My most recent endeavour to be productive during this summer lockdown was to complete one last online course before my university semester starts next week. I spent 4 days taking a 5-week course (approx. 21 hours) titled “Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour” on Coursera, taught by Prof. Nader Tavassoli from London Business School, University of London.
I was introduced to many concepts (3 Es of brand differentiation, 6 As of employee brand engagement, ABCs of behaviour change, etc.) and they were succinctly explained by Prof. Tavassoli using easy-to-understand case studies and interviews with brand leaders.
What distinguished this Coursera experience from my previous LinkedIn Learning one were the peer-reviewed assignments that required me to use the concepts I’d learned to analyse my preferred brands and their practices.
Here’s a collation of my submissions for the peer-reviewed assignments, featuring some of my favourite brands such as Uniqlo, Innisfree, Ikea and Unilever.
The assignment instructions have been edited to better suit the flow of this article.
Module 1: Brand Purpose & Experience
Choose a brand you are particularly interested in and do the “brand bar stool test”: Ask 3-5 people who know the brand to describe it in a single or a maximum of two concepts (e.g. Volvo = SAFE, Disney = MAGICAL). Do people have a clear sense of what the brand stands for? Please reflect on what you learned doing this exercise in just a few sentences (min. 100 words).
Uniqlo = Comfort. When it comes to choosing what to wear, many would choose comfort over “looking good”. Uniqlo capitalises on this consumer value and has flourished in their brand recognition (at least based on a “brand bar stool test” among my friends). It is reflected in their physical décor, their customer service and most importantly, their clothes. I think Uniqlo made a smart decision in focussing on comfort versus the obvious concept of “looking good” when it comes to clothes. This is particularly true in a country like Singapore, where people have shown to be less than concerned with fashion and style, given the common outfit of “a t-shirt, shorts and slippers”.
Choose a brand you are particularly interested in and determine what differentiates the brand from its nearest competitor. Is the most important reason one might choose the brand is because it has a lower price? Or are there significant functional-performance or service-level differences? Or is it mostly something about the customer experience at different stages of the customer journey (e.g., during purchase, usage, after-sales service)? Please reflect on what you learned doing this exercise in just a few sentences (min. 100 words).
Uniqlo doesn’t have a low price, but it’s deemed reasonable for the quality it provides. The brand prides itself on using “everyday people with a variety of occupations” as models for their clothes, evoking relevance and relatability to their consumers. Their closest competitors in Singapore’s market are probably Giordano, Bossini and maybe Esprit? Uniqlo’s differentiation from its competitors could perhaps be attributed to it being a Japanese brand, and thus of better quality and more on trend, compared to the other brands mentioned, all notably quite dull. One is also always greeted by the salespeople in Uniqlo’s physical stores. This could have enhanced customers’ shopping experiences, in addition to their (albeit limited) alteration services.
Module 2: Brand Design & Delivery
Think of the brand promise for a brand you are particularly interested in. Select a single moment-that-matters along the customer/consumer journey – e.g., making a payment, complaint handling, usage, communications, social media, contract renewal – and describe how you can better bring the brand to life. Please reflect on how your idea will improve the delivery of the brand promise in just a few sentences (min. 150 words).
The words that come to mind when thinking of the Korean beauty/ cosmetics brand, Innisfree, are “clean, natural and green”. They are known for using natural ingredients sourced from Jeju island and “promise” to be eco-friendly in their product design. However, as a semi-regular user of their products, I think they can enhance the customer journey by letting us bring back our used/ empty plastic containers and cartridges for recycling when we go back to replenish our stock of their beauty/ makeup products. In doing so, they get to advocate for their eco-friendly brand promise and encourage us to be better people by doing our part for our planet. This would create a positive cycle that convinces us we made the right choice in choosing Innisfree, a brand that’s good for the planet and for us as people, and we continue to patronise it and reward its effort to be good for the planet.
Module 3: Brand Leadership & Alignment
Refer to an organisation’s website and try to find the following information: 1) On the business side, what are the vision, and purpose or mission? 2) On the brand side, what is the “brand promise”? This may be stated in a slogan or in a customer-facing advertisement, website, or brochure. 3) On the behaviour side, what are the “core values” or “principles”? Some organisations also have an Employee Value Proposition (EVP), a competency framework, a leadership model, or some kind of “our ways of working” model, if this is available.
Each of these codes or guides have their own particular use, so they will not be the same. But they are also general guides to behaviour. Ideally, therefore, they should be connected in some way and support each other.
To what degree do you see an alignment between the codes or guides across business, brand and behaviour? Please reflect on what you learned doing this exercise in just a few sentences (min. 200 words).
Ikea brands itself as a provider of well-designed, reasonably priced, good quality furniture and household items for everyone. They also mention they believe in going beyond home furnishing, extending to making a positive change in society and ultimately the world. Ikea’s sustainability initiatives, like partnering with social entrepreneurs and achieving 100% commitment to sustainable cotton, thus demonstrate an alignment between their brand and behaviour. This is somewhat translated in their (main) business because their household products are claimed to be sustainably sourced and customers who buy these products contribute indirectly to Ikea’s sustainability goals. However, in encouraging people to buy more of their (new) products to drive profit margins, like any other business, consumers are creating more waste. Ikea managed to address this in one of their “a sustainable everyday” features, highlighting their efforts in alleviating the waste problem by creating products from recycled materials, and products that can be “reused, repaired, reassembled and recycled” by their customers. It’s a step in the right direction, though whether customers actually recycle their products is a different issue altogether. Therefore, Ikea’s overall business, brand and behaviour do align with one another in terms of increasing sustainability in the way that they operate.
Module 4: Brand Practices & Engagement
For a brand you are particularly interested in, select a single brand practice – e.g., recruitment, on-boarding (induction), training, reward and recognition – and describe how you can better bring the brand to life through this. How might the change you propose better get people to understand and accept the brand, become advocates and/or ensure that people’s actions better deliver on the brand promise going forward? Please reflect on how your idea will improve the delivery of the brand promise in just a few sentences (min. 150 words).
Ikea brands itself as a provider of well-designed, reasonably priced, good quality furniture and household items for everyone. They also mention they believe in going beyond home furnishing, extending to making a positive change in society and ultimately the world. Perhaps Ikea employees could be attached to an Ikea sustainability initiative of their choice, like a partnership with specific social entrepreneurs or achieving 100% commitment to other sustainable materials (because they’ve already done so for cotton). This would not only encourage their employees to contribute their ideas and efforts to a sustainability cause, which is central to Ikea’s brand promise, it also gives them ownership to their attached initiative and its goals. It’s no longer “something I was tasked to do”, it becomes “a cause I'm passionate about”. The employees could also be given the option to come up with their own initiatives, instead of just choosing from those already in play, thus fostering an environment where pro-activeness in caring for people and the planet, one of their Ikea values, is recognised and rewarded.
Module 5: Brand Metrics & Returns
Think about what you've learned in this course. Please pick the three main concepts that you'll be taking away from this course. For each concept, provide a short description and specify why you think this concept is important (300-500 words).
Overall, I gained valuable insight about looking at branding from inside out, instead of only outside in. The three main concepts I’ll be taking away and applying in my future career are the increasing emphasis on experience (not just effectiveness or efficiency) for brand differentiation, employee-based brand equity, and the ABCs of behaviour change.
The increasing emphasis on experience, specifically customer/ consumer experience, for brand differentiation highlights the idea that being more effective or efficient than one’s competitors is not a sustainable way to differentiate one’s brand because processes and products are easily copied. So the best way forward is to focus on improving the customer experience. This is important because, as was mentioned in the MOOC, customers make decisions based on emotions. And the experience is what primarily affects people’s emotions and encourages brand loyalty, not necessarily how good or cheap the product is.
Employee-based brand equity refers to how a company’s branding affects or changes its employees’ behaviour. This is important because a company is wholly reliant on its employees to deliver the brand to its customers. If the employees themselves, who are considered to be affiliated with the brand in customers’ eyes, do not believe in and actively advocate for the brand, one cannot expect them to able to successfully convince potential customers to do the same.
The ABCs stand for the antecedents, barriers and consequences of behaviour change. This is important in the bigger effort of understanding the customers’ pain points in their journey and their root causes. By being able to empathise with the customers’ perspective, one can not only resolve any issues in one particular customer’s experience, but also provide a better one for all future customers. In fact, this additionally makes for a positive loop of feedback and improvements, reinforcing the benefits of changing behaviour to increase patronage of the brand.
Pick one of the concepts you outlined above and choose a brand that does particularly well in that dimension. Explain why you chose this brand and provide details and/or examples of how exactly it does well in relation to the concept (200-300 words).
When it comes to employer branding and hence employee-based brand equity, Unilever does quite well in establishing itself as an attractive and well-reputed company to work for. Even beyond hiring employees, they have a “reverse mentoring” programme where they provide a platform for undergraduates (in Singapore) to share their thoughts and opinions with Unilever business leaders, in return for receiving career advice and business insights from these experienced professionals. This clearly demonstrates Unilever’s commitment to “every u does good”, where every product of theirs has a social cause, and (young) person’s opinion matters, deserves to be heard and has value. For a multi-national FMCG corporate giant like Unilever to support such initiatives, where profit is not involved at all, it is heartening for current and future employees to see that they are not simply paying lip service when they say they care for people. This “reverse mentoring” programme also shows Unilever’s willingness to learn, underscored by their community involvement initiatives – giving back to society while learning from them as well. Ultimately, Unilever believes their employees, current and future, are “powerful” and “can make an impact in spaces that matter to [them]”. I believe it too.
Cover pic from here.