Insights

Have you ever entered into a relationship that was based on an illusion? If yes, it is a fair bet that the relationship no longer exists. The same goes for relationships with brands: Those who seduce with illusions will fail.

When your favorite Italian offers you truffles with the words: "These are the most flavorful truffles I have ever had in my kitchen!", you order the fettucine with truffles without even knowing the price. You can be seduced more quickly than you can be made to feel safe. In a new restaurant, you don't even know if the truffles are any good. The price per gram suddenly becomes the deciding factor.

Sustainably fascinating brands therefore turn the tables: They offer real peak performances and stage them in seductive ways. Staging and illusion, however, have nothing to do with one another.

What does it mean to offer value instead of illusion?

Whether you are visiting the BAUMA, ViennaTech, or Hannover Messe: Exhibitors either immediately present their product details, or they compete for your attention with meaningless, unprecise, but emotional slogans.

Both aspects are actually fundamental for lastingly successful brand appearances: clear (product) performances and emotional customer address. Value is created by special performance. But first we must explain the term "value" in a brand context. It is not about value in the sense of valuable, but also in the sense of a special quality I associate with a brand.

Consistent repetition of a peak performance is not the same as standstill

What brand would you consider more likely to build a new sports car: Porsche or Hyundai? You'll probably say Porsche. This is the result of decades of peak performances delivered by the brand Porsche in the sports car segment, accompanied by appropriate emotional advertising.

It all started with an idea by a man named Ferdinand Porsche. Then came the unique implementation of construction, design, manufacturing, and marketing. These peak performances delivered over and over again over a long period of time are a kind of constant repetition. They are delivered over and over again because they are rooted in the innermost core of a company. Because they match the talent of the person with the main idea, or for reasons that are anchored in the company itself. Consistent repetition of one's own performance does not constitute stagnation!

Advertising has long allowed companies to superficially differentiate between comparable performances. Differences to the competition are found only in the advertising rather than in the form of special performances, technologies, services, or processes. These differences were gradually phased out of advertising.

If you want to break out of this game and sell your technologies from the world of electronics, biology, chemistry, or any other engineering field for good value, you must determine what it is that your company really does better than the competition. And not product-specific, but across your entire range, at least across all successful products.

Ask yourself what is typical about your performances or in the way you invent, produce, or market them:

• What about your performance already has tradition, what was the founding idea?

• What products or services come closest to that idea?

• Which of your performances offer the customer a benefit that they might not recognize at first glance?

Often, the values of a brand, which incidentally are also sometimes called success rules or brand core values, are rooted in the founding history. For example Audi: The values that evolved from tradition and peak performances culminate in the claim "Vorsprung durch Technik" (Progress through Technology). But these values would have evaporated long ago if Audi didn't prove them every single day.

Today, you find them at all touchpoints. The architecture of the Audi dealerships, the technical flair of the brand design, everything emphasizes what makes Audi so special. The result of this successful brand strategy is: Before we buy, we no longer check if Audi truly does have a technological lead – we believe it.

Winning streaks in rally racing and groundbreaking TV spots in which an Audi Quattro drives up the ramp of a ski jump are just two examples for the way Audi uses all the registers of brand management to present itself as a winner and rule breaker. The content is certainly not transferrable, but the principle is fundamental for technology brands. This precisely is the difference between peak performance and illusion.

Explain why the product could only have come from you

Try to collect success stories, typical features, outstanding achievements, or curiosities. You'll find that everything revolves around a few similar causes. When you sort the list according to topics and give these precise headings, you'll be one step closer to your brand's value system.

Selling value means relating all current and future peak performances to the past ones. Don't try to explain to your customers over and over again what you product can do better than the competitor's. Instead, explain why the product could only have come from you: Because it fully uses and reflects all of the talents that lie within your brand.

This is how you benefit from the feeling of security that has already taken hold in your customers. They feel secure in making the right decision, and will reward you with loyalty in the form of a higher repeat sales rate and cross-selling rate, a larger price premium, and a higher willingness to recommend. Particularly in the buying and selling of technologically complex goods in the B2B world, these are essential factors.

Study: B2B purchasers want security

The representative study "B2B-Marken in der Praxis" (B2B brands in practice), which we conducted among purchasers in the fields of machine engineering, chemicals, and automotive suppliers confirms it. When asked about the essential criteria for buying B2B brand products, purchasers emphasized those that increase the security of their purchase.

And yet, when developing, producing, and marketing such goods, companies do whatever they can to avoid repetition, habit, and the resulting familiarity and trust and therefore security in purchasing. The values built over the past are neglected and even disguised with illusions.

If you want to use a brand to gain more appreciation for your products, you should forego illusions. Instead, ask yourself the following questions: What is typical about your products? Which are superior to the competitors and why? Get to the bottom of your brands history. It is worth it.

This contribution is an excerpt from the textbook "Value Branding – vom hochwertigen Produkt zur wertvollen brand" (From premium product to valuable brand), published by » Haufe Verlag. The author » Jürgen Gietl, Managing Partner Brand Trust, describes how » B2B brands and particularly engineering-driven technology brands can be successfully established and managed. His practical advice is perfect for example for brands in the IT, bio-technology, chemicals, automotive, machine engineering, textiles, automotive supply, logistics, and medical technology sectors.

You can order the brand management textbook directly from our web site: » "Value Branding – vom hochwertigen Produkt zur wertvollen brand"