What Is The Route To Long-Term Brand Strength And Resilience?

Brands are scrambling in order to get the attention of increasingly discerning – as well as hyper-aware -consumers. How have some brands got it right to remain resilient in the face of uncertainty? What do resilient brands do right, giving them the opportunity to not only stand their ground in tough times, but to come out stronger?

Clarity is what finally drives resilient brands’ positioning, builds their equity and also gets customers converting faster. Clarity is the basis for building a resilient brand and is the only way in order to get to a specific answer. Strong and resilient brands share common traits.

When you consider what it is which enables them to recover quicker, endure better as well as drive growth, you can’t help but land on this truth: they are clearer than their competitors. The power of clarity can never be overestimated.

In the pursuit of a precise positioning for any brand, clarity starts with one question: how do we get to the only possible words for your brand? These are the words that feel right for the business, the category, the market and the target audience.

Short-Term Imperatives For Brand Strength And Resilience

Brands did not automatically recover after the financial crisis. In addition, they will not recover automatically from this crisis. Understandably, in a period of uncertainty as well as financial pressure, it is tempting to cut back on advertising and marketing investment – at least in the short term. However, cutting back is extremely counter-productive.

The need to feel comfortable – as well as certain – about the market prior to investing is normal. However, today is not normal. Delaying the decision to invest will not add comfort or certainty, but it will jeopardise effectiveness. It is necessary for brands need to come to mind easily and be easily accessible. Vanishing from the marketplace to gain a short-term financial benefit will make it more difficult and expensive in order to rebuild brand presence.

Resilient Brands Proactively Build for Market Stress

During a time of amplified market stress, there is a lot more which demands your attention with less time for due diligence or cautious reflection. It can be sufficiently challenging to keep day-to-day operations running smoothly, let alone focusing on bigger strategic business factors or brand strategy issues.

However, a strong baseline which is already well embedded into the business operationally and strategically makes a big difference. It’s frequently the decider between barely surviving or actually thriving.

In addition, customers may be very preoccupied with amplified anxiety at such times resulting in more limited attention spans. As a consequence, the time to work on your brand strategy so you purposefully build for market stress is quite long before hostile market conditions improve.

A strong, consistent brand strategy assist your business in order to navigate resiliently through market stress. Brand strategy offers clarity both in terms of commercial decisions that is aligned to the business strategy and direction for your brand.

It also enables an easier decision tree for customers, increasing your brand’s strength during adversity. In fact, brands that ‘engineer themselves’ for market stress proactively build stronger competitive advantage. This enables these businesses to leave their competitors way behind when things get tougher.

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