Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

264 BRAND RELEVANCE
One way to get the conversation started is with a story about
such topics as these:
• Dramatic features or benefi ts . The Tato Nana with its breakthrough
priced of $ 2,000 has a host of stories surrounding
the effort.
• The people behind the idea and how they brought it to life . The
story of Zappos, the Prius, Saturn, and Google all had development
human - interest stories.
• How the technology developed . The story of Ivory soap, which
was found through a production mistake and P & G ’ s SK - II
that was found because women in sake factories had great
skin, are compelling stories that reinforce a key association.
• Interesting applications . Stories can be based on applications.
How is Segway or the minivan used?
• A culture that underlies the innovation . The domestic 24/7
call center at Zappos that refl ects its accessibility culture or
Nano ’ s single windshield wiper illustrating the “ cost plus
function ” culture.
Surrounding the brand with excitement, energy, and visibility
has a downside. As in the case of Yugo and Segway, it can
create the appearance that the potential of the new arena is
actually greater than it is. An in the case of Amazon ’ s Kindle,
it can also attract competitors who are looking for growth
opportunities in the hopes of themselves gaining a relevance
advantage. The optimum in some contexts is to have visibility
that is targeted to a segment not now in the mainstream. That
is what Enterprise did. By focusing on insurance companies
and those needing a replace for a vehicle being repaired, they
were under the radar for many years. Zappos also had limited
visibility because it emphasized existing online customers and
relied on word - of - mouth rather than mainstream media in order
to build a huge business.