What has your brand created for me lately?

Every once in a while a product comes along that sells itself. (Think of Apple's iPhone. All you had to do was hold it and you were sold right?) And sometimes there are brands that transform customers into admirers, followers or even advocates. (I'm told once you drive a Ferrarri you never go back to a Volkswagen. Or once you own a Leica you’ll sell your Nikon etc.)

But for companies who fight the tough fight, trying to gain market share by convincing prospects of a superior brand, features, benefits or better differentiated solutions, there might be hope.

Increasingly brands can provide something that is useful, usable and desirable to the customer that does not happen to be either their product, services or solutions.

Think of these examples:

1. Nike sells shoes and clothing. And with “Nike +” they also provide a utility platform that allows runners to connect socially.

2. BF Goodrich sells tires but recently created a social community called “Nation of Go” the heart of which is the Web site and App that allow drivers to share, contribute and create their favorite driving tours.

3. Hasbro needs to sell “Monopoly City Edition” game sets and creates a 3D Monopoly inspired online game attached to Google Maps and Google Earth that allows users to compete for big prizes.

4. Nokia sells phones among other things.They created a mobile App called Nokia Money to do basic financial transactions through their mobile device.

You get the idea.

Think of it like this. Marketers have always given stuff to customers and prospects to keep them interested in their brands. And it used to be good enough to offer a coupon, a whitepaper or more recently watch a video of a white paper as a means of connection. But now brands need to try harder to become more customer-centric and connect in more meaningful ways. We need to be asking: “What do my customers need, want and desire? What would make their jobs easier, their lives more fulfilled and maybe more fun?”

Combining that customer insight with creative and engaging solutions, is the key to creating usable, useful and desirable experiences that ignite your customers and your brand. Activity like that keeps your brand alive and well considered for the slam dunk purchase.

The Critical Nature of Optimization

Recently I had the opportunity  to view the final testing and tweaking  of car #607, a late 90's Le Mans veteran, Audi R8. This car just a few years ago was the most sophisticated race car available. A durable, incredibly well-built car as far as race cars go. Many would say the R8 is superior to the new generation of Audi R10s that is Audi's first foray into diesel race cars. Amongst the competition to which an entire engine would be  sacrificed per race, this R8's engine can last forever. It is that good.

But the technology is only as good as the people putting it all together. Precision engineering and racing technology mirrors the creation of high-performance web sites for example, in a interesting way. For months and months the R8 team worked on getting the requirements nailed down, the parts together, assembling the framework and large components. Months passed as pieces of the puzzle like: wheels, drive train, engine, suspension, were individually tested. Some pieces were swapped out and replaced with items with different specs such that other components might work better. Months of this big picture adjustment occurred. Weeks after firing up the newly rebuilt engine,they started what is arguably the most important part of bring the Audi R8 to life: testing, tweaking and optimization. Down to the weight load on each wheel, which is adjusted by hand and a hex wrench to within millimeters of precision, every possible variable and system is tweaked to provide the best system performance for the next race. This is the portion of the build process where all of the team's experience comes into play. Optimization occurs for every track, every race and is configured down to being able to handle track conditions and the variables of say, the weather.

Without the optimization of the car, the R8 would be just another great race car with no real chance of winning a race. Much like launching a web site without spending time and effort going over usability, analytics strategy or thinking about optimization opportunitie