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independence4 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

12 claims · 6 articles · 4 receipts

window

2013-12-07 → 2022-12-14

4 builders who never spoke to each other

Put a character at the front of the brand

Buyers bond with a person or an invented character far more readily than with a company, so give the brand a face and a set of traits it plays consistently. The founder can be that face early, but the character has to be defined well enough that it survives the founder stepping back, and renting a celebrity's reputation is not the same as building one.

The method

  1. 01

    Treat your brand as a fictional character rather than as a logo or a style guide.

  2. 02

    Do not stop at a logo: invent a character to front the brand, because buyers cannot bond with a company or a product but they will bond with a character.

  3. 03

    Differentiate by putting a person at the centre of the product, which nobody can replicate.

  4. 04

    A brand has to outgrow its founder to scale, but do not let it become faceless in the process.

  5. 05

    Do not hire a celebrity to borrow a brand you have not built, and do not swing to being too cool either.

What it returned

  • 41%

    The Moving Picture Company measured a 41% increase in brand connection where a mascot was used, and sustained use is associated with profits up 34.1%. Bourgoin also notes 28 of the 32 NFL teams field one.

  • Deiss gave Forrest Gump as the character DigitalMarketer plays, and contrasted Apple against Dell and Marvel against DC as pairs separated by character rather than features.

  • Kanye's shoes, Nigella's cookbook, Joe Wicks's workout

  • Deiss named guru posturing of the Tony Robbins kind and overblown cool as the two failure modes companies fall into.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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