Brands and Competition go one with another. Basically, Brands were created due to reasons of competition on product levels, aiming to help consumers navigate among many choices, and moving the competition from core satisfaction & functional levels functional to more abstract such as social and emotional needs satisfaction levels. Brand and Branding was always both Art and a Science. Technology has had a strong impact on concepts and models of Brand and Branding. On one side you have offline brands going digital, and you have some new ones digital born brands. I'm fortunate enough to work for both categories and levels of HQs of Brands such as Nike and Uber, so I believe my perspective is balanced.

On one side you have offline brands going digital, and you have some new ones digital born brands.

Competition is fierce like never before. Why and how you ask. Well, for reasons more than one, but overall market has been disturbed by multiple forces induced by digital economics. First, it's much cheaper now to compete on a global scale like never before both in absolute terms and in brand marketing terms. Global outreach, especially in terms of marketing has never been cheaper. However, digital has brought about new and different competitors, incumbents in categories and markets but also completely new players from other categories and markets. Horizontal industry switch-over and/or extension has never been easier. Market / product competition configuration and reconfiguration has never been more abrupt. Retailer and Brands might be fighting on the Brand / Imagery level while Uber is re-constructing the competition to delivery / distribution point of view changing not just the consumer journey start, but game completely. (more on this on a separate topic).

In a digital world we're all competing on customer journeys.

In a digital world we're all competing on customer journeys. Brands are trying either to inspire us and guide us to them via Instagram, Pinterest and other, or Insert themselves into our daily digital rituals (Ads Displays) in your newsfeeds and re-configure our decision making journeys. Your company / brand business most probably will define where you can and how you compete. It probably defines where your current customer journey starts (or you think it starts) You as a marketing / brand professional can't do much about it as it is set mostly by the organisational design and corporate strategy. Your playing field has been defined and it is up to you to compete within given market boundaries.

Your company / brand business most probably will define where you can and how you compete. It probably defines where your current customer journey starts (or you think it starts)

So what are the unique competitive features Brand Digital professionals have at their disposal within current set up. Aside of product, price, most competition comes to Brand imagery. Maintaining brands and making sure brands live in customer's minds. However, upholding that image of brands and brand experience has never been harder. Customers are empowered, probing and their attention is decreasing exponentially. One article mentioned that at this moment human attention span is lower than that of a goldfish. I agree. What does that mean for you?

Well, many things, but my take out from this is that competition for Brand professionals is moving away from WHAT they deliver to HOW they deliver, meaning the brand experiences via digital brand content.

Competition for Brand professionals is moving away from WHAT they deliver to HOW they deliver, meaning the brand experiences via digital brand content.

Why I belive HOW is going to be much more important than WHAT is simply because of couple of things.

Digital assets/content are a commodity. Once you create it anybody can copy it at virtually zero cost. What you create is irrelevant. Whether you deliver it and whether you're enabled to deliver it continuously is the game.