The Visionary Brand | The FUEL | How to Create A Visionary Marketing Strategy

The Visionary Chronicles

EPISODE 152

CHRONICLE: May 7th, 2024

Content from Bryan’s new Award Winning, Bestselling Book

The Visionary Brand, The Success Formula Behind the World's Most Visionary Brands

• Readers Favorite Award Winner: Best, Non-fiction, Marketing book
• Amazon Bestseller.

The Visionary Brand | The FUEL | How to Create A Visionary Marketing Strategy

" In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” – Seth Godin

The FUEL drives great brands to market aspirational products, create and grow an authentic culture, and further solidify their premium positioning.

The synergy realized through the power triad flow (Product, Marketing, and sales) concludes in a successful product launch and broad acceptance by your core consumer. The FUEL you inject into the brand takes the form of visionary marketing across all levels of your brand communications and consumer engagements, both visually and verbally. Ignite it inside your brand; you will feel it across your entire organization and community. The motivation and enthusiasm for your brand’s foundational principles keep your customers coming back and your team passionately driving your future.

FUEL, the marketing strategy that drives your brand, has become one of the most important components to successfully gaining market share and building brand equity. While the continual progression of digital marketing engagement across advertising platforms (social, digital, sponsorships, etc.) has increased, the timeframe in which you can impact your customer has steadily decreased. This provides a challenging backdrop for brands looking to move out of the noise and into their own quiet space. They need to find a way to connect quickly through aspirational messaging with authentic products.

Fuel runs out if you don’t top it off now and then. Your destiny is yours, so you must ensure it is carefully managed. This comes in the form of consistently reiterating your commitment to your ongoing foundational principles—why you exist. Visionary brands constantly inject this way into their brand in all areas, both inside and outside the company.

1. ABT | Always Be Thinking, find a quiet space to realize new ideas, generate concepts and engage with forces outside the four walls.
2. ABL | Always Be Learning, with evolution of AI, most brands were caught off guard, always be in front with your vision, or you will be left behind.
3. ABD | Always Be Different, always find ways to differentiate yourself from your competition, find your Open Water.
4. ABR | Always Be Real, always be authentic in all you do, nobody has ever lasted being something they are not.

Jim Jannard, the Visionary founder of Oakley, always made a point of “re-energizing” the team, never letting us forget what we stood for as a brand. He would give inspirational speeches that built a passion for the brand and pride in being a part of its ongoing success. By injecting this brand inspiration into Oakley through visual (posters, videos, sponsorships) and verbal communications daily, Jim provided a great working experience and fostered pride in what we achieved. Again, as with any messaging, this was reinforced with more than just words; there was also plenty of visual messaging throughout HQ that served as a continual reminder of the dedication of the brand and the founder himself.

The Bloodline | Disruptive by Design | The Injection

Oakley was a brand that embraced disruption, not just with products but in everything we did each day. Whether in products, processes, marketing, engagement, or just being different from the rest, we succeeded where others failed, and this fuel drove us to achieve global market share, a dominating product category share, and revenue in excess of $1 billion.

Having visionary leaders who inspire the masses from the top down drives a passion for the brand and loyalty to its foundation. The brand leader supplies the fuel.

And just what does it look like to add that fuel to your brand? How does a visionary brand define, create, and grow through its messaging and positioning? Regardless of the product, visionary brands can inject inspirational and aspirational lifestyle messaging for their consumers, creating a strong connection point in their daily lives. This connection point eventually turns into your community, where your customers’ loyalty to your brand starts. In our new dynamic, digital age this may be where the relationship starts, but can usually end there as well. If you break trust, confuse your messaging, or disconnect with your core, this is a slow leak that can quickly become a gaping hole, flushing all the great work out with it.

The idea of inspiring your consumers to achieve more through your products or technology is where visionary brands build a dedicated consumer following. In this age of digital destruction for brick-and-mortar retail, creating, engaging with, and activating a base of followers (in other words, the ability to fuel your community) is integral to long-term success and viability. Inspire your customers to follow an aspirational lifestyle with your brand and no other company will be able to replicate it.

“The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.” – Kobe Bryant

You will find that many diversified brands have aspirations as a cornerstone to their ongoing success: Nike, adidas, Ralph Lauren, and more. However, you cannot be a premium brand unless you have defined your aspirational positioning and can consistently deliver this message and value proposition to your target consumer. Fortunately, this can come about organically through staying true to your foundational principles and living up to them authentically through your brand’s culture—if you know who you are, there’s no need to fake it.

In creating their inspirational marketing campaign, “Just Do It,” Nike inspired the masses. The intent behind the campaign was to inspire individuals to achieve aspirational goals, with the product being the mechanism to assist them in achieving the goal. This was a brilliant campaign, as it was the first of its kind to drive messaging beyond product to a desired lifestyle. This would turn out to be a generational campaign. It was timeless and not specific to a sport, gender, or race. “Just Do It” was a campaign to get people active, engaged, and off the couch.

This is how you add Fuel to drive a brand—not through products but through messaging to your loyal community to let them know that the brand is here to help them achieve their goals. Brand, product, positioning, and engagement are key pieces of the puzzle to achieving visionary marketing, and together, they add to your brand’s fuel.

Stay True, Stay Authentic, be Different, and be Great!

Enjoy the Journey!

Bryan Smeltzer, President

LiquidMind Inc.

#TheVisionaryChroniclesPodcast

#TheVisionaryBrandBook

@LiquidMindsite.com

@BryanSmeltzer.com

© All rights reserved, Bryan Smeltzer, 2024

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BRYAN SMELTZER

Bryan Smeltzer is a consumer products business executive and entrepreneur. He has held executive-level roles in business development, Product, and marketing with some of the world's most prestigious brands, including Oakley, TaylorMade, Adidas, K-Swiss, and Schutt Sports, among other international brands. He also founded a men’s apparel brand, successfully running a profitable business for ten years, eventually selling to a VC firm.

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He also hosts a Podcast called The Visionary Chronicles, ranked as the #1 Visionary and Top 50 Marketing Podcasts by Feedspot for 2022 & 2023, and recently finished his first bestselling book, The Visionary Brand, The Success Formula Behind the World’s Most Visionary Brands, and recently received the prestigious Readers Favorite Award for BEST Non-fiction, Marketing Genre book.

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With the book's release, Bryan created The Visionary Brand MasterCourse. The Master Course site at The VisionaryFiles.com includes a Master Course with 18 Video Learning segments and almost 2 hours of Visionary lessons training. Over the past eleven weeks, over 1,784 brand leaders and Entrepreneurs have taken the Master Course! Unleash your potential as a brand leader and take the Master Course.

Sign up for the Visionary Brand Course, and get a FREE hardcopy edition of The Visionary Brand and a “Be Visionary” coffee mug!

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Bryan oversees LiquidMind Inc., a global brand strategy firm that partners with start-ups and establishes mid to large-cap consumer brands to empower businesses to think differently, be different, drive a passionate culture, and execute relentlessly.

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