On Driving Brand Growth, with Pierre-Laurent Baudey
In today’s highly competitive market, how do brands like Nike continuously stand out?
Vivaldi’s CEO Erich Joachimsthaler discusses the modern relationship between brands and consumers with Pierre-Laurent Baudey, a former 22-year veteran of Nike, a member of Tillamook’s Advisory board, and founder of his own practice, PLB LAB. In this episode of The Business of Platforms, these two passionate brand-builders discuss what it takes to build a strong brand, from evergreen principles to the three fundamental and consumer-centric pillars for brand growth. Tune in to the conversation and find highlights below:
Episode 19: On Driving Brand Growth, with Pierre-Laurent Baudey on Vimeo.
Some things in brand growth will never change. First: a consumer-centric strategy and execution (however, as you’ll see later in this post, the level of centricity has turned into obsession). Second, failing for success: there’s no failure, only feedback. Top brands own their outcomes and use failure as an opportunity to learn, grow, and succeed. Lastly, the art of brand storytelling. Humans crave stories, and the best brands amplify personal stories that people can project themselves into.
In today’s highly competitive market, brands must build relationships through trust, and the way to build trust is by being authentic and standing for values. As a result, the best brands have the guts to stand for something bold and attach themselves to a larger purpose. Pierre-Laurent shares how strong brands have implemented three fundamental pillars to achieve long-lasting brand growth, which we can call “KIIS” Model.
3 pillars to achieve long-lasting brand growth
- Know Me. Brands are obsessed with comprehensively and deeply understanding their consumers.
- Inspire and Innovate For Me. Brands should take every opportunity to continuously provide inspiring stories and innovative products to their consumers.
- Serve Me. Brands must focus on creating a long-term two-way relationship with the consumer by providing relevant ecosystems that generate value for the consumer and enable their lives.
These three pillars form a feedback loop thanks to digital technologies and platforms. By creating a digital ecosystem around their consumers, under regulation, brands can collect data from the platforms and generate insights about the consumers. As a result, the more brands interact with a consumer and the more consumers interact back, the more brands know about consumers and the more relevant their inspiration and innovation becomes, and the more consumers interact with them as a result.