Any branding and marketing exercise must stand on the back of good solid innovation in the product that is being sold. The time invested in the process of discovery, research and tweaking of product builds strong brands, that can be resilient even in the face of the toughest competition.
Branding and Marketing Won’t:
- Cut-Short the Test of Time
Quality takes time to build and develop. Anything that promises faster returns without the process is probably nonsense. One can, for example, create a hit music track for December, but it doesn’t mean anyone will remember it by spring the following year. Devoting time in the creation process, perfecting, working and re-working a track, and having patience in the editing process may result in music that can withstand the test of time, something that will remain pleasurable to listen to even 50 years down the line, or even 500 years later—as the music of Beethoven or Bach has shown us.
- Take Away the pain of Sacrifice
Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen, 2008.
It may very well be that your product is not developed in a scientific laboratory, perhaps innovation for your business lies elsewhere. Like getting an MBA degree. By bringing new knowledge and insights back into the business, an MBA can become a way of innovating in your business. This also takes time. You don’t get it overnight (unless you do your degree at a fly-by-night college). This may require you to make sacrifices in the time you give to the daily operations of your business, but in the end the rewards make you forget the pain of the struggle.
- Help you Escape Struggle
Struggle typifies anything of worth in your life. I remember my first car, I got it as a gift from my parents. I gave it to a friend to go to a party while I was not there. Let’s just say the last I saw of the car was a broken license plate, the rest of it went to the scrapyard. My second car, I bought with my own hard-earned cash. I never gave it to anyone to drive in my absence. By then, I understood the struggle of getting it, it was no longer easy to give away.
So in a way struggle moulds us for the positions we need to step into by addressing (calling us to order) on particular attitudes or behaviours.
Sadly, some people spend life running away from struggle. But that’s okay too, cause it has a way of finding you.
- Produce New Knowledge
Many big international companies understand that the game means: innovate or perish. “They assume that as risky as innovation is, not inventing is even riskier”.[1]
At first, funds put into creating a new product might seem to produce slow results. But as key knowledge to make the needed advances in innovation becomes available, the development can move at greater speeds.
- Tweak your Limits
Not all the innovation needs to be scientific in nature, sometimes its just about tweaking a product for consumer fitness. This is especially so where a technology has reached a particular limit, as we can say with the computer hardware industry these days, where computers seem to have reached a limit in terms of speeds and performance. Innovation is taking place in the realm of cloud computing and expanding mobile technologies.
These 5 points bring out the real value to your business. By the time one returns to the market with a new product, tested by trial and research, the aggressive marketing and branding done then only affirms what is already of value inherent in the product.
[1] Foster, N Richard. Innovation: The Attackers Advantage. Macmillan: London, p30.