How To Grow A Profitable Brand With Empathy For The Community

Hello family, I'm happy to have you here on yet another interesting article that we are going to be sharing with you with the objective of helping you change the trajectory of your digital marketing, and brand identity, and brand culture.

What you'll learn here:

1. What is branding
2. The Evaluation
3. Generate A Unique Niche
4. How Brands Are Using Empathy

I know by now most of you after seeing the headline to this article you probably thinking I'm going to write about giving to the community with the object of avoiding taxes, unfortunately this is not the place. If you want to know how to show genuine empathy without expecting anything in return but making your brand a more human and interactive lifestyle. Empathy in business is a model which can breath life and a more human interaction between the community and the brand. Let's dive deep into it.

What Is Branding

The idea of a brand dates back to the primitive days of human civilization when ‘Brand’ represented a burning wooden stick. The very basic concept of branding is to symbolize ownership, Egyptians use to engrave on stones to distinguish their work from others. Right from the beginning branding was all about making an identity both literally and figuratively. Farmers use to mark their livestock to show difference and ownership.

As time changed the concept of branding evolved accordingly, the simple idea of just marking one’s product and ownership took a greater form of connection with the consumers. In the era of the industrial revolution, a different type of branding was done by the manufacturer called ‘Mass Branding’ when the large scale of production was done to feed the increasing demand of the mass. Consumers were getting more accustomed to buying local factory-made products thus leading toward a generic form; to differentiate their product they started to engrave their logos or dialogues as unique identification. In 1875 the trademark registration act was passed which allowed businesses to legally mark their product in the market.

The Evaluation

Till the 1950s branding was done to mark the quality of products, and in the era of TV advertising this concept changed to show product differentiation and gain customer loyalty.

During the late ’90s, companies realized only selling products won’t be a reasonable way to sustain in the market, they started to invest into building a brand personality keeping the longer race in mind. Brand personality stands on two of the most important factors first trust, second value companies provide. For instance here in Zimbabwe Delta Corporation which is famously known as Delta Beverages or Coca Cola one of the biggest examples when it comes to gaining consumer trust and value their consumer needs and it has been dominating for some time now. However, companies like BancABC, Stanbic Bank, Eco Cash Holdings, Nyaradzo Group, Simbisa Brands, Skylake Boreholes, & Yanaya etc. the list goes on and on of companies who are sprouting up in the market making a homogeneous playground for every business to compete.

Brands aren’t just a brand anymore, the shift has been taking place for sometime and it has become a way of life. If we see the current digital scenario of some of the digital platforms like Linkedin, Meta or Facebook, Google, and Twitter they are the biggest and widest brand names that we see everywhere, every single day and without these platforms, imagine how much their will affect the working places & the global community at large. making reference to a previous event which occurred last year when Facebook had an outage for close to 6 hours on their systems which affected Messenger, Instagram, & WhatsApp respectively. Customers & Facebook altogether lost billions of dollars.

Generate A Unique & Authentic Niche

In the present era of digital advertising, brands need to consider numerous things to maintain their image apart from selling products. For example, Nike and Adidas both sell shoes and accessories. But what is the difference between the brands is that Nike isn’t only selling shoes, they're selling fitness and endorsing the athletes from different respective sports who are their customers. And Adidas is selling the image of sportsmanship in the market. These are the core values where brands tap into the psyche of their audience – to maintain an image, compete in the market & sell products & services. So generating a unique niche for your brand will

How Other Brands Are Using Empathy

In the present growing online market, the competition has become fiercer & purpose-driven in terms of branding and marketing. Companies aren’t selling products and services actually, rather they are selling values & ethics to their consumers, which is part of the brand personality. Consumers in the online world are very much aware of which is a sponsored ad, carousel ad, and the other formats. So, what do consumers search for while purchasing a product?

Consumers search for the connection with the respective brand while purchasing a product, a brand that will tap into the aspiration level of an individual. They search for detailed stories and individual experiences on these social platforms before buying any particular product.

Apple is one of the biggest examples, in their approach toward the customers, Apple never sells their product directly, rather they show the user experience to their customer providing a complete end-to-end solution. Instead it claims that it sells an experience which one will have with their product not the product it's self. In the present era of multi-fracture problems globally, where climate change is one of the biggest problems looming over the head of the human race. The one-minute thirty-six-sec ad of the Apple 2030, further showed the greater vision of a brand and how they are contributing toward the current global issues. Where the company has pledged to go carbon neutral by the year 2030. More and more brands are adopting the storytelling approach to convey the brand experience to their consumers and also to build the brand image.

Followed by Stanbic Bank International, which has one of the biggest initiative on ESG Environmental Social Governance. Which personally is a subject which I have a great appreciation and passion for and I get so excited to see Stanbic Bank International as they pave way for other organizations invest into environmentally friendly projects or initiatives, and advocating the impact it can have to the share price or stock price of the organizations who uplift SDGs Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015.

Another example of using the emphatic approach to convey the message of a brand is shown in 2020 When Nike went all in to support the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which was a world-wide campaign for black people's rights after the disturbing death of Floyd George from a brutal conduct of a Miami Police officer. Nike went ahead and made frontic efforts to support the black community and did not make any direct sales from this movement but instead they where simply funding & supporting the campaign. This shows how far a company can go to serve their customers. An instant emotional connection with a wide range of audiences even with them not using the brand product.

Conclusion

As we conclude this article, I know if you're leading or part of an establishing brand you probably thinking "We don't have capacity to do all this" you here is something to take note of, empathy cannot be measured and all you have to do is offer what you can so that you still keep the business running while you build your brand identity in the long run. Branding and authenticity is also not a one day thing which can easily be measured but you know it when people engage with your brand out of their intent to genuinely do business with you.

I genuinely that a brand need to be a fan favorite to succeed. There are so many products and services fighting for same attention in your very same space, if you don't have those superfans who would do anything for you, it's really hard to gain traction and you end up spending advertising dollars to buy loyalty versus depending on your vocal brand ambassadors. If you treat the community with empathy they will become your loudest brand ambassadors.The strongest brands are those which put effort to sustain the personality they have in the market, by staying true to their core value. These brands know when to evolve and adapt to suit the customer’s lifestyle needs. In the current digital era branding is more about designing customer experience with their product, & connecting to the customer needs in Real-time. A brand can leverage more

That's it for this week, I hope you've extracted some insights from this newsletter and please subscribe to our emailing list for more exclusive updates and promotions from Digital Mate Inc.

Leon Mandigara is the CEO & Founder at Digital Mate Inc, & marketing consultant for so many brands and individuals. Want to schedule a meeting or call with him? click here.

This newsletter is a product of Digital Mate Inc. Get a free digital marketing consultation and analytic report.

Until next time, we are glad you have made it this far and would like to say thank you for reading this article, hopefully you drew some great value from this and we would like to here from you on the comments below.