Dave Kerpen

CEO

Likeable Media

http://likeable.com

Dave Kerpen is the cofounder and CEO of Likeable, an award-winning social media and word-of-mouth marketing firm. Likeable was named to both the 2011 and 2012 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies in the United States.

Dave’s first book, a New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon #1 bestseller, was Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (and Other Social Networks). His second book is titled Likeable Business: Why Today’s Consumers Demand More & How Leaders Can Deliver. (McGraw-Hill, November 2012).

Dave is a frequent keynote speaker at venues around the world and a contributing writer for Mashable, Inc, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, Forbes, and The Washington Post. His work has been featured on CNBC’s “On the Money,” ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Early Show, BBC World News, and the New York Times, among others.

More so, your company itself is becoming the base product that you sell. In this article, we explore how the brand itself is increasingly important as your number one product, what it means for your business going forward and what to do about it. Trends evolve and sometimes trends converge. There are four trends all pushing your brand to become more important than your products. These are: brand idea, boards of advisors, incubators, and shareholder activism. Having so many trends all pushing in the same direction is causing this evolution of the company as product to happen much faster than it might naturally. Brand idea, covered previously, is that all important emotion evoked by the mere mention of your brand. The importance of brand idea is accelerated by other trends such as boards of advisors, incubators and shareholder activism. Boards of advisors are critical to your business success. The best advisors are drawn to strong brands. It is not that the products are irrelevant, but that it is less important than the strong base brand. Incubators come in all varieties, including public and private. So how do you become chosen? It starts with... You guessed it... A strong brand. Shareholder activism is perhaps the most powerful force accelerating the emergence of your brand itself as your chief product. Active shareholders are driven to invest not by the products you offer but by the by the brand you portray. To turn this trend into an advantage for your business, consider the following. Trends are converging to make your brand the product. Your brand-product attracts advisors and incubators. Shareholders demand brand over product. Shore up your brand before anything else. Lastly, use products to boost the brand.