When Ford started making cars, the world operated on the “Production Concept”. The more you can produce, the more you can earn money. Because cars took longer to get manufactured, the whole focus of organizations was to enhance the production cycle. The demand was enough out there. When Ford and Toyota solved the issue by making a production assembly line, the production got fast. (This is the summary of the second industrial revolution)
The next concept was “The Selling Concept”. Everyone could easily manufacture the products now. There was enough literature on how to put up the system and get it running (Thanks to Henry Fayol, I would say). Now there were more players playing against each other in all the industries. The selling concept stated that it was all about convincing power. If you can sell a comb to a person who had no hair, you are the winner. This was the time when people trained gigantic sales teams and sold fax machines visiting offices. This was the charismatic salesman time when showing success was the key to selling (The Practice very common right now in Pakistan’s real estate sector).
With the rise of electronic media and social media, it became easy to reach people in mass amounts at once. Now the smarter businessmen were not busy training huge teams to make sales, instead, they were busy crafting a singular message to reach all their audience at once. They controlled Demand and Supply. The one who knew how to create demand and how to control supply was the successful businessperson. Everything was dependent on “Product, Price, Promotion, placement” – The Marketing Concept.
This is exactly when human beings even started wasting good products by dumping surplus to oceans just to create scarcity and maintain prices. Those who used this phase in their favor made organizations that are bigger than the countries now.
This all is over now! If the businesses of today don’t evolve with the “Branding Concept”, they will struggle to survive in the upcoming decade.
The world demands relevance and feeling more than ever now. Responsible production and responsible consumption is a concept now which was never so prevalent before. The world is looking forward to authentic and raw brands that they can relate to. Brands now need to have a strong brands story and the consumer cares about BTS (Behind the scene). The Branding Concept is all about crafting an authentic story based on strong values and sticking to that story no matter the circumstances. This needs thorough research on consumer behavior, market dynamics, pain points, the owner’s vision, and the capacity of the team. There are countless channels to reach your audience today, a good brand puts a lot of thought into which channel to choose and spent energy on and which channel to avoid.
It is the time of customized message, and not a mass message. A message that can resonate with everyone on a different level. This is a long-term approach and not an overnight success formula.
