With our first round of funding now closed (more on that soon), we’ve turned 100% attention to building Alice. For starters, the team kicked out a new version of Alice.com yesterday, which includes a bit more about what we’re up to with the company and links to our favorite song “about Alice.”
But the new site also brings a key question front and center: Who will Alice be in the minds of consumers? Sure, we think we’ve got a great business model, with a unique offer and the opportunity to build a new kind of retail platform with competitive advantages. But we need to take that disruptive model and package it up into an overall promise that will resonate in a simple way with an identifiable set of consumers. In other words, we need to develop a brand and a story that matches the value propositions of our company.
I recently came across brand tags, a site that does a fantastic job of showing how brands live in minds of consumers (thanks to Adam Singer over at The Future Buzz for clueing me in). The site, a creation of Noah Briar, is brilliantly simple. Enter the first word that pops into your head when you see a brand. Overtime, this has built up a giant aggregation of brand associations that allows you to see into the publics collective brand view. If you spend a little time plugging in brands, you’ll see who is doing a good job branding, and who is not (granted, the branding and the underlying product are inextricably linked). Here are a few of my favorite examples:
The Good
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Crest (top thoughts include Bright, Clean, Fresh and Minty)
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Amazon (top thoughts include Books, Cheap, Convenient, and Everything)
The Not So Good
What will we see years from now when Alice.com is up on this list? That’s what our team is working on, arguing about, and deciding right now.
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
You are a wild man…After reading that title I wasn’t sure which way you were going with you post. Once again you didn’t disappoint.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Hi, Brian & Mark:
Under such an economy, I feel Alice’s model has great potential.
GO! Alice!
Tianlun
October 26th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
A more design-oriented take on branding through the lens of re-energizing brands is over at http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/
I am enjoying your blog and curiously await the commercial launch.
Best of luck, especially to your newest employee Nic.