Scared?
If you’re responsible for a brand or organization, allowing that brand or organization to become irrelevant must be among your top three fears. If it isn’t, it should be. Kodak didn’t think it would happen. Nor did Blockbuster. Nor Sears.
If you’re concerned about staying relevant to your customers, your employees, the marketplace — how are you going about that? What does it mean to be relevant anyway? And how does becoming irrelevant happen?
What is “relevant?”
One definition of being relevant has to do with being germane — closely related or appropriate for something. That is, a statement you made or an action you took was perceived as having something closely to do with what’s going on, in context.
Another definition or aspect of being relevant is that you’re appropriate or contribute value within a particular time period. Being relevant means being integrated somehow with a period of time. Like being hip or in fashion. Or whatever the kids say today. (See what I did there?)
At The Good People Research Company, we think something is relevant if it matters. That is, particularly, that in someone’s life, a person, organization, product, brand is important or meaningful such that if it went away it would be missed.
Put another way, a brand or organization becomes irrelevant when not enough people find it important or meaningful enough to their lives that they would miss it if it were gone.
Havas, a multi-national PR firm, does a Meaningful Brands Survey each year. Typically, they find based on consumer responses that 70%+ of global brands could disappear tomorrow and the consumers would not notice. The latest survey clocked in at 78%. In other words, not all brands are deemed meaningful to the marketplace.
How to stay relevant
Obviously not everyone has figured out how to stay relevant. And likely, many of those that are may not know why they’re relevant, and these brands might become irrelevant soon because of that lack of insight.
If you agree with us, and think that being relevant means you matter to your customer, employees, or other stakeholders, then the key to staying relevant is to find out what matters in their daily life (lived experience).
But, as we’ve pointed out many times, social science has learned that you can’t simply ask people what matters to them and get an accurate and meaningful answer most of the time. What matters to us is less verbally articulated than it is revealed in the patterns of our behavior and language.
At The Good People Research Company, we focus on these patterns in behavior and language using a series of special research methods that surface a person’s Guiding Narrative®.
The Guiding Narrative®, the inner story that tells us how the world works and what we should value to fulfill our role in the world, is the blueprint for understanding what matters to individuals and groups.
Respect their Guiding Narrative®
So, if you want to matter to your audience, you need first to understand their Guiding Narrative® and then reflect that understanding in your own behavior and language. If you do this, you create symbols that your customers, employees, and other stakeholders will not only recognize; they will find it reassuring and motivating.
What does that look like?
Think about visiting a new country where the spoken language is not your native language and you meet someone who lives there. Or think about visiting someone’s home you’ve never met before. When you make an effort to learn a language, or take an interest in another’s family customs and rituals, you signal that you 1) are interested in how they experience the world; and 2) willing to make the effort to build a social bridge.
Recognizing and respecting others’ Guiding Narratives® is an exercise in building understanding and respect. If you each recognize an affinity between you and another, the two of you likely end up building a mutually loyal and supportive relationship.
It’s no different between an organization, with its brand as a symbol, and audiences that engage with the organization.
The Guiding Narrative® provides the avenue through which two parties can develop connection. Explore the Guiding Narrative® of your audience members and see what happens.
Could be magic. You could learn how to remain forever relevant.
