Brand innovation - Building the identity and personality of your company

This type of innovation is about how to make people feel positively about your company. The most successful businesses have iconic brands which become sometimes as valuable as the product or service they offer. Your brand is the emotional connection created with your customers. It is the way you win their hearts as well as minds. However, successful branding is one of the hardest innovations to achieve as it is not a one-off campaign or tactic. Brand innovation needs to be part of your culture, your DNA, so it can live and breathe across the spectrum of your customer engagement points and by your staff.

When it comes to brand innovation your choices are myriad. Ikea have a service to help customers with post-purchase needs, like the resale of second-hand furniture. Virgin America build their brand in the competitive airline industry by having focus groups which provide innovative ideas to the airline, while receiving flyer rewards. And Netflix manages their brand by being the masters of consumer and entertainment data, so they can always be on point for the industry’s biggest trends.

Today there is a growing trend to build brand around social causes and needs. Think about brands like Patagonia, which in its 45-year history bucked economic downturns and culture changes to reach an annual revenue exceeding $750M, driven by the company’s strong stance on environmental preservation, challenging political institutions, and strongly upholding its social values. In 2016 when the company announced it would give away all of its Black Friday sales to grassroots environmental organizations, Patagonia raised $10 million for charity via sales and acquired 24,000 new customers.

An example of an initiative to align purpose with brand is Netwealth’s sponsorship of Banqer. Banqer is a free online financial literacy tool that helps teachers deliver important financial concepts in an engaging and relevant way to young Australians. It helps provide a financial education platform that facilitates a hands-on environment for students to get curious, creative, and ultimately, confident with money. Netwealth's support keeps Banqer free for 15,000 Australian kids.

Learn how advisers can use this innovation