Mehrzad Manuel Ferdows believes that enduring brands are self-aware, principled, deliberate, adaptive, and focused.
Mehrzad Manuel Ferdows, a leading entrepreneur, advisor, investor, and industrial Engineering graduate from the University of Southern California has given a speech at a conference held in Dubai on brand endurance. He started by pointing out that a myriad of brands from law to insurance to nonprofits to tech is born and eventually die each year. Business settlers might presume the reason behind a brand’s decline is on operational issues of the product or service. Mehrzad Ferdows stated that it is far beyond the narrow bounds of any brand’s functional utility that makes enduring brands appeal and extend. The foundations lie in emotions, aspirations, and values. When companies start from scratch, the founders need to consider both rational and non-rational components capable of invoking responses in the target audiences. On the other hand, successful brands share one key trait which is the ability to successfully navigate change. There are several factors to take into consideration in terms of how some brands endure over decades. These brands have been studied for years to be self-aware, principled, deliberate, adaptive, and focused.
How Self-awareness Help with Brands Endurance?
Mehrzad Ferdows added that many companies hear branding or brand building and automatically associate the term with services that are high cost and lack concrete deliverables. The fact is with a healthy dose of honesty companies can start making a positive impact on their brand. This is to be done with a little brand self-awareness. People might think branding is building something state-of-the-art, however, it is rather helping companies cultivate something they already have. Mehrzad Ferdows pointed out that presenting a distinct character with mastery and confidence is the key attribute of self-awareness. When a company is aware of who they are, what they stand for, and how to express themselves to the world, the decision-making process will then be different whereas companies walking on the path unaware of where they are aiming to stand soon are left deserted and lost. A brand’s self-awareness is just as important as building brand awareness with the latter relying on the former. Self-awareness is obtained by acknowledging a problem, dreaming big, and always being aware of how your brand sounds acts, and looks.
Principled Brands Endure over Decades
Mehrzad Ferdows stated that developing a brand strategy means decision-making in some significant multiple aspects of an organization. Consistent business decisions that are by brand principles will lead to a more principled approach to branding. He further stated that the key attribute to principled brands is that they turn fundamental truths to inform decision-making. Principled brands excel when what they stand for is lived out in the daily lives of their employees. A company’s philosophy to plan carefully, consider wisely, and move with an intention that correlates to its principle is crucial in its endurance.
Deliberateness Is a Key to Brand Endurance
Mehrzad Ferdows added that being deliberate in the way to maximize opportunities and building toward long-term goals is another factor that helps brands sustainability over years. Mehrzad Ferdows pointed out that brands that endured sustained to cultivate the foresight to think ahead and plan for multiple outcomes. There are drawbacks to deliberateness as well. This is when a company’s excessive planning makes it burdensome to respond quickly and adapt to the altering needs of customers.
Adaptive Brands
Mehrzad Ferdows continued that to escape the threats of the changing brave new world of communication and networking, companies selling branded goods need to make significant efforts to be agile and innovative to continue to thrive by understanding what consumers want and how this is evolving and engage with customers in radically new ways. Years of experience permits talented marketing teams to better understand their audiences, respond to them to stay ahead of the curve. The adaptive brands are harmonized with the shifting demands of their audiences. They are all-time open brands to new tastes, personalities, and identities.
Staying Focused Leads To Brand Endurance
Mehrzad Ferdows argues that brands that set defined goals capable of being measured in terms of their progress stay concentrated. This attentiveness combined with consultations to uphill battles in popular perceptions has pledged industries achievements through decades. A focused, targeted and well-strategized branding endeavor will yield results at a higher rate thus it provides the necessary data of what works and what not to help build the moving forward map. Staying focused; these brands are built by identifying the target audience in advance and cater the messaging to fit the requirements and needs of their customers. Additionally, by employing repetition and familiarity in its messaging the audience will take hold of the brands quicker. He added that investing in achievable goals is the key to burgeon.
Not Every Brand Need the Same Set-Up
Mehrzad Ferdows concluded that the most enduring brands understand and harness a mixture of the above-mentioned traits. There is no clear-cut single recipe for success. Leaders and industry founders need to take account of their own best strategic pathway which is varying for every industry and each brand. Being self-aware of the expectations and opportunities, harnessing strengths and weaknesses, and looking for inspirations somewhere outside of the competitive set have resulted in brands’ sustainability along with evolving to better navigate change. These timeless brands with years of experience, talented marketing teams, and the ability to understand their audiences will certainly know how to keep consumers from being drifted. They’re rigorously aware of how their audiences are changing and refashion their brand to meet those changes.
About Mehrzad Manuel Ferdows:
Mehrzad Ferdows is a leading entrepreneur, advisor, investor, and industrial engineering graduate from the University of Southern California.