As we’ve been discussing lately, the ideas of building a New Brand Growth Playbook and acting as a Brand-Driven Business is crucial for the long-term brand success. There are several examples of how businesses are living this reality in today’s marketplace. Here, we’re talking about the Warby Parker’s, Airbnb’s, and Spotify’s of the world. The companies that were once deemed “disruptors” but now executing as sustainable and continuously growing organizations. It wasn’t solely a groundbreaking idea that lead to the success of these companies, we had plenty of options for eyeglasses, we could already rent vacation homes and music was everywhere. There is something fundamentally different about the mindset and view of the world these companies have compared to their traditional counterpart. 

These differences have become insights to our views for the New Brand Growth Playbook, acting as Brand-Driven businesses and using technology as a driver for brand growth. With these mindsets as our foundation, we’ve created a Brand Growth Stack that illustrates how the various pieces start to come together. It showcases how the brand not only defines the business, but how it should be fulfilled across the entire stack. From deciding what technology to use, what experiences to build and how to build relationships, the brand should be fulfilled at each touchpoint for the consumer. 

The Brand Growth Stack

As you can see, the brand is defined at the top and drives the decisions all the way through the Experiential Stack where the interaction with consumers happens and into the Technology Stack where the engine is built to power the brand.

Brand Stack

This is the foundational work in defining the brand and business and operational models to fulfill the brand. Utilizing these elements, we can understand what the consumer needs from our brand, products or services and how they interact with us. This gives the inputs for defining and mapping a holistic consumer journey to build.

Experience Stack

The Experience Stack is enabled by the collision of the Brand & Technology Stacks.This stack includes the touchpoints and platforms we activate to not only service our customers, but fulfill our brand promise. Each touchpoint and interaction model plays a crucial role in the overarching experience of our brand and how it builds ongoing relationships with our consumers. This will include all retail, ecommerce, mobile, website, advertising and experiential platforms. Both offline and online. All connected by the tech stack (below) to tell a consistent and evolving story to our individual consumers. 

Technology Stack

This is the engine that powers it all. As brand owners and managers, this is where we get the data that allows us to make business decisions based on brand, business and consumer metrics and insights. This is also the place where all the martech and data is developed and accessed to power the Experience Stack. This stack will be curated and built in accordance to the brand strategy and rules as well as the experience principles and user journey we’ve defined in the other stacks. 

This is a very simplistic view of what the foundational elements and  of the New Brand Growth Playbook and playing field looks like. The inputs from the Brand Strategy and Experience Principles will be the leading force to execute on the Experience and Technology Stacks towards a truly Brand-driven Business.