Brand Biology - Evolution by Customer Selection

90% of startups fail, 80% of product launches are not successful and 60% of the fortune 500 companies in the 1970’s do not exist today.

Your species (brands) are dying in an alarming rates.

In face of such grim truth brands and brand managers should seek survival tools. In this article I will cover two survival tactics and strategies of those who were able to survive the wild of the markets, those who were heard among the white noise and stand out from the crowd.

“If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough.”

― Mario Andretti

1- Survival of the fastest:

One of the reasons of extinction for brands is refusing to adapt or not adapting fast enough to new technology, even tho their markets and their customers has adapted to it.

The simple and most obvious example of that is websites adapting to mobile technology even tho:

• Google is now penalising websites that are non-mobile friendly.  

• Two-thirds of smartphone users say a mobile-friendly site makes them more likely to buy a company's product or service.
• 61% says that if they don't find what they're looking for (probably within about five seconds), they'll click away to another site.

We are still faced with the fact that 91% of small business’ websites are not optimized for mobile use.

Adapting fast to technological shifts is a key tool to a brand’s survival.

Borders didn't think they need to adapt to amazon fast. Blockbuster video didn't think that Netflix was a threat and that digital was a threat that needs to be  eliminated fast.

Borders closed all of its retail locations and sold off its customer loyalty list, comprising millions of names, to competitor Barnes & Noble for $13.9 million. Borders' locations have been purchased and re-purposed by other large retailers.

Saddled itself with over $1 billion in debt and was unable to make the transition to digital. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and has been replaced by Netflix and other digital services.

Fast adaption is a survival tool as customers don't select slow brands, they let them slowly perish in a non digital world for maybe a nostalgic to revive  them in a casual conversation.

“It’s easy to predict the future, just remove the fragile elements from the present”

Nssim Taleb

2- Survival of the Antifragile:

“Fragile” if you read this word written on a box that is delivered to you, normally other words that associate with this box are handle with care,easily broken or caution.

The Oxford dictionary defines fragile as ”easily broken or damaged”.

In his book “Antifragile” Nassim Taleb asks, what is the opposite of the word fragile?

What would be written on that box if the item inside is the opposite of fragile.

Words like strong, robust and solid doesn't really mean anti-fragile. Because a fragile object is very risk sensitive where those words describe more of a risk neutral case, where the pressure or risk doesn't really harm the items yet it definitely doesn't benefit it.

If there is an antifragile item in that box the words on that box could read as please mishandle, add pressure or the item inside gains from risk. In this case the objects actually benefit from risk and pressure.

Some brands were able to find a lifeline, a cure from fragileness and a process to becoming an antifragile brand. Introduce risk in fractions so your brand can survive, this process is called 70 - 20 - 10.

Where 70% of the Brands investment is in “Now”, or established and successful programs; 20% goes to “new,” or emerging trends that are starting to gain traction; and 10% goes to “next”.

This concept can be applied to any brand’s activities where 70% of the activities are safe, familiar and cash cows, 20% of the activities are for the stars, trendy and new and finally 10% is for the risky more dangerous activities. This process seeks sustainable growth and most importantly antifragility.

 

Customers tend to abandoned fragile brands and leave them to the memory of textbooks and academic studies of worst case scenarios.

These are two branding survival tools in this series of articles. We will be unlocking more branding ecology mysteries and other survival mechanism in the coming articles.

Who Cares about twitter anyways? (5 different ways to use twitter)

The first and most valid question you could have reading the headline of this articles is.

Who cares?

I mean, that in the most literal sense of the word, who cares about twitter? Who is using it and are your target audience using the platform?

Since that this is both vital and valid question we will first go through some data and numbers of who is using twitter and how is twitter being used?

Then we will go through the list of 5 different ways to use twitter (other than a micro blogging platform) to benefit your Dubai based business both in the MENA region and globally.

Let’s look at the numbers shall we..

In the most recent report http://bit.ly/2coDD4d the state of social media marketing 2016, Marketing profs published the following states about twitter:

  A-     Twitter came in the second place right behind Facebook as the social platform that marketers use in both B2B and B2C focused markets.

  B-      Twitter came third as the paid social media platform right after Facebook and Google ads (technically we can considered it second since Google ads is not a social media platform ) .

  C-      In terms of number of worldwide social network users Twitter came with a sizable number of audience of 320 million users.

(That was right behind Instagram aka Facebook’s gallery sidekick, which came with 400 million users).

Now you might be thinking this is only on a global level which is great for branding reasons like building an online reputation or brand online existence or even gaining global online traction and traffic yet how will that benefit a Dubai based business targeting the MENA region ?

Well let’s look at regional numbers shall we?

According to the Arab social media report published last year http://bit.ly/1Ux2M93  there are some interesting facts about twitter:

  A-     39% of the Arab users access twitter on a daily basis.

  B-      In terms of subscription KSA and UAE were the highest countries from the Arab region with (53% and 51% respectively) .

  C-      In terms of accessing Twitter through an app, the highest were UAE and Bahrain (45% and 40%, respectively).

There is a very important point that needs to be addressed here before we go further, these numbers and stats are not to stay drop everything and implement a radical paradigm shift to both your business and to your marketing plans toward twitter based campaigns, yet these facts show that twitter as a platform has both regional and global influence that needs to be addressed and added to your marketing tool kit.

And here are 5 different ways you can harvest the power of social media through twitter for your business.

  1-      Customer service tool.( monitor your own handle or handles)

        If you are wondering should I have an online presence or not?, or if you are       wondering should I interact with negative comments or not?

Your customers are not.

They are both online and active,

According to the Microsoft’s 2016 Global State of Customer Service Report 55% of consumers’ customer service interactions now begin online rather than on the phone or in person. This percentage jumps to 65% for consumers ages 18 – 34.

 That is why brands responsiveness on twitter has increased from 14hrs to 9hrs in 2014.

Some of the tactics that you can use to enhance the customer service side of your brand.

A-     Monitor your brand twitter handle and set up an alarm for quicker respond.

B-      Monitor your brands services and products as your customers might not be aware of your twitter handle , yet they might have experienced your products and services.

C-      If you have the funding  for it set up a situation room for your twitter accounts (https://www.quora.com/Which-companies-have-physical-social-media-listening-centers)

  2-      Competition monitoring.( adding competitors)

Some of the tactics that you can implement to monitor both your market and your competition are:

    B- Monitor Key words that relates to your industry in general.

    c- Monitor trends and new buzz campaigns even especially if it’s not yours.

  3-      Establish thought leadership in your field.

Facebook has mark zugerburg, Apple Had Steve jobs, Microsoft has Satya Nadella who do you have?

In other words who is the face behind your band and how is that face interacting with the public. Twitter can help humazing your brand and engage in creating your brand identify here is how:

A-     Set up an account for your brand ambassadors and your brands leadership team.

B-      Engage in twitter chats and twitter conversations.

C-      Link back to your Brands account from the bio of your ambassadors and your thought leaders account.

  4-      Social listening and Market analysis tool.

Twitter lists is an option that your brand can benefit from , lists gives your brand the option of social listening option to a specific need or your market potential needs and letting your target audience know that you are listening , monitoring and interacting. Here are a couple of lists that you can create:

A-     List of a market need either actual or potential.

B-      List of key words that relates to your market.

C-      List of other partner markets for example of you are in hospitality you might need to listen to (referrals programs- customer service complaints – tourism and destinations).

  5-      Creating a social buzz around a specific campaign.

The final and one of the strongest strengths of twitter is events, twitter feeds on that being a mico blogging website and the average lifetime of a tweet is about 18 minutes if you have an event for your brand you need to feed your tweet to the platform with the highest volume of tweets as you can here are some effective tactics that you can use to maximize your reach during an Event:

A-     Live video coverage during the event especially that now twitter allows longer videos .

B-      Create a hashtage dedicated to the event and drive traffic to it.

C-      Encourage conversations by having a showcase screens in the event with the live coverage of the conversations.

D-     Transfer the offline atmosphere and environment of your event online through creating a story telling narrative of the event duration.

Feel free to extend this conversation on twitter of course 

My handle is :@Fouad_khafaga