Danai Pathomvanich
Oct 19, 2015
Brandtech, the harnessing of brand network effects by leveraging technology to build large, passionate online communities around consumer products is now becoming a reality.
Initially, the network was used by internet companies to drive their successes.
However today, many high-growth consumer brands are using innovative new techniques built around social media to achieve prominence.
Forget about campaign mindsets
Instead of operating with marketing campaign mindsets, brandtech companies constantly push content to users, so that they resemble 24/7 media companies more than traditional consumer brands.
In a recent article Harvard Business Review article, “How Tesla, Under Armos and Sonos do branding”, Rasmus Bech Hansen said Tesla has become one of most valuable high-end car brands by how it leverages technology to its products and its marketing.
“Tesla did away with car dealers and moved customer interactions to an engaging web-platform that contains all the information a prospective buyer would need, like car performance data and market comparisons.”
By so doing, it made its car buying processing and customizing simple.
On its website, it engaged and built a large user community by pushing out shareable content, allowing people to share their own experiences, and live-streaming new product announcements and local events.
Hansen said this has turned Tesla drivers into Tesla marketers and has given the company a valuation of $US30 billion.
Creating shareable emotional experiences
Today’s “brandtech” companies use technology to create emotional product experiences that customers then want to share with others.
“Whether it’s a social fitness app (like sports apparel company Under Armour’s dashboard) or an immersive experience (consider how Tesla feels more like an intelligent driving partner than a traditional car), a software layer distinguishes the product by incorporating into people’s daily lives.
High-end speakers systems provider Sonos overturned prior traditional brand-value creating attributes with innovative technology marketing.
In the past, customers looked for a speaker system’s design, sound quality through advertising or big specialized retail events.
Sonos built an app that connects its speakers to services like Spotify and Pandora, and recommends personalized music for customers using its own algorithm.
Now, each time when users listen to music, they can through this interface, follow other stations, create playlists, and see other users’ behavior.
“The brand becomes more valuable for each individual user as more join.”
The company doubled its revenue last year (2013-2014) to more than $1 billion and its systems are installed in more than 1 million US homes.
Acquiring capabilities
Companies that don’t have the internal capabilities to build brandtech platforms are buying them.
This year, Under Armour invested more than $500 million in two fitness community apps, and it has grown its community to include 120 million people.
“They meet consumers where they are”
Forget one-message fits all approach
Traditionally brands have used a one-message-fits-all approach. Hansen said disruptive brandtech companies do the opposite.
“....they engage consumers using content that is distributed, consumed, and shared on a variety of digital platforms.”
They have mastered the use of social media for community building.
Shareability
Red Bull has created dedicated YouTube channels to showcase extreme stunts and musical events.
Shareability is one of the main criteria for its YouTube content postings.
It now has more than 4 million YouTube subscribers (Coca-Cola, on the other hand, has 500,000).
Red Bull broadcasted the daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s space jump on Youtube to more than 8 million people live.
Under Armour’s Facebook-driven marketing campaign for women’s wear (“I will what I want”) was a similar story.
It became a social media sensation and received 5 billion impressions and $US35M of so called “free earned media”, which is an indication of how many people have shared the content on social platforms.
