Digitise or be digitalised

Digitalisation is a new way of creating and capturing value that hugely affects products, business models and communities.

From a brand-strategy perspective, it is also the ability to detect emerging patterns and help them to take shape that is the key to creating value and obtaining results in a world immersed in this process of digitalisation, which changes without warning, erratically and chaotically.

Faced with this, brands must free themselves of outdated paradigms, assuming a clear intention to better understand their future path.

In the digital world, the past is no more than the present, projecting itself towards the future.

Allegro 234 takes five elements into account when developing a new branding strategy, which, recognising the profound changes in a digitalising company, guarantee a positive impact in economic, social and environmental terms:

1. Interdependence in a world of networks and connections, where the brand must construct community, recognising that network and community are two different things: the network connects; the community cares.
2. Co-creation understood as quicker and shorter life cycles in which experiences are in ‘beta mode’ and where the brand, through the intention that it transmits, provides an action framework for the innovation processes that require the involvement of different members of the community conversing about, with and through, the brand.
3. Long-term relations based on conversations prior to any type of transaction, even without any resulting commitments, where what is intuitively related to people are the values that they share. The brand transmits these values, propelling forward to intentionality.
4. Reputation built upon trust and authenticity (and defensively, with transparency), in an interconnected world where the responsible consumption of conscious brands is widespread, considering the economic uncertainty that surrounds us as a rule.
5. Boldness and flexibility to change, recognising that disruption is the new convention that makes static (or hardly dynamic) companies be perceived as boring and/or not responsive to people’s changing needs. This is a difficult topic as change and adaptation of a business model and therefore, the brand, require significant financial, structural and mental effort.

It can be said in this online world, that the key is in the values that the brand experiences, shares and implicitly communicates. When these brands become the firm’s sole signature – the spirit of all that they do: every idea, action and experience; it can be said that the company has reached brand clarity in a digitalised world.

You may be interested in reading “En route to brands with purpose”

To allow for an in-depth conversation on the digital world, the brand strategy has to be crafted.

Remember –repeat after me, “craft evokes traditional skill, dedication, perfection through the mastery of details”

The challenge of brands faced with digitalisation is that the interconnections between people, disruptive underlying changes of the context and the construction of new products and services cause a profound change in how companies now seen as “problem solvers” are considered. That is, above a perspective that is inward-looking, outdated, limited and at times, obsequious, only on the lookout for shareholders’ interests.

Twenty-first-century companies will be known as communities of human beings, not as a collection of human resources. Otherwise, “Houston, we have a problem!”

This leads to the need for high levels of collaboration in companies whose brands have the same common intention as the organisation.

Digitalisation is not dehumanisation!… in fact, it must be the complete opposite

The creation of a brand strategy that accompanies the firm in this new path lies in the detection of subtle disruptions that can undermine the business in the near future. There is no technique or programme for this, just a sharp mind exposed to the situation. Such disruptions are unexpected and irregular, essentially unprecedented.

You may also like to read “The unbearable lightness of subtle disruptions”

For branding this translates into the need to merge formulation and implementation into a fluid process through which creative branding concepts evolve in a world which in many cases is turbulent and disruptive. Have a look at our work on “Crafted Branding”.

This brand vision in light of the challenge of digitalisation gives the company an authentic air and a unique position in the market, generating real and measurable value for all audiences.

You may also be interested in reading “Brands with conscience, their Focus on social”