Will Your Brand Survive?

In this new phase of digital economy, brands (personal/product/corporate/) that seeks to thrive and make great lasting impacts with their products and services must pay attention to these two critical survival tips, else they will barely survive and face the imminent danger of extinction:

Tip 1
Innovate: What worked yesterday may not work today; and what is working today may not work tomorrow. This call for constant change and upgrades; re-evaluation of tools and processes to meet the demands and drives of the new economy. If your brand is still celebrating and relying on its past successes and attributes in this digital age, then the danger of extinction is high.

New Technologies are flying in so fast that unless a brand learns to leverage the use of these tools to its advantage it will not survive the test of time.

A typical example of a brand using technology and innovation is Coca-Cola; no wonder it's one of the world's leading brands. They adopted the use of technology to enable the cover of its plastic bottled Coke to be used as credit for making calls in Asia [watch the attached video below]. This way, people who buy the bottled coke keep the cover so as to use any time to make distant calls to family and friends. This is a win-win situation; they are providing value to their customers and solving a problem. This alone will bring lots of businesses to the Coca-Cola Company, make their customers happy, and drive brand loyalty.

The question for you today is; what are you and your brand doing to stay on top of the game? Any brand that refuses to grow (innovate) dies slowly.

Tip 2
Plug-in: It's about time you think of collaboration rather than competition. Don't try to reinvent the wheels rather invent add-ons. For brands and especially smaller brands to stay afloat and not be drowned by massive competition from the big brands, they have to think about complementing an existing model/niche with their products or services.

This is the thinking line; instead of creating a new Facebook-like social media to compete with Facebook, why not think of creating an app that can easily be integrated with Facebook, taking advantage of its massive reach.

A typical example is the gaming app company, Zynga, which created the game Farmville for Facebook; they are making millions of dollars with their app. The question is if they had created their own platform will they have made it that way? Possibly No!

This is it; what can your brand add to an existing model, consider what you can bring to the table, what brands can you possibly collaborate with to birth a bigger or more impactful brand?

How can a brand thrive without innovation and collaborative works? Think creative!!!

Bernard Kelvin Clive
Author of REBRAND: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Branding

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LW9I8DY/