ExperienceCurve by Karl Long

Experience Branding was one of four trends that are changing the face of branding as proposed in a Prophet press release.

Now, most people who have been exposed to business strategy have heard of Michael Porter, but I donít think many would think of him as a pioneer of brand strategy. When it comes to experience branding though the Porter provides a framework that could help guide many brand analysis and strategy tasks.

There is a fascinating parallel between this concept of brand experience, and the concept of the “activity based view” of the organization as proposed by Michael Porter in his paper “What is Strategy”.

Southwest Airlines is given as an example of an organization with a network of interconnected activities that would be difficult for a competitor to duplicate. The essence of Southwestís (brand) strategy is to serve cost conscious travelers who value convenience, and their activities support that strategy.

Source: “What is Strategy” (Porter, 1996), Harvard Business Review

A key source of competitive advantage that Porter describes is “strategic fit”, or the level of reinforcment between the activities. The strategic fit for SouthWest airlines is quite evident in this figure.

When a full service airline, Continental, introduced Continental Lite to compete with southwest they were unable to compete, because they still had the infrastructure of a full service airline, charging the price of a discount airline, and slower turn arounds due to full service ground crew. The brand promise that Continental Lite communicated was not supported by the network of activities, therefore the brand experience failed.

If you conceptualize an organization as a network of reinforcing activities, and the brand as a network of reinforcing experiences, you can see that brand strategy and business strategy are two sides of the same coin.

Related Links:
http://prophet.com
What is Strategy by Michael Porter