Beyond the tech suffix
From fintech to medtech, a vibrant and competitive landscape has meant reputation, credibility and vision are competitive advantages that simply cannot be ignored by brands operating in these sectors. A recent Transform breakfast, held in association with purpose-driven brand consultancy Brandpie, brought in-house brand, marketing and comms experts together to share insights on how to navigate this increasingly complex topic.
Technology-based brands, or indeed brands using tech to branch out their business offerings, are faced with great opportunities, but also face great challenges when communicating this change to stakeholders. Transform magazine was joined by brand, marketing and comms experts hailing from a wide range of organisations – including the likes of Airwallet, BT Group, LexisNexis and UK Power Networks – to discuss their perspectives at a recent breakfast session held with brand consultancy Brandpie.
From the get-go, there was a fascinating dialogue surrounding the theme of challenges tech-leaning organisations face from a branding perspective. For instance, one of the issues faced by a delegate was repositioning their company from a more traditional practice in its particular field towards that of a “tech giant”.
“Where is your biggest resistance?” another attendee asked.
They replied, “I think customers are still not quite ready to embrace [our new offering]. They're still using old methods and practices. So I think at the moment there's just that tension to actually change, to embrace the world as it is now.”
Delving a little deeper, we discovered it was more complicated than that. While this person’s older clients may be described to some degree as technophobes, the next generation using their company’s services are much more amenable to this change, therefore creating an interesting yet tricky dynamic surrounding demographics and how to aptly position their service.
Another delegate was quick to pick up on the fact that some of these brand’s competitors position themselves in a more “generic” manner. Refraining from showing themselves off to the world as fully-fledged technology companies, these competitors may benefit from an advantage, the attendee argues, because of the fact that a credibility gap grows the further brands diverge from their core purpose.
They added, “That's one of the things we're all facing when it comes to the ‘suffix question’: you might be credible in your core sector, but does that mean you’re necessarily credible in your adjacencies?”
One delegate had a slightly different perspective, basing their insights on a digital transformation their organisation underwent in recent years. To this attendee, there was a clear differentiation between the “digital transformation” and the “marketing transformation” that then layered on top.
For instance, the investor community, they say, finds motivation to undergo a repositioning because of the operational efficiency it will bring. This person had to actually prove first of all that the transformation journey they were on was financially robust. Once that was achieved, repositioning in the marketplace for end customers became plausible.
This, of course, throws up questions of credibility, as one delegate astutely said.
“It’s the little proof points; you have to start small before you get big,” they replied. “It's credible to have a vision but you then need to break it down into little chunks and go, ‘Okay, these are my building blocks’, and you've got to have proof points along those building blocks to know you’re on the right journey, and you have to be open to pivoting because something bigger and better might come along. But it has still got to be part of the overarching story.”
Another interesting point made regarded the retail industry and its flirtations with technology following the slow demise of the high street. An expensive mistake, one delegate argued, was that many of these companies rushed into investing in online platforms to sell goods when in fact partnering with Amazon, for example, would have sufficed. The moral of the story being that it is not always necessary for firms to be quite so gung-ho when it comes to tech-based repositioning, and that financial considerations – as was laid out above by another delegate – had ought to be seriously considered.
Ultimately, however, the effective repositioning of a brand – perhaps in all sectors, not just in tech – is still somewhat at the mercy of how that company actually operates. One delegate’s organisation had committed itself to heavily investing in infrastructure throughout the UK, which then put it in a far sounder position to communicate to the public that it is a forward-thinking organisation. Alternatively, a big error made by an organisation makes that repositioning all the trickier, if not impossible altogether. As the attendee said, “If you do something dumb, you can't fix it with words.”
The topic of culture also weaved its way in and out of the conversation. Delegates all seemingly agreed that there was a tendency at times for organisations to fixate on ‘shiny objects’ – like AI – and then forget its core strategic plan.
One commented, “It takes really strong leadership [to not focus on too many areas of expertise] because when you're in a leadership team and you're in the exec meeting, the ‘shiny thing’ becomes a really distracting topic. It's actually exhausting because you spend most of your time talking about these things rather than putting a strategy and plan in place.”
Changing tack, issues of perception arose and the difficulty brands face of differentiating themselves – not just from competitors, but from the sector itself. One delegate suggested brands – particularly those in the energy sector – do tend to get tarred by the lowest common denominator. Then again, in industries where the bar is so low, this delegate suggested “doing a few things better can actually make a massive difference and differentiate yourself.”
A worry for everyone around the table became clear when one delegate explained how there sometimes can be a de-prioritisation of marketing, communications and brand creative, particularly during macro financial turmoil or uncertainty, like the 2008 financial crisis.
“That’s happening again now,” one attendee added, to which many nodded in agreement.
It’s a phenomenon that’s hard to revert, too, the delegate argued. When calculating where to invest the scarce quantities of money available to decision makers in business, those three areas can seem “intangible”, making it hard to explain to them how it will impact the general public's opinion of the brand.
“But if you don't invest in them, there's a slow attrition of how people feel about the business. That does come out the other end and it doesn't work well,” they added.
How can this be overcome? One delegate implored the importance of shifting the perception of marketing teams to an area that actually drives business. This can be achieved by quantifying output, such as through lead generation. Another delegate suggested having reports and studies on hand that clearly demonstrate the value of these practices to the bottom line of businesses over extended periods of time.
A final area the group discussed was that of utilising the employer brand in tech-based industries. This received a mixed response, with one delegate suggesting that – while important – it wasn’t high up on their list of priorities at present. Another attendee, interestingly, questioned its importance at all within the field of branding.
They added, “The one big thing I will take away from today is the idea that ‘experience is everything’. And I think the visionary organisations are actually starting to shift away from focusing on ‘What's our employer brand like’, to ‘How do we actually think about the career experience that we're going to shape and drive in the future?’”
Transform magazine co-hosted this roundtable with purpose-driven brand consultancy Brandpie.
