Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Jelena Uzelac Vasić, Chief Brand Designer, New Startegy
Monday is an ideal time for evaluating thoughts, highlights and impressions that marked the previous week. Although it sounds like a description for a show concept titled “Impression of the Week”, the truth is somewhere around that. Settling impressions of the previous week for me often boils down to recalling the words that I heard more than 3 times during the last 7 days from more than one person …
In addition to words “holidays” and “connecting vacancy days”, which were definitely the most common last week, in the professional sphere the most resounding words were: innovation, transformation, growth, digitization, brand, idea, change, etc. Through these words my collocutors described the same need , the same pain, the same current comfort zone that the pressure and the environment are pushing into a new unknown zone. They talked about the same challenge with different words, and the thing they shared is that all of them experienced that challenge as a current state of things that requires immediate answer as the lasting solution to the challenges. And yet, the reality is just the opposite …
People and dialogues of the ecosystem
The turbulent and dynamic environment, changes, ideas, transformation, people, digitization, brands, small, medium, large … these are the terms and processes that constantly bombard us, and which make the business reality of every business owner or responsible representative of a business or a company. In a market that is constantly transforming and providing unique potentials, and sends universal dangers, the daily business question is: “How to provide continuous growth and how to create a strong market position and an even stronger brand?”
No matter what anyone tells you, there is no universally correct answer to this question, but one thing that I am convinced in is that the knowledge and innovative approach to all important aspects of business are that which represents the only safe way for improving the company, for creating value for all the members in the company ecosystem, and for the growth of brands.
The reality is that all the big changes in the previous decades have brought us to the position that we cannot and must not avoid the significance and the place of the term “brand” within a company. More than ever, the brand as a process and a person, not as a phenomenon or a field, is the responsibility of all people and figures who make up the company. More than ever, a company doesn’t represent the legal form of a registered name, but a person, whose personality and characteristics are created by all the people who make up the company. And that brand is, above all, just one element in the ecosystem in which it operates and lives, and in it it is an equal partner with all the other participants.
And there are many members in the ecosystem… far more than the “king – consumer” of yesterday. Dialogues with employees, various internal sectors, investors, distributors, suppliers, media, competitors etc. all have an equal influence on brand of a company, and it is equally important what kind of first, second and every subsequent impression you leave on them, and what kind of dialogues you have with them. In an ecosystem, as the complex unity of living beings and the space they live in, there is a common purpose and value that connects all the participants, and a great degree of their diversity, which make an ecosystem more prosperous. There is no rivalry among participants or anyone who controls content and topics of dialogue – there is only common creation of value and and equal participation in conversations. The opportunities for dialogue, ie the touchpoints between a brand and participants, are more numerous than ever, and brand has never had less control over them, or ability to predict them. Make your brand prepared for these many and uncertain encounters, by being always true to yourself, and by standing out with what is most difficult to copy – with your personality.
Constant circling of values in the ecosystem
And let us go back to the fundamental challenge of companies and the biggest impression of the last week – how to innovate, how to transform, how to grow themselves and their brand? By timely changing the way they look at their business and its breadth, to understand the ecosystem in which they work – who makes it, how everyone in it is connected and who talks to whom and how in it, and by rephrasing your greatest challenge – you don’t have a one-time task and mission, and you’re not looking for a one-time solution for it. Innovating and growing a brand is a continuous process that happens in a circular ecosystem in which value is constantly circulating.
The owner of this process is neither a company nor a sector for innovation, product development or marketing, but all the people who make the company and who create the company mindset. For true results, growth and differentiation of the company at all levels, it is necessary to think in the same way, to be led by the same purpose, which allows everyone to see a wider picture and find the best focus. And the best focus is the one that allows a company and its brand to grow, to remain recognizable in that growth with unique character and purpose, that every employee wants to work for the brand, that every investor wants to invest in it, that every media reports about it, and that every consumer genuinely recommends the company’s products to others. And the brand can achieve that by conveying its unique experience, happiness and love. That’s what an exemplary and successful business of the 21st century shout look like.
Brand – a person with the power to change the world
At the end of the day, what do these challenges and most common phrases of last week bring to marketing and a brand? They don’t bring either a turnaround or transformation, but the natural “return” of these business disciplines to their basic principles. More than ever, marketing has the power and the jurisdiction to deal with all its fields, with all the “capital Ps”, no matter how many of them exist in current theory.
Change and excellence can come from anywhere, and marketing experts more than ever, have to understand the breadth of all these P’s and must define a narrow focus from every area, which represents a chance and opportunity for the company to be excellent.
And what about the brand? The brand remains what it has always been. One of the most important business assets. It’s all the emotions, adrenaline and inspiration that the interlocutors feel in touch with your brand. And it is the unique reason why they always come back to talk just to you, whenever they have the need to talk about a particular topic. And there are many collocutors, there are many brand touchpoints, and there are even more topics. Each of these human dialogues can be a source of growth and sustainability of a brand, in a world in which change is the new word for existing.
That is why nurturing dialogues with participants in your own ecosystem is the primary task for all the brands who wish to offer more, better and change the world in which they exist. I firmly believe there are such brands, and that brands can really do this, because they are ubiquitous and in touch with people’s lives every day, countless times in the day.
Welcome to the new week, the last before holidays, and just one in a line of those in which a new business & world challenging brand is being created.
