«I have an idea which I am afraid to share», those were the words that came out of my friend’s mouth. How can I make it work? I am facing companies with great marketing sections, well-paid consultants and research teams with revolutionized tools .All these combined in a market that keeps evolving, everything you took for granted yesterday, might not be equivalent today. The supposedly future trends become mainstream before we even realize it.
Although all the above is true, I personally think that we are going through the best era for new brands. And there are three main reasons that make me believe that.
I read about the first one in Marty Neumeier’s book, AG: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands. We are all familiar with the children’s game, rock, paper, scissors. In this game winning is totally coincidental, winning the game has to do with what you are faced with and none of the choices can beat both the other two. Scissors cut paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes scissors, etc.
Following that way of thinking, a new entrepreneurship with a fresh product or a startup one with an innovative idea plays the role of the scissors. Its strength is pure targeting .That is the only advantage a brand acquires and needs to exploit. That condition can give the brand the opportunity to enter a market which top brands dominate. Top brands play the role of paper and can lose an important market share to scissors.
That could happen because the top brands were not expecting or were too slow to react to the new brands’ success.
The second reason has everything to do with the alterations in the market. The internet and the social media have brought huge changes on the way people decide what to buy and how they make their decision. The old, traditional ways of mass media belong to the past. The internet and the social media (SoMe) offer an excellent platform of communication with the world whose cost is affordable for everyone.
Nowadays is far too easy to bump into social brands, meaning brands that were born, raised and exist solely online. They made their first appearance online, told their story on SoMe and have been incredibly popular and successful ever since.
The third and most important reason, is the fact that nowadays, even if someone does not have a huge budget, he has an affordable and highly effective tool at his disposal: branding. Branding is not a secret that we only encounter in the meeting rooms of large multinational companies. The techniques and strategies that you can implement using branding tools are exactly the same as the ones that big multinationals use. They are extremely effective, if applied correctly, and can put new brands on the map.
And that is because branding gives the brand the power to tell its story clearly and consistently and helps not to spend money on meaningless communication material. It creates a communication framework in which the brand can move safely for a long time, contributing both to the consistency of the message and, ultimately, to the savings of resources. Finally, it is an affordable tool. There are several offices / companies in Greece that can offer remarkable branding services, adapted to the budget of startups and small businesses, so the cost / performance ratio is great.
So, if you have any qualms about your new beginning, I would suggest that you do not hesitate. The environment is more favorable than ever for the development of new brands. What you need to do, after bringing your excellent idea into life, is to take advantage of the possibilities that exist around us, such as branding and new communication platforms, and with consistency, perseverance and systematic work you can become… the scissors that will cut the paper!
We would like to thank www.epixeiro.gr for their contribution
