Success is Simple! It’s in your DNA

Your brand DNA is made up of several core components, such as the brand vision, mission and values.

We’ve all read that marketing strategy book.

However, when are we going to get real and realise that no one really studies your brand’s marketing story. No one cares about a lengthy, drawn-out marketing strategy document. Not even your employees.

If you keep your core values true, relevant and SIMPLE, they will be understandable and become a naturally adopted habit to your employees, as well as to your customers. Transparency is the key to loyalty, but what’s the use in being transparent while depicting a long and complex message? No one will read it.

Simplicity is everything. Big businesses, such as Apple, have kept it simple from day one. Steve Jobs was apposed all advertising that sounded like advertising. He wanted an authentic, clear and concise message representing the Apple brand. The single, strong and simple message then became; “Think different.” Those two little words defined what the brand had always been about since it began in Jobs’ garage.

The same simplicity was taken on when naming the machine iMac; the words “internet” and “Macintosh” = iMac. From the name down to the design, the overall common concept was simplicity.

Whole Foods also embraced the simplified mentality and based their brand DNA around a particular consumer culture that is interested in, literally, whole foods that are organic, ethical and healthy. They told the world their vision, mission and core values in one statement; “Whole Foods. Whole People, Whole Planet.” This message and identity has attracted the right employees as well. By being employed at Whole Foods, they proudly represent this culture themselves.

Uber is another great example of simplicity in terms of the way in which it operates. Uber capitalises on people’s already very low expectations of the taxi/cab industry. Once a person experiences the Uber service, they usually cannot believe how easy that just was. Although there has been much recent debate around the direction in which the Uber brand is going, the initial brand DNA was perfect. Simple.

A local example of a top brand that has kept it simple since 2006 is Yuppie Chef. Yuppie Chef is a popular kitchen accessories e-tailer based in Cape Town that sells third-party products. Yuppie Chef has become South Africa’s leading e-commerce store, and how is that? You guessed it.

Yuppie Chef is online-based and they’ve kept their focus within this space by investing in content marketing. They have singled out key social media contact points because their core principal is creating a community. That’s it. Through this consistency in their message, delivery process as well as communication platforms, they’ve set realistic customer expectations and have therefore successfully built their online customer community.

Business leaders need to take a good look at the top successful brands in the world and notice how the majority of these brands are, and always have been, of a simple structure. Their identity, image, vision, mission, etc all have a single idea behind them. They never deviate from the initial drawing board. They understand the brand’s purpose and it is communicated so clearly across every single touch point.

Always take a step back and reiterate the brand purpose. To be a successful business, you need to go back to the basics and remember to always:

KEEP IT SIMPLE.

View the previous nlighten blog by Shani Sayag: Final Boarding Call for CX

nlighten. enhancing customer experience: www.nlightencx.com