Knowing the other, a matter of common sense

A brand is nothing without relationships. To initiate and cultivate any relationship, it is essential to know who it is addressing and to have a good knowledge of the person it intends to seduce or convince and with whom it wishes to establish trust and sharing.

1. First, know yourself

Knowing the other cannot have any real meaning if we do not know ourselves, if as a brand, we do not know what we are capable of being and doing, what we are able to contribute and maintain, what we intend to defend and what characterizes our positioning. Before defining the other, it is therefore necessary to define oneself. This is the basis of a branding approach.

2. Define your objectives and choose the right tools

Knowing who you are talking to and who they are allows you to determine the right communication tools (insight), the brand language to adopt, the key moments when your targets will be most receptive and the most appropriate media.

There are a number of approaches and tools that can help you define your targets or potential partners. The most common are social and economic groups, cultures, aspirations and behaviours that define “tribes”. Depending on the extent of the study, it will also be a question of describing “personae” (from the Latin persona, which means a personality, what characterizes a person); precise and sensitive portraits of typical customers, users or partners. A complementary way of understanding your customer is to analyse their journey or the way they establish a relationship and interact with your brand, its services or uses your products.

While these approaches are undoubtedly useful, one of the main challenges is to determine why and how to use them. Because the more deeply you want to know the other person, the more time, skills and resources are needed that not every SME has. Defining tribes, for example, is relatively easy, whereas establishing personae is more complex.

3. Beware of miracle recipes and use common sense

We all dream of mastering everything and succeeding quickly. And this sometimes leads us to adhere to questionable approaches or criteria, or to opt for inappropriate tools (or, worse, to use the right ones in an unsuitable way).

Moreover, some of the most popular theories, which may seem attractive, are not as useful, relevant or well-founded as they would have us believe. This is the case, for example, with the concept of ‘generations’ (X, Y, Bataclan, etc.), which marketing and the media like to brag about (this will be the subject of a future article).

So, if certain tools and processes have proved themselves, it is not all science in terms of marketing or branding (far from it!). It is therefore not always easy to sort out what is really useful in a field as sensitive and essential as branding and communication. The rule here, as in any field, is to keep a critical mind and use common sense.