The previous article discussed the six pillars of distinction for brand awareness strategy. These pillars include a strong value proposition, brand story, service/product differentiation, audience-focused marketing, customer experience, and impactful messaging and design. These are the six strong pillars your company will stand on. By harnessing the power of these six pillars, your company can seamlessly mold its brand awareness strategies to align with both your core values and evolving consumer behavior. The result? An expanded reach and heightened visibility that transcends your intended target audience. Let’s see how it’s done.

Before starting, one quick word – If you are a business owner, feel free to share this article with your marketing team to brainstorm effective ways to implement this principle for your business.

Now, to understand how to build brand awareness strategies that connect your Six Pillars with the evolving consumer behavior and market, at TheBrandformer, we would like to introduce the concept we call “Chessketing”, a combination of Chess and marketing.

A definition of the word “Chessketing” would be something like this – a game combining a chess mindset with the game of marketing.

Finding Harmony

There are many marketing approaches you can adopt to amplify your brand awareness, social media, guerilla marketing, advertising, etc. Regardless of the strategies you opt for, prioritizing a focus on balance between your loyalty to your business’s fundamental principles (The Six Pillars) and evolving consumer behaviors is the best way to adaptability. Flexibility is the name of the game. Bruce Lee famously said, “Be water, my friend.” Water doesn’t change its chemical formula, it simply adapts to its environment. Seeking this equilibrium should be the focal point, your opening move in every Chessketing game.

Consider Starbucks as an illustration. They continuously align themselves with emerging trends while remaining steadfast in their commitment to their pillars. You can clearly see the application of this strategy in their design & branding – both have evolved over the years while staying true to the foundational ideas of Starbucks’ core philosophy.

Now remember, the need to appear consistent is inherent in human beings. And human beings are consumers who seek consistency in the brands and businesses they connect with.

Marketing, like chess, is not a binary game. Going from “it will either align with my pillars or fit the changes in the market” to “how to build my brand awareness strategy in a way that fits my company’s pillars AND the changes in consumer behavior?” is challenging. However, this shift in mindset can be a valuable asset to staying relevant in a dynamic industry and winning the long-term game.

In the above discussion, we emphasized two contradictory ideas: consistency and adaptability. How can you achieve both simultaneously? The answer lies in the art of persuasive communication.

The Art of Adaptive Marketing

A persuasion is a powerful tool. How you present your ideas and brand in your marketing strategies determines whether you effectively demonstrate consistency with your pillars while showcasing your ability to adapt to your audience’s needs. By employing persuasive techniques, you can strike a balance between these seemingly contradictory concepts. Achieving this balance requires outstanding creative direction and finesse in implementation. Sounds tough? Well, it is.
As an illustration, let’s see how Apple effectively balances adaptation to market and consumer behavior changes while staying true to its core values.

Apple’s value proposition is centered around serving individuals who “think different”, and as a brand, it has always differentiated itself from competitors. Recently, the tech industry has witnessed a shift in the market towards augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) products. During this same wave, through multiple market strategies, Apple announced its upcoming product, the Apple Vision Pro. What is striking is, in all of their marketing strategies and throughout all the channels, Apple succeeded in intentionally avoiding the use of the terms “AR/VR headset.” Why? By refraining from using these terms they escaped the direct comparison trap, and with that, Apple remained true to its core value of competitive differentiation. This strategic, conscious, and calculated move symbolizes their commitment to consistency and adaptability using persuasive communication.
As a result, Apple achieved multiple objectives:

1. They successfully adapted to the changing market and consumer behavior.
2. They stayed faithful to their six Pillars of Distinction by presenting and communicating the coming of a new product tailored to the unique mindset of those who “think differently.”
3. Within their brand awareness strategy, they skillfully utilized persuasive communication to present the product in a way that stayed true to their core principles while also acknowledging changes in consumer behavior. By employing careful persuasive techniques, they subtly conveyed that their product answers consumer need for AR/VR products while belonging to a distinct category. As a result, not only they expanded their reach and visibility beyond their usual market and target groups, they even reinforced their position as the market leader in a “class” they uniquely occupy.

If we use the analogy of a chess game for the concept introduced earlier, this approach by Apple can be described as a sophisticated game of 3D chess.

To sum up

long-term success and top-notch brand awareness strategies require connecting your business’s Six Pillars of Distinction with changes in consumer behavior through brand awareness strategies. The concept of Chessketing, which encourages using the mindset of chess in marketing, emphasizes the need to keep consistency, flexibility, and adaptability on a balanced scale. Just like water adapts to its environment while maintaining its essence, to succeed in a constantly evolving market, businesses need to find a harmonious balance between their core principles and the evolving needs of consumers. Persuasive communication can be a powerful instrument to reconcile the consistency of a company’s core concepts with the adaptability required to navigate the ever-changing market landscape.