Be different? Yes, please

Be YOUnique

Every­thing is al­lowed in fash­ion at the mo­ment. More pat­terns, more colour, more vol­ume: more is more. The un­der­ly­ing mes­sage is that every­one can wear what he/she wants. In this sense, the pur­suit of in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty seems to be a ma­jor theme to­day. Many com­pa­nies use this sub­ject in their cam­paigns and call up­on their cus­tomers to em­brace unique­ness. They promise ac­cep­tance and ap­plause if one dares to ne­glect the opin­ions of oth­ers. This move­ment is par­tic­u­lar­ly no­tice­able in large cities. There, peo­ple have to ac­tive­ly do some­thing to avoid drown­ing in the mass­es. In a fast-paced en­vi­ron­ment, this means a con­stant re-eval­u­a­tion of the self.

Be individual together

With the grow­ing cel­e­bra­tion of the in­di­vid­ual the pa­ra­me­ters of group mem­ber­ship change, mak­ing ex­clu­siv­i­ty an im­por­tant fac­tor. To be a part of the group, you have to look spe­cial, you need a pass­word, you have to pay. A reg­u­lar par­ty be­comes much more ex­cit­ing if you on­ly know the lo­ca­tion with a code word, right? For some time now, brands have been us­ing this prin­ci­ple in the form of a “loy­al­ty pro­gram”. As a mem­ber, you gain ad­van­tages over “reg­u­lar” cus­tomers by get­ting in­vit­ed to launch events or by gain­ing ac­cess to one-time pro­mo­tions. The more dif­fi­cult the “ad­mis­sion pro­ce­dure” is, the stronger the feel­ing of pres­tige. Con­se­quent­ly, you may be part of a group, but at the same time you feel val­ued as an in­di­vid­ual.

Brands — tailored to the customer

The in­creas­ing de­sire for in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty on the so­cial lev­el al­so in­clines com­pa­nies to re­think. In or­der to re­tain cus­tomers, brands have to give them a sense of unique­ness and of­fer ser­vices ac­cord­ing­ly. It is not on­ly the end prod­uct that is im­por­tant, but above all the jour­ney to it. A per­son­al­ized chat bot can al­ready pro­vide in­creased well-be­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, every­one should feel un­der­stood by the brand as a hu­man be­ing with dif­fer­ent facets. Di­ver­si­ty and ac­cep­tance can be com­mu­ni­cat­ed through ex­ter­nal cam­paigns and in­ter­nal­ly through team build­ing events.

Es­sen­tial for a suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion is the au­then­tic­i­ty of the mes­sage. As a com­pa­ny, you have to live by the at­ti­tude you em­body to the out­side world. Oth­er­wise, a brand risks los­ing valu­able in­di­vid­u­als.