers as soon as possible

•        Base for other products

Guy Kawasaki the Silicon-Valley based author, speaker and entrepreneur had some improvement of his own to the model. He said to the startup grind interview that his view of the concepts adds two V’s to the mix.

MVVVP:

A- Minimal.

B- Viable: it is foreseeable that you will gain a profit that your revenue will exceed your coast

C-Valuable: that your changing the world, that you’re doing something significant.

D-Validation: it validates your vision in the future.

E- Product.

The concept of MVP or MVVVP is vital in boosting creativity especially to the “cut to the core” technique.

Cutting to the core technique is the act of revealing the core concept of a product or a service to enhance, modify or radically change the fundamental concept. A very clear example of cutting to the core technique is the green products and services.

 Starting from the packaging industry where the green cut to the core of grocery packaging and pushed for using paper instead of plastic.

Another great example for cutting to the core is the transformation of the automobile industry, Tesla motors provides a perfect illustration to the concept this is how they define the models on their website:

Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers in Silicon Valley who wanted to prove that electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.

 With instant torque, incredible power, and zero emissions, Tesla’s products would be cars without compromise. Each new generation would be increasingly affordable, helping the company work towards its mission: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport.

Tesla’s engineers first designed a powertrain for a sports car built around an AC induction motor, patented in 1888 by Nikola Tesla, the inventor who inspired the company’s name.

The resulting Tesla Roadster was launched in 2008. Accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and achieving a range of 245 miles per charge of its lithium ion battery, the Roadster set a new standard for electric mobility.

Tesla would sell more than 2,400 Roadsters, now on the road in more than 30 countries.

Notice that in the first line they cut to the core of the industry and provide their own model to revolutionize the industry, and who would cut to the core other than a group of engineers in Silicon Valley.

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Creative thought and the creative process of linking ideas.

Written by: Fouad Khafaga
Twitter: @fouad_khafaga

Linking

One of the interesting things of the human ability is that we are able to connect and link ideas that in their own nature not necessarily relate-able, for example the evil spirits and the dark those are two independent ideas that does not in their foundation share a common aspect, yet we were able to link those two ideas to create tales, music & movies.

In a lot of the horror movies they use the concept of the haunted houses which are just the host of the two ideas evil spirits and darkness. The concept of merging ideas in this way was able to produce many creative applications in business, entertainment and human development field.

Here is an example

When seen from a distant chess players can sit still in the same place for hours, this in the first sight does not seem like a physical activity and in fact it’s far off from being a sport. However when asked about chess player say it’s a sport and it’s a bloody sport.

Idea 1A : chess                                                                                 Ideas 1b : martial arts

creative link : the book samurai chess

the writer made a creative link between the martial arts techniques and common philosophies like the art of sacrifices and the how to weaken the enemy physically and mental and applied such techniques to a chess board which resulted in what became a very interesting read and some revolutionary concepts.



Note: we can also make the same link through the book art of war by writing a book titled the art of chess war for example.

Our brain contains 86 billion neurons every new connection between two new neurons makes us smarter; following the same concept making new connection between thoughts that might seem either irrelevant or unrelated creates a new channel of creativity.

Consider thinking of cars body and human skin, seems like 2 far apart ideas yet BMW doesn’t think so they did introduce a concept car called Gina the this is what they can to say about the design of Gina :


“The GINA Light Visionary Model has an almost seamless outer skin, a flexible textile cover that stretches across a movable substructure. Individual functions are only revealed if and when

They are needed. With this model, BMW Group Design initiates a fundamental discourse about the characteristics that will affect the development of cars in future. It is therefore fundamentally different from concept cars, which reflect what is expected of them by implementing as many elements as possible in a future production model. In contrast, the GINA Light Visionary Model is a vision of future cars and serves as an object of research.”

Not just skin its seamless skin. The concept is available online on the BMW web site for more details and information about the concept car.

Another field that uses the linking technique in a creative manner is Guerrilla Marketing the idea is to link urban Guerrilla war techniques in the Marketing world. Here is how the founding father of Guerrilla techniques Jay Conrad Levinson defines his art:

“I’m referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always — achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money”.

The original term was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book ‘Guerrilla Advertising’.
Guerrilla marketing is often ideal for small businesses that need to reach a large audience without investing a huge lump sum of money or if they simply have a tight budget on marketing and advertising. It also is used by big companies in grassroots campaigns to compliment on-going mass media campaigns. Individuals have also adopted this marketing style as a way to find a job or more work.

Now Guerrilla marketing and Guerrilla art can be seen all over the world creating high brand awareness and an amazing advertising impacts with low budget exactly like it was intended to be.

Comedians, writers & concept artists use the linking technique in their character creation process, they try to find two ideas that obviously doesn’t match and create a character around it, this provide them with a human cognitive paradox and depth of character.

 Like for example a military general who’s into cake baking and wedding decoration, a nun who owns a casino in Vegas or a doctor who is sick (HOUSE A.D.).

The linking technique is one of the most widely used creative techniques that can be observed in a Variety of fields.