Like Keystone firms in business ecosystems, successful brands create a strong perceived role. How do you identify your brand’s current perceived positioning, and how that may be moved towards Keystone status?

We are becoming familiar with the concept of business ecosystems, each with a Keystone brand upon which all other players depend for vitality. Such a model in its original form is inevitably focussed towards supplier-side issues. PC manufacturers benefit because Microsoft launched memory-hungry Vista. Tesco and its suppliers gained cost and time savings from the creation of an e-ordering network 20 years before the dotcom boom.

Amazon has developed efficient supply chains to vend now almost every area of goods. What happens, however, if we transfer the ecosystem approach to a customer focus? What role can brands play in the customer’s own “ecosystem” of work, family and leisure; and can Business ecosystems theory help us here?

Trusted brands: Keystone role

Increasing pressures mean that customers avoid unnecessary decision-time. Brands in the widest sense (these may be stores’ own labels) relieve risk by offering reassurance; often relegating price to a secondary consideration. Perhaps one of the simplest and hence best examples of this is the long-running Ronseal positioning/ strap line “It does exactly what it says on the tin”. No-one is pretending that a customer’s life will grind to a halt if their garden seat is not varnished and ready for use. On the other hand, given the time invested in doing the job properly and the potential disruption of not being ready for the weekend Bar-B-Q, a satisfactory outcome is essential. 

Mark Iansiti, a leading guru in business ecosystems defines a successful Keystone brand strategy as having two parts. The first is to create value within the ecosystem. In brand terms such value may be purely functional e.g. this Espace carries all the kids and all their games kit, enabling my family to meet their weekend timetable. On the other hand, most successful brands also offer an emotional/ non-functional component. This is IKEA furniture I’m not ashamed to show my friends, even if it is very affordable. This red iPod nano proves I am really cool.

The second component Mark Iansiti notices for a Keystone brand is to share value with other participants in the ecosystem. Our village store has a role in the community far deeper than providing milk and papers. It provides the focus of virtually all social interaction; it raises the alarm if elderly regulars do not come in on time, key notices are placed there etc.

Web 2.0 offers brands the potential for a wider role in customers’ lives-for example enabling social groups, offering relevant advice and support etc. There has also been success when brands emphasise “green” behaviour, as long as it is seen as legitimate and not exploitative. The Co-op and its Fair trade initiatives is another good example where give-back need not be to the original customer to be appreciated and lock in the brand with customers.

Close to being Keystone?

The honest answer may be, some way off. You may even perceive you brand, if only in private, as a quasi-commodity offering in an area not particularly significant to customers. Disabuse yourself of that thought. If your brand didn’t matter, it would not be part of an £x m market. Toothpaste helps stop dental decay, but for example its regular use may also assist you in getting a job, or securing a new partner- pretty Keystone roles. One of the principles of real ecosystems is that even the smallest species of insect has its part to play, and the system will notice its absence. Are you sure you know what roles your brand currently encompasses, and what it could fulfil?  How well does it compare with other potential solutions to the same need, and how could you develop a more unique solution?

Getting a handle on the situation.

There are a number of techniques to assess your brand’s current position versus its competitors, and hence the potential to reach for Keystone status.   A recent new technique with unique advantages is the “Myscope” process we have just developed- see www.myscope.com. This can be used both as an aid to developing an effective marketing strategy and to assess the outcome of marketing investment. Myscope brings Internet benefits of speed (days, not weeks for results) and quantitative depth to the well-respected previous manual process for mapping brands; for example using a marked-out floor mat.

Brands under Myscope analysis are simultaneously assessed onscreen against relevant potential strengths within their particular marketplace-just as brands are compared in real life. Respondents can, and do, adjust their Myscope chart as other brands are added to the chart, so that the outcome is rich in information- expressing the relative relationships of all the brands under consideration on a multi-dimensional model. Myscope not only continuously monitors your own actions, but also evaluates competitive response, as all brands jostle for primacy.

A typical Myscope before completion (see www.myscope.com ).

The aim remains the same

It is irrelevant whether your brand is a service or physical product, whether it operates in the B2C or B2B area, if it represents a single product or is a portfolio brand. New techniques and new technology will always offer the opportunity to strengthen and reposition your offering. The objective is always to move perception along the direction analysis indicates is most likely to increase Keystone status.  Relevant data will indicate your level of success by target sector and amend your strategy or tactics as appropriate.

And finally…

Here is a very simple tip whenever you are in regular dialogue with your customers about your brand; and if you are not, why not? Listen out for any statement that begins “I couldn’t manage without my (Shredded Wheat)”. Probe why? And you are very possibly on the way to identifying a Keystone brand parameter, which can then be measured and strengthened.  In the real instance above, it led us to developing the “Bet you Can’t Eat Three” advertising campaign emphasising the unique substantiality of the product, whose strap line lasted unchallenged for almost 2 decades!

Dudley George MBA FCIM

Email:   dudley@drgmarketing.co.uk
Web:  www.drgmarketing.co.uk

Dudley George has had around 30 years experience in research and marketing encompassing UK, US and French multinational companies. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a member of the Market Research Society and of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. His company DRG Marketing Ltd operates the patented MyscopeTM competitive mapping technique.