Can Brand Connection Be Predictably Engineered?

The concept of Brand Connection has always been mushy. Traditionally, it’s been uncertain, unscientific, unprovable, and unpredictable.

I’ve helped lead a brand strategy firm for more than 20 years, and I couldn’t agree more.

Yes, I said it: I couldn’t agree more.

Our industry has been built on a kind of Schrödinger’s Cat philosophy. Measure it, and it might not show a proper causation. Don’t measure it, and attribute success to whatever you’d like. Depending on economic conditions, brand building both simultaneously works and doesn’t work. This unprovable superposition of results allows most agencies to succeed, even if their clients show little success as a result. 

This is precisely why we approach every situation with a healthy skepticism and a heavy burden of proof.

You see, focusing efforts on Brand Connection works, but only with incredibly hard work, discipline, patience, and measurement. Organizations, in a mandate to get immediate results, don’t want to hear that. Agencies, just looking for a quick buck, would never admit to this reality in their desperation to win new business.

That is why we’ve built an engineering approach to brand success. Driven by process, discipline, measurement, and predictability.

First things first, we must agree and admit that neither the organization nor the agency has much to do with the brand itself. The brand is owned by customers. It is not what we say or show that matters. It is a customer’s perception that drives everything.

Next, we must admit that there is no such thing as creating customer action. There is only such a thing as solving for customer motivation. We cannot (and should not) manipulate anyone into doing what they don’t want to do for short-term gain. Instead, we must engineer connection, systematically earn trust, and then be prepared to engage perfectly once they are ready to do so.

How do we go about this?

First, we engage with the end in mind. We listen to customers and prospects. We don’t guess. We don’t go with our gut. We get data. Qualitative. Quantitative. Unfiltered. This provides us with data points, giving us a clear picture of how elastic the brand can be based on internal goals and vision. We define the chasm of influence.

Then we construct multiple paths forward. All strategic. All ownable. All winnable. But we let the audience decide.

Focus groups. Testing. More data before spending one dollar. We hone. We test. We prove.

And then we construct an efficient, effective plan designed to move people from unknown to known. From known to intrigued. From intrigued to dialogue. From dialogue to movement. From movement to repetition. From repetition to relationship. From relationship to advocate. From advocate to evangelist.

No matter where one begins on this spectrum, we systematically move them rapidly to the right. By doing so, we ensure the plan builds upon itself. The more customers want to share, the more new prospects end up somewhere in the queue.

But we don’t stop there. We continue to engage. Measure. Elevate. Engage. Measure. Elevate.

More customers. More connections. More possibilities. More success. All beautifully recorded. Dashboarded. Shared.

We are Phire Group. We don’t make promises. We don’t guess. We don’t move without knowing.

We engineer extraordinary brand experiences.