UNCERTAIN WORLDS

PART 4: DESIGNING RESILIENT BRANDS

12-15 MINUTE READ. PUBLISHED 10 JUN 2024. UPDATED 18 JUN 2024.

CREATIVE COMMONS CC BY ELECTRO STRATEGY STUDIO. WRITTEN BY ADRIAN JARVIS AND SAMUEL TAIT.

TL;DR Brand resilience is an approach to brand and organisational design that focuses on changing needs and market dynamics. At its core is purpose-led brands with business models, architectures and operations that are designed for change. Resilience is both a competitive advantage and a driver for sustainable growth.

ENSURING BRANDS PROSPER IN AN INCREASINGLY UNCERTAIN WORLD.

Resilience is a measure of a brand’s ability to grow through shifts in behaviour, technology, and regulations. Resilient brands adapt to changing needs and recover quickly from setbacks. This helps protect shareholder value and ensure long-term competitive advantage.

The key characteristics of a resilient brand are:

  • ADAPTABLE: The ability to adjust course in response to changing market conditions.

  • PROACTIVE: Continuously seeking new opportunities for growth and improvement.

  • PEOPLE-CENTRIC: Needs and expectations are at the forefront of the brand strategy.

  • COHESIVE: All brand elements work together, creating flexible experiences.

  • SUSTAINABLE: Good practice is integrated into the core to ensure long-term viability.

This article was co-written as a collaboration between ELECTRØ X Empatic & Co, combining expertise in brand and design strategy with business transformation. We work across timezones from the Danube to the Pacific, serving clients of all sizes and stages.

This is part 4 in a series about practical frameworks for brand design. Jump to Part 1 — Connected Brands and Ecosystems, Part 2 — Designing Brands as a Force for Good, Part 3 — Systems Thinking for Brand Designers or Part 5 — Exploring Brand Futures.

1. ACTIVE PURPOSE.

Purpose transformation means redefining the brand’s ‘North Star’ to match evolving market dynamics, societal changes, and internal aspirations. An ‘active’ purpose motivates people and instils value(s) beyond features and function — providing a necessary focus on the long-term vision critical to resilience in a rapidly changing world.

A company’s purpose is its promise to do something for someone. Clear and compelling promises that are kept can align stakeholders on common goals, inspire extraordinary commitment, focus resource allocations on proper priorities, increase accountability, and build a business system that creates mutual benefits for all team members. Harvard Business Review, 2024.

  • PURPOSE TRANSFORMATION: How brands can actively contribute to sustainable futures and improve customers’ lives. Crafting a purpose statement that is motivating and reflects the interconnectedness of everything. HOWIES was founded to improve how clothing is manufactured by pushing for more sustainable practices in an industry renowned for damaging the environment.

  • PURPOSE PILLARS: The key strategic themes that support the active purpose and provide a clear plan for actionable initiatives. These pillars reflect where brands can create value and have leverage to challenge norms. DOVE has challenged the beauty category for 20 years through three purpose pillars: addressing toxic beauty standards, building self-esteem with young women, and improving the environmental impact of their products.

  • GROUNDING PRINCIPLES: To connect a purpose to reality, brands need a ‘South Star’ — the ethos on which they are built that underpins how they operate. These grounding principles ensure that ambitious goals are pursued sustainably and ethically — balancing core values with operational and commercial pragmatism. DARK MATTER LABS uses Life Ennobling Economics as a ‘South Star’ that guides all their projects. Providing the principles for how they think and the actions they take towards their purpose, redesigning the civic infrastructure for a more equitable and sustainable future.

2. ADAPTIVE BUSINESS MODEL.

Rapid change and unpredictability require an adaptive business model. This means regularly rethinking how the business creates, delivers, and captures value.

This alignment helps businesses stay adaptable to the future scenarios that affect long-term viability; including social, economic, and climate change. Advanced approaches need to move beyond prediction to anticipation, identifying the underlying shifts in markets.

An unerring focus on animal rights and material innovation has meant a trajectory that is peppered with history-making moments. Among the highlights: launching the first artificial spider-silk garment in 2017, the first vegan Stan Smiths in 2018, slides made from recycled industrial waste in 2021, and denim made from recycled textile waste in 2022. The Designer Interview: Stella McCartney, Net-a-Porter 2023.

  • RESPONSIVE STRATEGY: Designing flexible approaches to how a brand creates, delivers, and captures value. Allowing brands to move more quickly, adapting to changing needs, technology and regulations. In each of these cases, a culture of innovation and design clearly demonstrates resilience and perpetuates a virtuous cycle of sustainable growth.

    • STELLA McCARTNEY, originally known for luxury fashion, has always incorporated sustainability into her business model. However, the brand has significantly increased its focus on sustainable practice, both driving and adapting to the demand for ethical luxury.

    • SQUARE expands its fintech products for small businesses, including payment processing, point-of-sale systems, and loans. Responding to market needs through digital and physical product design that is simple, functional and beautiful.

    • SPOTIFY leverages data analytics to personalize music recommendations and playlists. Continuously adapting their applications and features to both improve usability and increase play-time. Introducing features to meet the needs of new generations of listeners.

    • DYSON has made significant investments in digital, advanced robotics and AI to respond to market demands for smarter and high-performance products. Expanding R&D, manufacturing capabilities, and direct-retail to address the threat of commoditisation.

    • ETNIA BARCELONA quickly responds to market shifts through their direct-to-consumer model. Continuously refining their retail offer based on customer feedback; from pop-up and shop-in-shop to the home try-on programme (as well as collaborations and capsule collections).

  • ALIGNED VALUE PROPOSITION: Aligning the value proposition with a strategic plan requires understanding how the brand’s purpose guides the value delivered to customers. To develop products and services that meet changing needs, with reduced environmental impact. GINKGO BIOWORKS has a purpose of “making biology easier to engineer” which tightly aligns with its value proposition specifically targetted at complex challenges like food security, climate change, and biosecurity.

3. ARCHITECTURE FOR CHANGE.

Develop a category and brand architecture that responds to changing customer needs, and anticipates emerging spaces and disruption, is essential.

Designing mechanisms for observation and learning that help brands adapt to trends, technologies, and behaviours. To ensure that every aspect of brand strategy demonstrates advantage in a dynamic market — from innovation to experience design.

With recent inflation-driven price increases reaching affordability limits, and with developing market growth tailwinds slowing, companies need to turn their attention to boosting global household penetration and premiumization to find new avenues of growth. This requires a strong understanding of the underlying raw consumer needs to reshape consumer propositions and portfolios to fit those needs. Bain, Reshaping the Consumer Products Agenda 2023.

  • CUSTOMER NEEDS: Identify and address the specific customer needs and preferences. Use need-states to define market segments based on how they consider and buy products in the category. AESOP, a skincare brand, has consistently adapted to the evolving needs in beauty and wellbeing — while always focusing on high-quality, plant-based ingredients and minimalist design.

  • TREND DRIVERS: Track the macro-trends, fads and weak-signals of future disruption that help brands to stay ahead of market shifts. Understanding which trends provide opportunities for innovation and which are an existential threat. BEYOND MEAT has successfully harnessed the trend towards plant-based diets and sustainability, positioning itself as a leader in the alternative protein market by continuously innovating its range and expanding markets.

  • PRODUCTS TRUTHS: Resilient brands need to resonate emotionally with customers while also delivering ongoing, tangible value. The brand architecture should effectively connect needs, trends and these product truths. PATAGONIA has been amplifying sustainability trends by making functional and durable products that meet people’s emotional and rational needs.

4. COHESIVE DESIGN.

A cohesive design ensures all brand elements work together seamlessly — providing clear guidelines for flexibility and responsiveness. This helps brands adapt to change without losing their core identity — encouraging creativity, while maintaining a unified experience whatever the context.

Our new brand DNA reflects what is important for the LEGO brand. It is a beautiful, simple, and well-constructed system that both unifies and breaks free the creative and playful expression of our brand and product experiences. Thomas Holst Sørensen, Global Head of Design, Our LEGO Agency

  • FLEXIBLE IDENTITY: Cohesive design includes visual, verbal and interactive elements that communicate the brand’s essence and values flexibly across all touchpoints. This means maintaining the brand core, while adapting to different contexts. LEGO maintains its core values of creativity and imagination while adapting its brand identity for sub-brands and collaborations; such as the LEGO Ideas platform, LEGO Technic and the Star Wars series.

  • CONNECTED SYSTEMS: Leverage technology to create seamless, personalised connected experiences enhances satisfaction and loyalty. Integrating digital tools and data analytics ensures that all brand experiences are connected and responsive to customer needs. NIKE’s membership programme has an ecosystem of services; from exclusive products to personalised ‘inspiration’ through Nike Training Club.

  • RESONANT STORIES: Craft authentic stories that resonate in culture strengthen emotional connections. These narratives should reflect a brand’s commitment to its purpose and adapt to cultural trends. GLOSSIER builds authentic connections by engaging directly with its community and incorporating user-generated content into its marketing.

5. OPERATIONAL FLEXIBILITY.

In today’s interconnected and uncertain world, building an adaptable organisation is crucial for navigating disruptions and ensuring long-term success. This requires strategies such as responsive operations, continuous improvement, and sustainable action.

For suppliers to really invest in their people, in their facilities, in their technology development, they have to know that they’re going to have the business tomorrow. So one of the things that we really emphasize is stability in the supply base. The benefit of competition is long term. A lot of it is around technology and design. Chris Nielsen, Executive VP, Toyota North America.

  • RESPONSIVE OPERATIONS: Organisations can enhance adaptability by designing flexible processes and cross-training employees. This requires investment in optimisation, effectiveness and infrastructure. Agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban improve responsiveness, and frameworks like ADKAR help create the right capabilities and culture for ongoing change. N26, a digital banking platform, employs development processes that ensure rapid adaptation to regulatory changes and user needs. Also, their staff can be flexibly deployed across customer service and tech-support.

  • CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT: Promoting a culture of learning and growth is vital for resilience. Organisations should encourage knowledge sharing, employee development, and data-driven decision-making. 3M has a “15% Culture” that allows employees to spend part of their time on innovation, especially radical ideas for new products and services.

  • STAKEHOLDER-LED SUSTAINABILITY: The integration of sustainability into business operations has to be led by all key stakeholders, if it is to build resilience and shared responsibility. This involves board-level and investor commitments to achieve Net Zero and reduce the impact of brands on all nine planetary boundaries. IKEA plans to be climate positive by 2030 by reducing emissions across their whole value chain and designing for circularity, while phasing out fossil fuels.

KEY CHALLENGES AND BARRIERS.

It is important to understand that designing strong brands is complex. To succeed, brands must tackle key challenges that can affect their ability to adapt and thrive in uncertain times. Here are the main obstacles and how to overcome them:

  • CHANGE SPEED: A risk-averse culture, bureaucracy and fragmented authority stifle agility and the necessary speed to implement key initiatives.

  • MANAGE PRIORITIES: Budget limitations, competing initiatives, and limited skill-sets restrict innovation and the capacity to exploit new opportunities.

  • ADDRESS RESISTANCE: Deep-rooted habits, challenges to existing influence and control, and employee mistrust will significantly impede change efforts.

  • BREAK SILOS: Misaligned goals, lack of shared vision, and internal competition prevent effective collaboration and information sharing.

  • BUILD NETWORKS: Viewing brand ecosystems as a simple set of suppliers and competitors ignores the importance of networks for sustainable growth.

  • EMBED SUSTAINABILITY: Sustainable practice is often complex and lacks the commitment required to make real progress.

  • TRANSFORM DIGITAL: Established workflows, system compatibility, and cost of change hinder operational flexibility and scalability.

RESILIENCE TO AN UNCERTAIN WORLD.

  • Resilient brands adapt to market shifts, anticipate customer needs, and create new value.

  • ⁠Successful resilience come from an active purpose, responsive strategy, cohesive design, and operational flexibility.

  • ⁠Embracing resilience improves commercial agility and planetary impact, leading to long-term sustainable growth.

GET IN TOUCH TO DISCUSS RESILIENT BRANDS…

This article was co-written by Adrian Jarvis (director at Electro) and Samuel Tait (managing partner at empatic & co). The concepts discussed here are highly scalable from start-ups to multinationals, across a range of categories and territories.