Hours ago, CNET and other tech sites featured a purported leaked Windows 8 document. It looks real. Especially convincing is the sad "How Apple does it: A Virtuous Cycle” slide. (image above from leaked document above)
The Virtuous Cycle:
- A strong brand promises "That it will just work"
- It does "just work" and so
- The brand gets stronger.
There's nothing funny about the content. Just that Microsoft with Windows, still so typical of most companies, can't help but complicate, rather than distill.
It is easy to bash Microsoft, but their Windows brand represents the typical vicious cycle:
- A weak promise leads to
- Forgettable or frustrating experience, and so
- The brand gets weaker.
Few and far-between are the teams that...
- Know that brand is a customer experience, not a logo or design.
- Have a clear brand promise shared by everyone on the team.
- Have an authentic promise that fuses team passion with customer need.
- Deliver on the promise first and foremost.
- Put the customer first in everything they do and every problem they solve.
Is your brand in a vicious or virtuous cycle? Let us know on twitter or right below.
By Axle Davids, CEO & Brand Technologist, Distility Branding
I hate that I love branding.
Branding is so loveable when it fuses a team's passion with a customer's need. When it separates that team from the pack. When it imbues everything they do with an authentic sense of personality. When it helps good companies and good causes win the day.
But I hate the bad side of branding with a passion! When it is practiced as black-art voodoo or absurdly complex pseudo-science. When it is all fast talk followed by slow-motion. When it it is ruined from the inside by politics, conformists and brandwashers.
(Calm down Axle. Deep breath.)
I'll admit, in my career I have even unwittingly contributed to a scam of two. Now you know my secret shame. One that I hope will be absolved with the release of Brand Scammed! How to Avoid Buying the Wrong Branding Solution. Now companies and causes have a chance at hiring or buying a better brand.
So please help us here at Distility to save your peers, friends, and connections from the brand scammers. Together we can save someone's career. Together we can save a deserving brand from an unfortunate future. Together we can help companies and causes succeed where they would otherwise fail.
Please click below to share this on your social network, or contact us if you want to talk share more about brand scams and branding technologies with your network.