Is Your Brand A Movement?

What comes to mind when you think movement?  Civil rights? Or maybe environmental protection?  What about brands?  Can they generate movements? After all, a movement is simply a shift in popularity based on developing a connection with individuals by appealing to their “wants.”  Does this sound like your brand?

Brand success stories have been at the heart of society’s most prominent consumer movements.  For instance, we have YouTube and Hulu to thank for the online video movement, Amazon and Ebay to thank for the ecommerce movement and MySpace and Facebook to thank for the social networking movement. 

And though each of these brands employs a different mission and prescribes to a different business model, all have successfully encouraged trending toward an overall consumer movement.  So how do they do it?

As with most business issues there isn’t an apparent silver bullet solution.  However, our marketing experiences and research have uncovered a few of the finer points that have made their efforts successful.

1. Focus on consumer wants – As was stated in the opening of this article, creating a movement is about identifying with individuals based on their “wants” more than their needs.  Often times this includes showing the individual what they want by demonstrating the benefits of engaging the brand.

2. Be a technology early adopter – A commonality demonstrated through the aforementioned brands is successful movements today are better enabled through emerging technologies.  Certainly this has been evidenced in the development of the Internet and resulting brand successes in this space.  And while new technologies will continue to emerge online, applications for mobile devices and augmented reality systems hold significant potential for the future.

3. Profits aren’t the first consideration – That’s not to say that profits aren’t a primary consideration.  However, the brand success stories that progress to become movements are focused first on aligning the brand with an existing consumer story or “want” that is already headed in the direction the brand was going.  Case in point, Twitter is still trying to figure out a revenue generating business model, but their brand success story is strong.

4. It’s a progression of refinement – The key word here is refinement, not redefinition.  Movements result from momentum gained by a brand’s commitment to the original direction and identity of the initiative.  Refine the products, services and messages along the way, bring additional value to brand supporters.  Redefinition risks broadening the gap between a brand and its supporters, and may cause brand alienation.

Brands don’t embark with the intent to generate a consumer movement.  The movement is merely a by-product of brands focusing on the principles above to create a mutually beneficial relationship with their constituents.  And in many cases this requires taking calculated risks and adopting unique business models.  Those brands willing to do that may elevate themselves beyond a business and become a movement.