Relevant: food brands that enable their customer’s desire for learning, creativity in the kitchen…
Optimizing relevance in a marketing environment where relevant is everything
By Bob Wheatley
We have come to a place where brands‐that‐matter have relationships with their best users that look increasingly like those we have with our closest friends and family. They look human: Trust. Reciprocity. Care. Helpfulness. Listening. All are markers, icons of human relationship qualities. Now the same can be said of brand connections that transcend the merely transactional to the incredibly meaningful.
And what’s lies at the intersection of commerce and relationship? Relevance. When brands work overtime (baked into the mission) to align themselves with their core users’ passions, concerns, interests and pain points, they are on the hunt for relevance.
Here are the five key characteristics of relevant brands:
1. Your brand is an enabler and facilitator of customer lifestyle interests…
Food brands that help home cooks and food adventurers realize their passions for learning and creativity in the kitchen.
2. Your brand is now a trusted and respected source of guidance and information…
Pet food brands that recognize the role pet ownership can have to improve the health and wellbeing of pet parents — and bring the voices of respected experts to offer ideas and guidance on how the pet/owner relationship can embellish a healthy lifestyle.
3. Your brand is an unselfish communicator that puts a greater premium on help over hype…
The brand that invests in social platforms and technology that allows customers to interact freely and openly with one another, sharing ideas, experiences and recommendations. Social media is never viewed as the world’s shortest press release.
4. Your brand has dialed in alignment between unique brand experiences and customer interests…
The beverage brand that creates extraordinary and exciting events in sync with customer lifestyle priorities and that enable social interaction and adventure.
5. Your brand is routinely investing in the kind of research that dives deep to better understand core customer interests and problems that need solving…
Whether its home cooks, pet parents, socially active young adults or moms you are in a constant state of listening and discovery to learn what they think, feel, believe, need, know and how they live. Your probably using private Facebook panel communities and similar techniques to quality spend time interacting, observing and testing your assumptions, ideas and messaging.
Relevance is a discovery process built from deliberate efforts to understand (and not assume you know) their aspirations and passions. Relationships take root as we get better acquainted, and as trust emerges. The same can be said of how powerful brands gain permission for a relationship and the opportunity to have a conversation.
No one wants to engage with a barrage of selling messages. Helping is the core litmus test of best practices in brand behavior.
How does your brand address relevance?