Building Brands Intelligently in an Era of Artificial Intelligence
What is a brand? What does it take to build one? Who builds the brand – the marketing team, the product or service by virtue of its delivery of promise? Assuming one can be built is it possible for it to transform?
Questions that would make the best of marketers and gurus pause to reflect and collect their thoughts before they ventured an opinion.
Yes, you read that right! An opinion!! Likely a studied or considered one but opinion, nonetheless. Now, the author doesn’t claim to be an expert marketer either but sure is a passionate one. The very same passion that has brought the author to publish a post on ABVS after a long, very long time!
Most brands have a multi-layered existence that operates in a 3-dimensional space with the so-called 4th dimension being time. These layers tend to thicken over a period of existence during which every brand evolves, becoming more certain, contextual, and relevant.
Let’s understand the layers first.
- The innermost part (but naturally) is the Core of the brand. The core, as the word is defined in the dictionary, is the part that is central to the existence of the brand. The core of a brand is not unlike the calling that we humans oft struggle to find.
The questions that need answers are what am I about? What do I stand for?
The brand like all of us may well spend its lifetime trying to answer these questions. Also, much like us humans the brand also contends or grapples with these questions after having been in existence for a while. Very rarely, almost never is a brand born ready with answers to these questions. Greater understanding of this shall emerge when we look at the 3 dimensions of a brand’s existence.
- The next layer is the brand’s Essence. This is the layer that defines the playground for the brand or articulates the stage that the brand performs on.
The core and the essence of the brand often are to be articulated for and understood more by those who build it. The outcomes of doing so manifest in the layers that surround.
- The third layer is the one where the brand starts becoming more lifelike as its starts defining its own principles and standards of behaviour. Values give a window to and answer what drives or motivates a brand.
- Persona is the fourth layer of the brand. This is the layer that starts giving the brand a voice; answering the questions what do I say and how do I say it?
- Legacy is the outermost layer, the one that is all about the impact. What stays behind after you figured out your calling, performed on the stage, demonstrated what drives you and said what you wanted to the way you wanted say it.
Individually all the above are just words but collectively, they make an entity. One that is felt, seen, has a personality, stands for something and yes, gets talked about – a BRAND!
Before we move on to the dimensions of a brand’s existence it would be prudent to understand what we talked about with the help of an example.
The author mulled many different ones before settling upon BMW.
In sync with the times yours truly resorted to ChatGPT to “Describe BMW as a brand” (refer screenshot).
The answer that ChatGPT put forth is what this author shall use to build his theory of brand construct.
Sidenote: At this point, it makes sense to reiterate that the purpose of this article/post is to evoke/stimulate thought hence agreements and disagreements, mild or vehement are welcome. Please do leave your thoughts in the comments.
The CORE of brand BMW is “engineering”. When you start with an aircraft engine and then move to motorcycles and automobiles innovation is a given and therefore the ESSENCE of the brand. The VALUES of brand BMW are described by their “focus on driving performance”. BMWs ready association with “sophistication and cutting-edge technology” are indicative of its PERSONA. Finally, the brands “commitment to delivering a distinctive and exhilarating driving experience” is bound to be its LEGACY.
Overtly simple in retrospect? Not really, it has taken over a 100yrs of the brand being in existence for it to have the ability to be summarized so succinctly.
Which brings us to the dimensions of that hopefully, courtesy all that we have talked about explain themselves on their own.
Nonetheless, the 3-dimensional space that all brands operate in are as follows:
- Feeling
- Thinking and
- Social
Time speaks for itself as the 4th dimension.
Now the FEELING dimension is all about how a brand makes one feel. It is the tangible, experiential aspect of the brand. Continuing the BMW example. “Sheer driving pleasure”
The THINKING dimension delves into the evocative and subliminal aspects of the brand viz “innovative” and finally the SOCIAL dimension is projective and provocative – “sophistication/luxury/premium”.
All of which need TIME to build, consolidate and get entrenched into the psyche of the audience.
Summing up, a brand is so much more than a name that we choose.
A brand is the sum total of the experience that it delivers, the problems it helps solve, the job it gets done, the way it makes “me” feel, the way “you” see me, and the way the “world” shall remember the brand, you and me for having created and consumed it.
All of that, through its 5 layers and 3-dimensions!