On The Importance Of Not Letting Your Own Beliefs & Values Get In The Way Of Your Brand Strategy

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of keeping an open mind and checking your own beliefs and prejudices when doing research and developing a brand strategy. Of course, the most public example of this trap was last year's Bud Light Saga, where the marketing team's belief and value system had disastrous consequences for the brand. It is easy to speak about it and mention it, but it is so difficult not to fall into that trap yourself.

I recently worked on a really interesting project. As part of the discovery phase, I had the opportunity and privilege of speaking to around 30 to 40 members of the Divine 9 sororities. If you haven’t heard of the Divine 9, or D9, look them up. They are a powerhouse of African American women and men grouped in 9 sororities and fraternities. For context, Kamala Harris is a member of one of those sororities (please, no politics in my thread).

Talking to those 30/40 women was in itself, and at a personal level, highly inspiring. One theme that came up consistently in my interviews, and this was not surprising, was the importance of representation in the companies they wanted to do business with. This very much reflects the public narrative of diversity, equity and inclusion. There is nothing surprising and nothing wrong here. And based on this input, it would have been easy to build a brand strategy around this territory/theme. And fail.

However, our surprise came when we quantified those learnings. Those who know me or who have worked with me know that I am a big fan of the mix and balance between qualitative and quantitative research in my projects.  One of the many reasons is that this combination of methodologies often allows you to challenge your own beliefs.  If you keep an open mind.

When we put this information in the context of other decision-making criteria (also gleaned in the qual), our quantitative data showed that representation and “doing business with people like me” dropped at the bottom of the list of selection criteria. Most important was the ability of these companies to excel at what they do and over-deliver on their core promise. My NDA prevents me from being more specific, but to use an analogy, let’s say that if you run a restaurant, the quality of the food and the service is perceived as way more important than the ethnicity of the owner. In hindsight, this sounds obvious, but the reality is that it is so easy to ignore these types of facts and data points, especially when they contradict your beliefs and values (the evil confirmation bias). Again, just ask the former CMO of Bud Light.

Now to clarify, this doesn’t mean that representation isn’t important. It is hugely important. But in the broader context, and since our job was to create a powerful and motivating brand strategy, representation on its own wasn’t perceived as motivating enough. It helped with the differentiation but not with motivation.

This is why I love my job. Every project typically includes such an aha! moment, a moment where I have to check and revisit my own beliefs and values, a moment where my perspective changes. Yesterday I posted about discovering new territories by asking the right, and different, questions even in highly established categories. Today was more about the potentially dangerous effect your own values and world view can have on the strategies you develop and the resulting business success of the brands you are involved with.   

In the next few days, I’ll post about how the public narrative about a specific ethnic group can be totally wrong. Another thing I have discovered by mixing qual and quant

 #brandstrategy #confirmationBias #marketresearch