Marc Gobe’s presentation during lunch today covered the importance of emotional branding using case studies from his consultancy and references from his new book, Brandjam: Humanizing Brands through Emotional Design. Toward the beginning of his presentation, he had a slide that read,
“Emotional branding is about moving from commodity to experience. Brands can create growth and relevance with consumers. Market share to mindshare.”
He provided a few examples of brands that are commodities and brands that have moved that commodity category into experience and emotion. These included Ivory soap vs. Bath & BodyWorks and Folgers vs. Starbucks.
A couple years ago I came across an AdAge article by John Battelle that basically says:
“Don’t fall victim to Old Railroad Disease - you thought you were in the train business while upstarts created new methods of transportation.”
When I read Battelle’s article I spent some time listing what I thought were Old Railroad companies (Marc’s commodity brands) and the disruptors/innovators (Marc’s experiential and emotional brands). The idea that CSX should have been UPS or Union Pacific should have become Delta.
Here is the list I made:
Corner coffee shops / Starbucks
FM radio / Sirius satellite radio
Compact discs / Apple iTunes and iPod
Ringling Bros. / Cirque du Soleil
American Airlines / JetBlue
Macy’s / Target
Hoover / Dyson
Palmolive / Method
GMC Envoy / Toyota Prius
Safeway / Whole Foods
Blockbuster / Netflix
Visa / PayPal
Allstate / Progressive
H&R Block / TurboTax
There are tons more examples. Pretty much anywhere you find large, cumbersome, risk-averse companies (just scan the Fortune 500) you’ll find natural opportunities they missed (Blockbuster and NetFlix), or outright passed on (Hoover and Dyson). What are other examples? Are they thinking they are in the train business or the transportation business? Curious what you think.
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