Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

312 BRAND RELEVANCE
handicap because it is hard to generate interest in a brand when
the audience assumes that they are already familiar with it. Why
pay attention to information about something about which they
already know plenty and in which they have little interest?
Energizing a brand may be the most important challenge facing
the majority of brands, and for brands with potential energy -
driven relevance issues, creating energy may be an imperative.
We turn to two ways to energize the brand — energizing the
business or creating a branded energizer.
Energize the Business
The best way to energize a business is by improving the offering
through innovation. Apple, Nintendo, Yamaha, Toyota,
Virgin, the Memphis Redbirds baseball team, and many others
have a continuous fl ow of innovations that create interest and
visibility.
However, that route is not always open. In many cases, successful
innovation is elusive even with motivated efforts, talented
people, creative processes, and healthy budgets. And innovations
that really make a difference, that rise above those that simply
maintain a market position, are even more rare. Further, some
businesses compete in product categories that are either mature
or boring — or both. Whether you make hot dogs or market
insurance, it is hard to conceive of new offerings that are going
to energize the marketplace. So the need then is to look beyond
the offering for ways to make the brand interesting, involving,
dynamic, enthusiastic, and even a topic of conversation. Some
suggestions follow.
Involve the Customer. Promotions that involve the customer
elevate the energy level of the brand and business. Coke Zero,
for example, asked basketball fans to upload their most fanatical
videos and photos supporting their favorite teams, and winners
were shown in a special show before the championship game.