Successfully building a brand is about creating a complete and repeatable user experience at all levels. One that is alive and keeps given feed back to the consumer and the consumer to the brand. It’s this relationship that builds powerful and strong brands.
In the technology space the non-consumer focused IT brands (information technology for those not into geek speak) have to constantly beat out their rivals in the area of building trust. It’s completely Darwinian out their and the world can hange dramatically from year to year or month to month. What was a $150 million company named Verity is no longer as it was eaten by it’s competitor Autonomy along with all the customer loyalty and brand perceptions. With technology trust is built on usability, reliability and being the dominant player. And that comes from eating the competition as fast as you can.
Look at Cisco Systems or Oracle. They have some name recognition with the average consumers but not much. But it when it comes to technology and enterprise infrastructure these guys are the heavy weights. They both dominate in their respective areas, Cisco in networking systems and Oracle in database software that powers, well just about all large corporate and government data infrastructures. In both cases they grew through acquisitions not innovation. They “ate” small competitors and new technologies that allowed them to become dominant players. This kept them as the big players in growing markets keeping them in the running when it came to a major platform choice in their category of technology. Unusually no one ever gets fired for picking the big, the stable, the not-going-away-tomorrow company that justifies long term investment. Innovation is important but the number one thing in large technology companies is stability.
When it comes to hardware HP and IBM again play the game of dominant player but ultimately HP wins out on all fronts. Why? Because HP does something none of the other brands I mentioned do: it appeals to the lowest level of average consumers experience, the home printer, to the most complex purchase a complete server infrastructure for a Fortune 500 company. When you connect at all levels to the consumer experience you build value beyond your technology. The real value of a brand is that it’s always being experienced by the consumer at all levels. What does HP say? reliable, predictable, practical, good value. And, now they are moving into consumer electronics such as hi-definition TV and entertainment systems, why? Because they can build and enhance their customer experience applying the same brand values to new technology at all levels of the customer experience.
I doubt if on a daily basis many people are thanking Cisco or Oracle for the “experience” they’re having on their networks with their databases.