What consumers want most from a brand is a good product or service. Nobody wants to do business with the devil, though, so values are important. And people pay attention. But the bottom-line is product-first.
There are brands that consumers trust and there are brands that consumers love.
It’s all very well having a purpose and brand values, but how have you translated those into actionable principles that guide what you will do and won’t do as a brand?
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs exposes two quite different aspects of Jobs’ personality and his management style. At times he could be very hard on people, but he also had a skill, like Walt Disney, for inspiring people to do their best work, evoking performances that may have been otherwise unattainable.
Alphabet, Google’s self-created holding company on Friday, has decided not to adopt the “Don’t Be Evil” clause in its code of conduct. It’s settling instead on the less distinctive and vague instruction for employees to “do the right thing” effectively choosing not to go down this path as a way of differentiating itself.
