01/01/2024
RULES AND STRATEGIES WE GOT FOR BRAND 2024 AS SaaS
1.We don't Rebrand the products but puts you in a consideration set with other products, but rebranding the problem can put you in a consideration set of one.
EVRYMAN reframed the problem of therapy from “finding yourself” to “creating yourself” before they positioned their product. Cofertility rebranded the problem of fertility from “egg freezing and donation” to “touching human lives” in order to make their product newly relevant.
We recently helped a client in the debt relief industry rebrand the problem of owing money. Debt relief is a murky category with shady players, and while we understood the tremendous integrity that our particular client was built with, we knew it made no sense to say, “Hey, trust us! We’re the good guys!” (a very common mistake many brands make).
Instead, we dug deep in our psychographic research and saw something remarkable — when people go into debt, they become the debt.
Their entire identities are reduced to one dimension: They no longer identify with their hobbies, they stop going to family functions, stop volunteering, stop enjoying time
They lose what makes them human, and understanding this was the real brand opportunity.
The brand wasn’t about an honest debt relief company with good products, although that was very true, the brand was about re-dimensionalizing people. We reframed the problem of “debt” to the problem of “losing selfhood.” And that is the concept we built their entire strategy on.
Immediately, their rebranded ads, messaging and positioning saw a huge uptick, while the culture of the company evolved toward a singular vision that guided every decision toward a common goal.
Think clearly about what you’re branding, because sometimes there is something much bigger than just the product.
2. We use Real conversion not logically.
People who have damage in the emotional centers of their brains are normal in every single area of their lives with one notable exception — they can’t make good decisions, and sometimes they can’t make decisions at all
It turns out that decision making is driven by emotion, and logic is what we use after the fact to justify our actions. Risk assessment, emotional processing, memory, self-perception and social cognition are all bound together in our brains, and they are all part of a very complex, very emotional decision-making process.
That means B2B is just as emotional as B2C. It means underneath every feature a user tells you matters to them lies an emotion they themselves perhaps don’t understand. It also means feature-led branding will always lose.
You need to find out the emotional triggers that will truly convey your value to the user. Emotions, not features (or USP or benefits or measures of being “better” than your competitor) should be the basis of your brand.
When people convert from the heart and not the head, they are more willing to pay for premium products, more willing to evangelize and more likely to remain loyal in the face of UX and product issues, delays and other challenges. Why would you give up that much goodwill by ignoring emotion?
3. Changing belief means changing identity.
But the thing about belief is that it’s much more than ideas floating in our heads. Atomic Habits author James Clear famously documented how those who are most likely to stick to changed beliefs and behaviors are the people who first change their identities. Entrepreneur Seth Godin put it another way when he said, “People like us do things like this.”
Belief and identity are so intertwined that changing our beliefs can feel like losing ourselves. It’s scary. We live in a culture that sees it as a sign of weakness — for example, consider the fact that instead of celebrating politicians who evolve their worldviews, we approach them with distrust and skepticism.
But when we change our beliefs, we change our behaviors, and it’s oftentimes the most effective way to get people to understand the value of your brand.
