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In the coming year, the technological
connectedness of everyone on Earth will
reach a level never before experienced by
humanity. The old rules don’t apply in
this world. New rules must be developed.
Here are a few to start with:
1. Be worthy of your customer’s
trust.
At its core, effective branding is
about a consistent connection between a
company, its products and its promise to
customers. No matter what physical prod-
uct or service you sell, your true product is
MARKETING
OR THE PAST 70 YEARS,
business branding has
been largely guided by principles developed in the
1950s and 1960s, when there were only three televi-
sion networks, messaging through advertising was easy to con-
trol and information flowed from a few “trusted” news sources
to millions of people.
This one-to-many model of information flow has been upended since the advent
of the internet and social media. Now, information flows in millions of different
directions at once—to, from and by people all over the globe—in an all-to-all free-
for-all for eyeballs and market share. Some of the well-established rules of branding
still apply in this new, hyper-connected environment. But that doesn’t change the fact
that building and differentiating a brand is harder than ever and will only prove
tougher in 2015.
MARCH 2015 •
PPB
• 83
THINK
BRAND WORTHY
THE FIVE NEW RULES TO BUILD A TRUSTED BRAND IN 2015
BY OWEN SHAPIRO
F