Consumers often define themselves by the things they purchase. What they drive, how they decorate their living and work spaces, the clothes and accessories they wear, the foods and beverages they consume, and the tools or toys that they have.

For years brands have mass-marketed their brand stories to drive purchases and brand affinity. But some consumers actively resist such conformity, seeking products and brands that let them express their uniqueness. Is there a way we bring these revolutionaries back into favor with traditional brands?

BRANDS AS STATUS SYMBOLS
Traditionally, consumer brand marketers have used aspirational depictions as a way to attract audiences or consumers en mass who collectively aspire to that life style. Apple appeals to the aspiring hipster-technocrat, Kohler appeals to homeowners who are prosperous and style conscious.

Beyond the functional value of purchasing these brands, consumers use them as status symbols to validate the self-perception of themselves as hipster-technocrats, or prosperous and style conscious. They show off and talk about their purchases with their peers, to gain admiration and validation of their status and taste, and evidence of how they perceive themselves.

The problem with this approach is that it reflects niche conformity. And conformity doesn't always appeal to everyone. In fact, consumers are spending increasing amounts in purchases to define themselves as unique and non-conforming. Essentially some consumers are buying their way out of a fear of conformity. And although status symbol brands aren't likely to become extinct, brands can find prosperity by finding ways to engage and empower those consumers seeking to create more individuality.

BRANDS AS STATUS STORIES
Most everyone has experienced the sheer terror of meeting someone with the same shirt, or the same purse, or the same shoes. And maybe in response to that, you purchased a one-of-a-kind purse, tie, eyeglasses, shoes, or a car. Maybe it was customized just for you, maybe it was hand-made, or maybe it was simply really hard to find and required extraordinary tenacity and shopping skills on your part. Either way, you've experienced the growing desire and choices available for more unique and personalized goods.

Looking at the automotive market we see Mini-Cooper, Scion, and Harley-Davidson serving this desire for personalized brand experiences and purchases. The purchasing experience seems designed to serve the individualist, not the masses. Personalization is part of the purchase. And these consumers buying for individuality often become the most passionate about telling their "I made this" story about those brands, as a way to validate their independence and uniqueness, stellar shopping abilities, and peerless taste.

Some brands that can't offer customized products or services, are instead personalizing the purchasing experience. By providing personalized shopping consultation, or frankly just more "brand experience" around shopping they are able to create loyal customers, foster great word of mouth, and charge premium prices over competitiors.

These insights reflect the evolving trends in consumer desires and loyalty. To earn or keep their loyalty, these individualist consumers seek brands that provide transparency and let them be more deeply involved, brands that empower them to express themselves uniquely, and brands that give them visibility and recognition among their peers.

Here are some things to consider:

• Think about which of your products could allow some level of customization by purchasers.
• Think about changing your purchasing experience to feel more like an individual consultation with a unique outcome.
• Let individualists tell their stories. Use your web site as a forum for their expression.
• If you feature hard to find or limited selections of products, celebrate them with passion. And find ways to build longer term relationships with your customers.
  

As a professional designer and marketer, some people are surprised that I don't consider design "art". Certainly some applications like fabrics, furnishings, or other design goods can often be considered art. But for most companies, design is a tool for solving business problems - such as redesigning a product to improve profitability, effectiveness, or competitive advantage. Similarly we use design in brand and marketing to address problems with brand perception, marketing effectiveness, improving conversion, or being more competitive.

When I work with companies regarding their brand, the challenges I often see focus on clarity and competition. Often the value proposition and what differentiates a particular brand isn't fully developed, or it reflects an internal view of the company instead of from the perspective of the brands audiences. The same can hold true with competitiveness. Some brands haven't fully considered how they are perceived within the competitive brand landscape of audience choices, or how their brand sets itself apart. These are often reflected as design problems, and opportunities to evolve messages and visual elements of their brand to be more successful at driving prosperity for their company.

DESIGN AND THE INTERNET
I was at a dinner party with a bunch of people trying to describe their jobs. Usually I try and dodge this question but it happened to ambush me that night. As expected, I had a few confused looks as I attempted a quick reply that I "made brands more fun" online. So to describe this profession I used the analogy of a car designer. Car design teams have style designers, human factor engineers, engineers and technologists, project managers, and marketers. All are focused on making a very specific group of car buyers absolutely rabid to have one of their cars. And everyone in the group nodded in consent that they could imagine that team and what they might do. So, within Internet design we also have designers, and usability engineers, technologists, project managers, and marketers. And we are all focused on making a specific audience absolutely rabid about a brand - online.

Still, the Internet remains an unpredictable marketing frontier for some businesses. Several years ago I asked a group of Internet professionals to give me their opinion of great creative, and select examples from a set of fifty different web sites I provided. Their selections were far from unanimous. Each person's selections were based on very personal evaluation criteria. Creative greatness was subjective. So how could an agency hope to consistently deliver great work?

I decided to take a new approach, and define the criteria that make for a bad or poorly performing web site, with the hope that in the antithesis we could define the criteria for greatness.

In order of importance, poor sites are most often:

1. Not relevant to their intended audience. This can manifest in many ways. A brand that is represented differently than the intended audience's beliefs about the brand. Organization, content, or imagery that is reflected differently than the audiences perceived needs. Or tasks and processes that behave differently than anticipated, or are perceived to be unnecessarily difficult. I often see the most transformation when a business realizes they have a variety of different audience types online. Highly involved audiences and casual browsers, influencers and decision makers. And most require different tactics to engage them and get them more involved with your brand.
   
   
2. Don't provide value to the business. The value metric is different for businesses. Very few businesses use site traffic alone as an effective metric. For commerce sites the metrics are often based on increases in orders, increases in overall order size, or improved conversions (of browsers to buyers). For business-to-business it is sales leads, contacts, or requests for information. For brand sites, it can be brand attitudes within the audience, dealer or retail locator usage, higher involvement in branded entertainment or communities, or the volume of downloads of branded digital artifacts.
   
   
3. Not as good as their competition. Since comparison browsing is the norm online, competitors could be eating your lunch. A good competitive evaluation should be a precursor to any web site redesign project. These can reveal some great business insights and opportunities by understanding the web site content and features provided across your competitors. But often the real breakthrough ideas come when we dig into the specifics of how your competitors are serving each of their different audience types.
   
   
4. Lack reliability. This might manifest as quality control, or technical glitches. But you're likely wondering why I rated something so critical as less important as the previous ones. The exception here is that some brands or tasks you perform engender forgiveness. For example most people aren't as critical if something doesn't work when playing around with the flavor browser on the TAZO Tea web site, but they are very critical about glitches when they are involved in booking a flight or purchasing something online.
   
   
5. Don't demonstrate breakthrough innovations. This is really the quality of greatness. Game-breaker brands. Instead of playing follow-the-leader with competitors, some brand reinvent their approach to innovate in their industry. CareerBuilder and its addictively viral Monkey-Grams, MountainDew with Dewmocracy – giving audiences the power to invent the next beverage, Mini-Cooper and it's fun ways to visualize customizing your next car. What most people don't realize is that these innovations likely evolved from really smart minds armed with really great insights about their intended audience, or a new market/ audience they sought to attract.
   

To be successful on the Internet, businesses need to continue expanding their understanding of the needs and goals of their web site audiences, and focus on inititatives which create opportunity and prosperity online. And leverage design as a tool to road map that success.

BLOG ENTRIES

Mass-marketing and the Individualist

Design Solves Problems