![\"alina](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/alina-in-front-of-eiffel-tower-small.jpg?resize=608%2C541&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019m deeply cynical about most brands \u2014 and the odds are that you are, too.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0a survey last year<\/a>\u00a0most people say they wouldn\u2019t care if more than 73% of brands disappeared tomorrow.<\/strong> And although strong\u00a0brands can outperform the stock market by 120%, only one in five brands are actually perceived as making a meaningful difference in people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n Most of my brand associations are a nuanced combination of positive and negative feelings. For example, I like my coffee machine, but when I see George Clooney\u00a0staring at me from a\u00a0company\u2019s glossy brochure, it doesn\u2019t make me feel part of a special elite\u2014it makes me feel I\u2019m paying too much for my coffee pods<\/strong>. And I like my e-book reader, but when I clear out the cookies in my browser, the company sometimes offers me cheaper books than when I log on as a loyal customer.<\/p>\n Social media is working hard to reduce the role of\u00a0marketing. If you have a bad product, you’ll quickly be found out. If you have a great product, you may not need any marketing at all — your customers will do it for you. Marketing can help amplify conversations about your product or service, and find out how to improve it, but products now “speak for themselves.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Because of this, I actually thought that I was relatively immune to branding, and when I was challenged to\u00a0think of a brand I \u201cloved<\/a>,\u201d I struggled. But I eventually realized that there was one company that I would unequivocally recommend to others:\u00a0Decathlon<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0a \u20ac7bn global sporting goods chain headquartered in France, with stores in 21 countries worldwide.<\/p>\n Why do I love Decathlon? It\u2019s certainly not the ads\u2014I\u2019d never seen one until I researched this article. And it\u2019s not the way the brand makes me feel or how others will perceive me when I\u2019m using the products. It\u2019s simpler than that: the company sells the products I want with good quality and great prices<\/strong> — which is a much better basis for brand loyalty than a celebrity actor or cool tweets.<\/p>\n Decathlon aims to make the pleasure and benefits of sport accessible to all<\/a>. The spacious stores are full of every sporting product I could ever need, with all the regular well-known sport brands, but also a wide range of own-brand products.<\/p>\n Great Prices<\/strong><\/p>\n Decathlon manages to offer great prices without a \u201cdiscount experience\u201d by designing and sourcing their own products. They\u2019re sold under twenty different\u00a0passion brands<\/a>\u00a0tailored to particular sports, such as\u00a0Oxelo<\/a>\u00a0for skateboards and roller-skates. Decathlon says that each team \u201cchannels all their energy in to developing technical, good-looking and simple products, always at the lowest possible prices.\u201d<\/p>\n The Decathlon products are designed for people like me, who want things that work, but don\u2019t want to pay extra just for a particular logo. My local store in the heart of Paris sells the t-shirts I use for running at just \u20ac4.95 ($6.25) each \u2014 less than a cup of coffee on the terrace of the nearest caf\u00e9. The goggles I use for swimming cost just \u20ac1.95 ($2.46) \u2014 less than the entry price to my municipal pool. And my sunglasses are currently on special offer at \u20ac6.95 ($8.78). And these are all quality products that I\u2019ve used a lot and been very happy with.<\/p>\n Product Innovation<\/strong><\/p>\n Decathlon stays on the cutting edge of sporting goods innovation with research teams that observe sports people during their activities. They use their insights to develop and test over 3,000 prototypes a year<\/a>. For example, the company was one of the first to make and sell \u201c2-second tents<\/a>\u201d that you can just throw in the air to set up.<\/p>\n Each year, the company celebrates innovation with a widely-promoted\u00a0contest<\/a>. Check out the\u00a0highlight reel of winning products<\/a>\u00a0to see lots of innovative and useful sporting innovations, including last year\u2019s surface snorkeling mask<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0thermal jacket that doubles as a life vest<\/a>.<\/p>\n Try Before You Buy<\/strong><\/p>\n My family and I have now purchased several bicycles, a kick-scooter, roller skates, a\u00a0wave-board<\/a>, and more\u2014and each time, we were able to try them in the store, zooming around the aisles to check we\u2019d made the right choice.<\/p>\n Omni-Commerce<\/strong><\/p>\n The Decathlon web store experience is just as pleasant as the retail stores, and seamlessly linked: I can find the same products, at the same prices. I can find out if the product I want is currently in stock in my local store, and I can choose a retail location as the web delivery address. And it works across country borders \u2014 I was delighted to find that my loyalty card worked in Spain when I went to stock up for a beach holiday.<\/p>\n Simply a Great Customer Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n By working hard on an innovative business model<\/a>, and delivering what customers want, Decathlon has become the #1 brand in France<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a great reminder that branding doesn\u2019t have to be about connecting with customers on social media (sorry brands, I don\u2019t want to be your \u201cfriend\u201d) or trying to change the world (I\u2019d rather accountable, elected officials work on that).<\/p>\n Instead of turning to fancy marketing techniques, Decathlon \u201csimply\u201d provides a great customer experience.<\/strong> That takes hard work and, increasingly, great computer systems and analytics.<\/p>\n Branding isn’t about being cool. It’s about doing what’s right for the customer, and that\u00a0is something we can all aspire to emulate, whatever business we\u2019re in.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now I\u2019m just wondering what my next sporting purchase will be\u2014I\u2019ve had my eye on a\u00a0surfboard<\/a>\u00a0(\u20ac149.95\/$189) for a while, but sadly the Seine isn\u2019t known for its great breaks, so it will probably be the Hawaii cruising skateboard<\/a> (\u20ac99.95\/$126)\u2026<\/p>\n Photo: my daughter, growing up in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower with Decathlon bicycle and helmet. A version of this\u00a0blog was first posted to The Customer Edge<\/a> site as\u00a0part of a series of\u00a0#BRANDLOVE<\/a>\u00a0stories including\u00a0Nordstrom<\/a>,\u00a0Adidas<\/a>, and\u00a0Costco<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Branding is not about advertising, celebrity actors and cool tweets. It’s about providing what the customer wants. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[28,190,310,313,366,723,911],"class_list":["post-12437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-brandlove","tag-branding","tag-customer-edge","tag-customers","tag-decathlon","tag-marketing","tag-sap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/alina-in-front-of-eiffel-tower-small-608x541-2.jpg?fit=608%2C541&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3eB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}