A study was recently conducted jointly by SAP, Shift Thinking and Siegel + Gale to understand what makes brands click in the ongoing digital age, as opposed to an earlier generation. It was found out that traditional brands try to position their brands in the minds of the customers, while digital natives positioned their brands in their lives. The former focused on selling, the latter on usage patterns post purchase. A clear example of distinction is between a departmental store and Sephora or Ulta. The former would want to somehow convince the customers to buy the product, while a Sephora would demonstrate to them how to use the same. Customers looked up to legacy brands with awe, but the digital ones as more useful to them. Examples of this dichotomy can be observed in the pairs such as Dollar Shave versus Gillette, Red Bull versus Coca-Cola, Venmo versus American Express or Visa, and Tesla versus BMW. Legacy brands marketed through traditional means, while newer ones are making use of digital marketing techniques. Another example may be cited of the difference between the kind of data Hilton would track as opposed to the upstart Airbnb. For Hilton, the content in the advertising was important, while for Airbnb the crucial bit of business intelligence to be tracked was what customers said after using. While this study mainly focused on the B2C segment, the trends are largely similar even in the B2B space.

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/02/the-most-successful-brands-focus-on-users-not-buyers?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=technology&referral=00208&spMailingID=19097281&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1201766625&spReportId=MTIwMTc2NjYyNQS2

Uploaded Date:12 March 2018