Thinking of all the brands in this era, we realize there are a lot of products and services that customers have to choose from. So, how does your company differentiate from the others?

Making your brand feel real to your customers helps with marketing a lot more because people can relate to it. People don’t buy the best product, they buy the story that comes along with the product.

The real proof is Apple’s campaign from 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, become CEO, and his job was to revive the company — they had only 90 days of money left. Jobs realized people don’t buy the best product, they buy the best story. He went from a nine-page ad to just two words: “Think Different”.

Brands will behave like real persons

Technology is advancing day by day, and brands have to adapt. This way, startups have to change their mindsets as well for the future that has to come.

Startups should also take into account the new generations that will come to the consumer market. It is said that 40% of consumer sales are impacted by Gen Z which means they have buying power.

The more we think about the future, the more we realize that companies with a developed personality will survive in the competitive market.

1. Gen Z will become customers

This generation has different interests and passions than the earliest ones. They believe in climate change and other causes, so they expect brands to be a part of it. Also, they have grown up being surrounded by technology and new gadgets, so they communicate differently with brands.

• Customers will have high expectations — Studies suggest that Gen Z’s brains have evolved to process more information at faster speeds, so keeping their attention is challenging.

• Tech industries will be at the top — This is the first generation of true natives to technology, who have been tuned in almost since birth.

• Bringing in a new market strategy — They are more skeptical, and many of them want to save money, so marketers should use multimedia like the video to demonstrate how their product works and how they can provide value to Gen Z.

2. Successful Brands will have opinions

Many companies will struggle to keep up with the new expectations of younger generations. Because Generation Z admires brands that do more than just sell a product or provide a service for profit, brands will have to sustain the new generation’s causes.

• Gen Z admires opinionated brands — Tesla is one of the examples, Tesla has garnered such success among younger generations because it is a company that focuses on innovation as well as maintaining social and environmental responsibilities.

• Conversations with brands will be in high demand — For being easily found and staying at the top of the mind, marketers need to encourage conversations from their customers with their brand.

• Creating controversy — Nike is known for endorsing social issues. Their ‘Just Do It’ campaign is known for protesting against racial injustice. After their ‘Dream Crazy’ ad in 2018, haters reacted immediately with firing their sneakers, while the rest of the world praised the act.

3. Brands will get close to Nike and Apple

Nike and Apple have developed their brands for decades and they still do. Nike has fans because they stand for something or are against it. Apple has a good story that people relate to, and they believe that customer service represents the gold standard for selling and supporting tech gadgets.

• Brands will have a good story — Apple’s ‘Think Different’ campaign opened up a computer world for a lot of people who thought differently because back then, Apple’s first computer was seen as a simple toy.

• Customers will see themselves in the brand — Apple was created for creatives, who Apple says ‘’they change things, they push the human race forward’’. Nowadays most of the professional creatives work on a Mac, and it’s even an industry standard.

• Creating a special place in the customers’ minds — Creating an experience around your product that focuses solely on the customers themselves will make them feel good, and people will be ready to pay even more to experience it again.

4. Brands will have an appearance

As we already know, the younger generation is tech-savvy and they communicate mostly online. That’s why brands will have to behave like real persons that will engage more often with them. Discord is a very good reference, because they make jokes, post images with them, and they enter in conversations with their followers.

• Develop a personality — It’s clear that brands will act like real persons because customers buy from a brand they recognize themselves in.

• Becoming more creative — Even more, websites nowadays try to compete with each other based on their look. During this year, more brands started to include on their websites animated illustrations, micro-interactions, augmented reality, 3D illustrations, storytelling.

• Coming up with original ideas — Consumers want experiences that are tactile and emotionally affecting — and they want to give a hand in shaping the story. This is something that makes you think!

Lastly,

Companies will come to understand in the upcoming years that people will choose their product for who they are and what values they reflect throughout their brand.