Value for you, value for me
Deriving value from an activity, product or service is entirely contextual. If I purchase an iPod, Apple don’t get to deliver value, they get to deliver a product for a price point they hope is compelling. I, by thinking about what the product does and how it does or does not enrich my life decide if it is valuable.
Money doesn’t have to be exchanged for value though, time is just as capable of being the currency. When we look at brand interactions, we’re looking at the time someone is asked to invest and what they get out of it. Value here can go both ways, depending on your perspective.
If you’re the consumer, you might watch a 5 minute video and derive a tremendous amount of value from the content. Nobody on the brand side is going to argue that isn’t a valuable interaction for the brand. But if the person watches the video and then goes off to do something else, there’s limited value for the brand as the message fails to spread.
Conversely, a site visitor simply choosing to “like” something on Facebook doesn’t engage on nearly as deep a level, but that interaction potentially offers a lot more awareness value for the brand as the “like” is broadcast to that person’s network.
In the same way Apple don’t get to decide if a product delivers value or not, consumers don’t get to dictate what a brand values. We’ve gotten so caught up in engagement, we’ve lost sight of simple mechanics and how they help a message to spread. Creating more value than you capture should always be the aim, but not every campaign can be a home run.
Sometimes, just a little bit of “like” goes a long, long way.
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You were always on my mind
In a meeting yesterday as I sat dreaming up ideas to make my wealthy clients even more money, someone blurted out “We need to ensure they stay top of mind” which I didn’t like at all. It sits alongside “the big idea” and “single-minded proposition” as a decidedly 20th century approach, and the reality is none of the brands people really want to be have anything to do with being top of mind.
The top-of-mind approach in fact is a challenger brand’s mentality. If you aspire to be top of mind you’re clearly not winning in your category, and you’re likely spending a good deal of time and energy just trying to compete. It’s the same as making a case for a piece of work focused around time with brand, while never pausing to consider just how much time is spent without.
The trick to both of those things is that the brands that are really thought of as top of mind, the Apples and Nikes and what have you, aren’t top of mind at all. In fact if they were to become top of mind, it would be a step back in some ways.
Those brands transcend any notion of “mind” and instead ingrain themselves in culture. I don’t just think of Apple when I’m shopping, and I don’t just think of Nike when I see someone run. They are the brands everyone else wants to be because nobody pauses to think about them.
So don’t bother with top of mind. Save that for the guys in second place, they don’t know any better anyway.
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image courtesy of Esparta with thanks to compfight.
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