Our hyper competitive marketplace is both creating and destroying brand value at a greater pace than ever before. The spikes and troughs of shift in brand value of the world’s most valuable brands have never been so tumultuous and precipitous.
These shifts in brand values and market capitalisation have been tracked by Hearts and Minds since 2012 through our annual Consumer Trends publication, https://www.heartsandminds.com.au/brandtrax/Trends
Through this ongoing research we have established underlying trends driving the consumer trends;
• the trend of collaboration,
• the trend of ever evolving business models which are in effect a moving part within a customer’s preferred eco system,
• and a trend toward a values based, more conscious consumer.
Technology is simply enabling rather than driving these trends.
When we distill these trends down to the level of a ubiquitous human need, we find it is;
“more about the we than me.”
Any wonder that social media is our new global language. A language where we share our values through our social behaviour, in order to connect to others. Social media is part of our trend towards our more values based and increasingly conscious consumer.
The ‘we’ also refers to the change in how business creates value. Today business leaders value collaboration through partnerships over business models as a key driver of business success, specifically those partnerships that embrace the customer’s preferred ecosystems.
In the world of ‘we’, superior features and benefits are no longer enough, brands have to interface and synchronise within the customer’s world through their preferred ecosystem. Ecosystems are not just technologies that talk and think together, ecosystems include business partnerships based on symbiotic value propositions, and through a more conscious consumer, ecosystems of value, where the social good and environmental credentials of products are considered.
Good brand planning requires modelling of the customer’s ecosystems and an understanding of the interdependencies of its moving parts and its evolutionary path. It is time business leaders challenge their thinking and their brand identity and shift the perennial question of “who am I?” to “who are we?”
Louise Kelly
louise.kelly@heartsandminds.com.au
Founder Thought Leaders Circle
http://www.thoughtleaderscircle.com
self portrait
Founder Thought Leaders Forum and Hearts and Minds
Managing Director
Hearts and Minds
A creativity and brand consultancy
http://www.heartsandminds.com.au
Thought Leaders Circle 