Jean-Claude Saade’s seven doors of connection for brands

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 7:27 am

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We encounter hundreds of brands every day, both online and offline. Yet branding as a discipline is much misunderstood, and often confused with visual identity.

To me, a brand is:

• What the brand looks like (the visual identity)
• What the brand says (the copy, words, and tone it uses)
• How the brand acts (the actions it takes and the philosophy behind them)

But how can an organisational or personal brand build empathetic connections with their audiences?

Jean-Claude Saade has an interesting paper on brandchannel.com about how brands can build deeper connections.

Brands that really want to connect with customers on a deep and meaningful level will have to identify common ground and areas of similarity and synergy with these customers.

Jean-Claude identifies seven areas where brands could try to do this:

• Shared Values (Peace, equality, liberty…)
• Shared Roots (Religion, ethnicity, language, culture, citizenship, education, profession, geography…)
• Shared Fights (Politics, environment, wildlife…)
• Shared Interests and benefits (Wealth, power, information, notoriety…)
• Shared Lifestyle (Fashion, housing, restaurants, vacations…)
• Shared hobbies (Sports, arts, music, travel…)
• Shared Preferences (Food, drinks, cars, clothing…)

What’s particularly interesting is that these seven areas can be equally be applied to public relations and blogging - they are essentially types of communities that are more likely to form, whether around a blog, product, brand or service.

There’s also some relevance with personal branding. How can you use the seven doors to enhance your personal brand connections and professional network?

Jean-Claude’s full paper is well worth a read as it has some good examples of the seven doors at work. It’s at www.brandchannel.com/papers_review.asp?sp_id=1290.

Tags: Blogging, brandchannel, Branding, emotional+connections, emotional+resonance, jean-claude+saade, Marketing, personal+branding, Public relations, Social media
Categories: Blogging, Branding, Marketing, Public relations, Social media

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