Brand is the embodiment of a company's vision, mission and values, which can be vividly described as the company's DNA and even the company's soul. How to manage a brand, constantly improve the brand influence and constantly stimulate the purchasing power of users is the ultimate goal of brand operation management.

The values contained in the brand directly affect customers' attention. It is extremely difficult to implant brand value into users' ideas. Only by improving users' sense of identity can users be willing to pay for products under the brand.

How to establish a good relationship between brands and customers, and what is branding? How to improve the brand's influence and position among customers, so as to detonate the purchasing power of customers?

This book, Brand Thinking: Fifteen Brand Logics that Burst Users' Purchasing Power, approaches the author and analyzes the secrets of the successful operation of fifteen brands such as Apple, Starbucks and IKEA. By analyzing how these brand predators focus on user experience, build related brands, increase customer viscosity with brand value, and surprise throughout the whole process of brand establishment and maintenance, the author also provides some feasible measures and methods in this process, which is worth enlightening.

Brand Thinking: Fifteen Kinds of Brand Logic Explodes Users' Purchasing Power is one of the representative works of brand expert Thomas Gard. It analyzes the changes in the current brand business environment, and points out that the Internet makes people more widely contacted. Everyone is no longer an isolated individual, so we must attach importance to interpersonal factors and apply them to business innovation. From the commercial practice, the author also analyzes the successful operation experience of more than ten domestic companies such as Apple and even Alibaba, and then draws the conclusion that the core of detonating customers' sustainable purchasing power is the positive surprise of the brand, which has irresistible temptation to customers, so as to purchase the experience in person.

Let's follow the footsteps of Thomas Gard, the brand master, understand the branding of customer experience and learn the practical knowledge and experience of brand operation.

Customer demand and actual experience are the core that a brand must pay attention to, and also the value of products under the brand.

To meet customers' endless needs and give them a good brand experience, we must constantly create personalized surprises and attract customers' continuous attention to the brand.

Apple founder Steve Jobs said:

When the first generation of Apple notebook was turned off, the indicator light flashed like a pulse, which made countless fruit powders have different experiences. This is a personalized surprise.

Building relationships between brands and customers is similar to building friendships. Innovating and creating personalized surprises is a good way to maintain a good relationship between friends.

In fact, the great success of some brands is often unexpected, or unexpectedly creates surprises for customers.

For example, Viagra was originally developed to treat hypertension and angina pectoris, and it was later found to have a miraculous effect on overcoming male sexual dysfunction. The original intention of Coca-Cola brand was as a substitute for morphine, which was used to treat headaches and relieve anxiety, and later became a popular drink all over the world.

So, how to continue to create surprises and let consumers have different experiences?

The author created a four-dimensional brand concept. That is, in addition to paying attention to the functional dimension of the brand, we should also pay attention to the social dimension, psychological dimension and spiritual dimension of the brand.

The social dimension is to consider which groups the brand mainly covers in society and which consumers are more attracted to use.

Psychological dimension, in short, is brand personalization. Although for each brand, the official will always interpret the meaning of the brand, but the reality is that everyone's understanding and interpretation of the brand is different, and there is obvious personalization of personal attributes.

The spiritual dimension involves the influence of the brand on the whole society, that is, we often say that entrepreneurs have a sense of responsibility and social responsibility.

Starting from these four dimensions, we can finally surprise customers from different aspects, improve brand awareness and attract customers to pay for the brand.

As I said just now, a brand establishes a certain relationship with its customers, which is similar to establishing friendship between people. This process is branding. Branding is more a tactic than a strategy. It needs to always take customers as the center and customer experience as the fundamental starting point, actively carry out innovative research and development, and constantly introduce products favored by customers.

The origin of brand concept can be traced back to ancient Egypt. At first, in order to distinguish the ownership of cattle, people branded different marks on cattle with soldering irons.

Therefore, the original meaning of brand is to guard against thieves. Now brand has a richer meaning and has become a synthesis of commodity value, politics and humanity, which is not only reflected in products, but also in the relationship between people, producers and consumers, and customers.

Author Thomas pointedly pointed out that

On the one hand, the brand can let the target know clearly what the founder wants. For example, the pirate's skull and the sign of the cruciform clearly show the fate of the crew if they don't surrender. Later, it was said that pirates were more interested in the cargo on board, and the crew often surrendered early.

On the other hand, brands can help products enter the market skillfully. In fact, many companies have made great efforts in marketing in order to promote their own brands, but if they can't effectively grasp the thinking, cognition and psychology of customers, they will produce a lot of waste, which will improve the efficiency of production, logistics and new product listing.

In the book, the author gives two suggestions to manage customers' thinking cognition.

The first is to start with high-level goals. It is the purpose that the brand wants to achieve, or the values advocated by the brand, which is more spiritual. Make use of the early warning and weak signal of customers or customers to carry out continuous innovation and continuous creation.

The second is to contact the known things. Our brains ask two questions before making a decision. Have I seen it before? Is this experience good or bad? Using this feature, we can connect the brand with the existing and known things in the initial stage, and get the attention of customers quickly.

Then it leads to another concept, associated brand.

Friendship is the key to understanding related brands. For example, a friend's birthday or wedding, if you don't give a gift, you will be in trouble and affect your friendship. If you treat your customers like friends, you will make them love the brand more deeply.

Associated brands also emphasize building relationships with customers, finding out the meaningful side of products and letting customers experience it personally, which is the role that associated brands should play. To do this, a more effective way is to tell stories, that is, the story of the product brand or the story of the founder's personal brand. Although the story may be different, it is similar that the founder's enthusiasm for the brand and the company can be passed on to customers, and customers can gain the greatest trust.

In the current business environment, product development is no longer the traditional paradigm of "imagining customers' needs, companies developing products and attracting customers to buy", but really figuring out users' needs and enthusiasm. In this regard, we need to go further. The product is useful to this kind of users in a specific environment. Do customers in other environments also need such products? Can we develop targeted products according to the needs of related users in other environments?

This is environmental innovation.

In addition, we should abandon the outdated concept of branding, that is, brand is to package and sell products and try our best to push them to customers. Branding and brand itself should be regarded as the core of company innovation, that is, to truly understand the actual needs of potential users and customers and develop targeted products. When the company sells one thing well, other problems will be solved.

This is somewhat similar to a successful online shop, which often has a main explosion. The popularity of one product will drive the sales of other products in the store and form a benign environment.

To innovate the brand environment, we must first find out the differences of different user environments, find out the real thoughts of users in this special environment, and then design products or services in a targeted manner.

The success of GoPro is a good example of environmental innovation.

Nick woodman, the founder of GoPro, likes surfing. At first, he just wanted to make a wrist strap to fix the camera. When he went to the field test, he thought, why not make a camera with a cover and a belt? In this way, a camera brand GoPro with a market value of billions of dollars was born.

Environmental innovation should also attach importance to customers' sense of participation, let them really participate and listen to their opinions patiently.

When a customer is furious with you and complains, it shows that he still likes the brand and wants to improve it and make it more perfect. If the customer is quiet and turns around silently, this is what he should be afraid of, and he should respond as soon as possible and deal with it in time.

In real life, there have been many such cases. Originally, a small complaint was not resolved in time, and finally it fermented into a big event, which had a great impact on the brand. Some time ago, Xi 'an's Mercedes-Benz rights protection incident was like this.

The author also points out another concept in the book, brand password, which is the core of the brand. It is a statement of the content represented by the company or its products, telling the relevant stories of the company, covering the company's business philosophy, positioning, vision, mission and values.

Brand code can be divided into six parts, in which product/revenue, positioning and style are the attributes of the brand in the market, and mission/significance, vision and values are the brand's vision for the future.

These six elements are the key to the brand's survival in the market, and also an important reference to measure the brand value. For brand operation, we can refer to these six elements and refine management one by one to make the brand more mature.

Brand passwords are also a powerful weapon to help find blank markets, and sometimes even create markets. This is the case with inline skating. Basle Brad first discovered the market gap of inline skating, which was not favored by people around him, but warned that it was a great adventure. However, any blank market needs to bear risks. Before the market is formed, you need to create your own brand and become synonymous with this risk. Until a certain market is formed, it will be successful and a brand new brand will be formed.

Different customers have different experiences of a brand, that is, perceived differences. However, surprise, happiness, trust and respect are undoubtedly the cornerstones of customer experience. To improve the customer experience, brands need to continuously provide customers with unexpected things and continuous positive tips.

Only by constantly creating surprises according to customers' experience and letting customers experience branding can we continuously promote brand development. From this perspective, customer experience is also an important reference to measure the success of a brand.

Apple and Nokia are good examples. Nokia lost its dominant position in mobile phones because it couldn't continue to surprise customers. Apple went to the bottom because it couldn't make any new innovations to make customers shine after the death of founder Steve Jobs, but it changed its downturn with innovation.

In brand operation, highlighting customer experience is basically the operational focus of major brands, but the specific operational strategies have their own characteristics. Here, the author puts forward a brand-new operation strategy-brand experience script, which, like script creation, brings continuous surprises to customer experience.

Brand experience script is to present various elements such as brand positioning, value and vision in the form of script, so that customers can have a deeper understanding of the brand. In the past, traditional marketing mainly relied on mechanization to attract customers face to face or through advertisements. In the new media era, this model has undergone tremendous changes, and it is necessary to prepare content and drama elements that match the new media.

How to write a script?

The brand script mentioned here is more like the script of a movie or TV series, following the classic three-act structure.

The first act explains the current form and begins to advance to the first turning point. Mainly to pave the way for brand introduction. Can introduce brand positioning, style and values. The goal of brand development, human mission and significance.

The second act is to show actions and conflicts and throw questions. Let confrontation, confrontation and contradiction accelerate the interpretation of brand characteristics and advantages. Through how to overcome obstacles to achieve the goal, further explore the value and significance of the brand, tell the story of the brand formation process, narrow the distance with consumers and deepen customers' impression of the brand.

The third act, that is, the ending, is often to solve the problem, pave the way or end.

The whole process makes the brand operation look like a wonderful movie or series, which attracts the audience to watch the constant surprises in the plot.

In recent years, on many occasions, the author Thomas Gard will be asked the same question by readers, that is, to summarize branding in one word. His answer is surprise, and it is a positive surprise. He thinks that customer experience and branding are essentially the same.

The book Brand Thinking: Fifteen Brand Logics to Detonate Users' Purchasing Power tells us that a brand is the soul of a company and the meaning and symbol of product existence. Brand building must focus on customers, take customer experience as the fundamental starting point and end result, constantly create surprises, improve customers' sense of identity with the brand, and be willing to pay for the brand.

Finally, briefly summarize the contents of the book.

First, we should attach importance to the branding of customer experience and take customer surprise as the standard to measure product success. Consumers not only attach importance to the function of the brand, but also the social, psychological or spiritual influence of the products under the brand is very important in the process of branding. In addition, it is worth noting that it is necessary to eliminate the negative impact on the brand in time to prevent small events from fermenting into big events and causing irreparable losses.

Second, the company should pay attention to brand building in the initial stage. People's cognition of the brand is the key to the success of the company. Therefore, before establishing business, we should attach importance to brand. Brand is a tactic, not a strategy. At present, the Internet and digital communication have profoundly changed the operating rules of the world. We must respond to this change in time and realize that brands are far more than just products or services. It is also inextricably linked with other aspects of people's lives. For example, the sustainability of products, humanism, and the impact on improving the quality of life. This is also the value and connotation of the brand.

The third is to pay attention to customers' ideas and carry out environmental innovation. We should actively break the traditional thinking, imagine the user experience, promote products, combine the existing product framework with different users' environments, carry out environmental innovation, enrich product performance and promote brand innovation. In fact, this is also a kind of ability to reconstruct problems, which requires concentration and practice. With a brand-new vision and perspective, combined with psychological and operational characteristics, we should think more about "why", dig out the root causes behind superficial problems, then use products to solve practical problems, and finally realize product upgrading and innovation.

The fourth is to create and deliver expectations with customer experience as the center. In today's Internet age, customer experience is more important than ever, and it is also the standard for retaining and screening customers. If you want to resist customer retention, you must understand where customer experience affects the success or failure of the company, how to improve customer loyalty to the company, and how to enhance the relationship between brands and customers.

Fifth, pay attention to the application of social media and deal with the crisis by breaking the expected pattern. The internet makes everything connected and transparent. On the one hand, customers will not hesitate to expose brands that provide poor customer service or product experience. On the other hand, customers are also eager to share beautiful moments and exceed the expected brand experience. In the process of brand operation, we should take the initiative to do something for our customers and work hard for their surprises, because every satisfied customer may be connected with hundreds of potential customers through social media.

The sixth is to create a distinctive corporate culture. In the process of interacting with customers, every employee can become a brand representative. If their behavior is improper, the company will pay a very high price, but the cost of correcting it is not great. To some extent, this reflects that personal brand affects corporate brand, and personal confidence affects customers' confidence in products and brands. Therefore, as the founder of the brand, entrepreneurs should be very confident, create a unique cultural atmosphere in the company, and then pass it on to every consumer through the brand. Similarly, we should spread the surprises from the employees of the company, make each employee feel special, then form a unique company culture, and finally implant the brand, so that customers can feel this unique culture and be deeply attracted by it, and finally achieve the success of the brand.