Radical innovations in the value chain, are creating promises that sit above the specifics of a product or a solution. Brands are saying, we stand in this space, we stand for this promise, and we are constantly improving.
Branded business concepts that are brought to life through branded value chains, are increasingly the way business creates both perceived value to the customer and shareholder value.
To be a brand and not a commodity, products and solutions pass through activities in a chain, to allow the product to gain some value. Today, more than ever, brands are exploiting the value created at each stage in the value chain, to enrich the customer promise.
What’s more, discerning customers are learning to look across the value chain, and the supply chain, to form their own view of the brand’s values. Nike learned a painful lesson there with their outsourced factory arrangements, and now Apple is feeling the heat with their duty of care towards workers in Chinese factories.
Take a look into the top 100 brands in the world, and their drivers of growth, and you will see many examples at how brands are promoting, a branded value chain.
I am busting to talk about Zara again, about how their fast clothes concept in shop windows, with no advertising, is a perfect example of a value chain concept becoming the face of the organisation, but I will leave it there. I will also bite my tongue on the fair trade coffee and the organic food examples and their staggering levels of growth because I have covered this in earlier posts.
Instead I will talk about the PlantBottle, an innovation of the Coca Cola Company, which is made 30% from plant materials and reduces the impact on the environment by over 12%. Jump on the Coca-Cola web site and you can track the bottle from its “origins to its future”.
Heinz liked PlantBottle too! They not only ran with the PlantBottle for their sauces, but they promoted their branded value chain with a “talking bottle”, which spruiked different messages printed on the bottle to promote its social and environmental virtues. Dasani, a bottled water from Coca Cola leads with PlantBottle as a point of difference in television commercial.
The branded value chain concept is about how a brand gets to market, not just what gets to market. Customers are demanding transparency like never before, and those brands who provide it and show how the brand promise lives in every step of the value chain, are being rewarded with sales.
Louise Kelly
Managing Director
Hearts and Minds
http://www.heartsandminds.com.au
References
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/citizenship/plantbottle.html
Thought Leaders Circle 