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Love it or hate it, your success this year and beyond depends on your ability to shape a brand: your career’s, product’s, department’s, or company’s.

Here are some counterintuitive lessons from a man who built a popular snowboarding brand as a college sophomore, knowing little about his industry, marketing, or business. Shaun Neff, founder and CEO of Neff Headwear, now has his products in 3,500 stores in 40 countries, and his gear is sported on ski slopes and streets, by celebrities from Holly Madison to Lil’ Wayne.

I got a chance to sit down with Neff, to learn how he did it and, more importantly, what we can extract from his success to help us build whatever brands we are working on.

You can watch the 15-minute interview segment on “The Outthinker: Shaun Neff” here:

 

Here are four lessons on building a brand from Shaun Neff:

1. FIND YOUR “PRE-EXISTING COMMITMENT”

We hold this fantasy about great entrepreneurs being oracles who somehow recognize and move on new opportunities more quickly than others. But my research for The Way of Innovation showed that they actually make a commitment before the opportunity arises and so are poised to step into it when an opening appears.

Neff knew he wanted to start a brand long before college. He noticed what brands people wore and was fascinated by their power. His drive stemmed not from a calculated market view, but from an internal personal passion. When you choose a pre-existing commitment, it becomes an always-there, always-searching filter through which you scan for opportunities.

What pre-existing commitment are you willing to pursue, regardless of when the market offers you a profitable opportunity to do so?

 

2. YOUR BRAND IS A FAN BASE, NOT A LOGO

The term “brand” brings up thoughts of logos, colors, and products. But when I asked Neff what a brand was, he spoke of none of these things. He said a brand is “a loyal fan base.” When you think of a brand as something to be looked at, when you admire it, you turn your back on what really matters: your fan base. Instead, think of your would-be fans: who are they, what are their passions, where do they spend their time?

If you thought of your brand as your fan base, rather than its elements and colors and meanings, what would you do differently?

 

3. STAND FOR SOMETHING MORE THAN PRODUCT

Shaun said that lots of brands “get stuck in one product: If you are a footwear company, you are always selling footwear. If you are an eyewear company, you’re always in eyewear.” A product-defined brand is inherently limiting. Neff Headgear has top-selling watches, sunglasses, and snowboard gloves. When they think of expanding into a new product they ask two questions: (a) do our retailers know how to sell this and (b) does our “gut” tell us this fits.

If your brand were not defined by your product or category, what would it stand for?

 

4. SEARCH TIRELESSLY FOR THE OPENING

With your pre-existing commitment in your heart and your fan base in mind, find your opening. If one angle doesn’t work, back up and try again, then again, until you find a way through.

Neff started out selling T-shirts. He’d paste stickers on signs, win over local taste-makers, and seek out the coolest snowboard shops. This created a small ecosystem in which his brand started selling. But he wanted to replicate this on a larger scale. For that he needed nationally known snowboarders to wear Neff gear. But he quickly learned that the best snowboarders were prevented by current sponsors from wearing other people’s shirts.

So Shaun studied their contracts one night and realized, “These apparel deals said nothing about the head!” Snowboarders couldn’t wear Neff T-shirts, but they could wear Neff headwear.

Unfortunately, Neff didn’t make headwear. So he went to the local dollar store, bought a stack of beanies, removed their labels, and wrote his last name with a black marker on each one. At the next tournament he convinced several competitors to wear his Neff hat. When two of them stood on the medal podium, “Neff” inscribed prominently over their heads, he knew he had found his opening. “The heavens opened … I am no longer Neff clothing; I’m Neff Headwear.”

Are you stuck pursuing just one “opening”? If so, think of three more you can try this month.

Leverage
Point
“8Ps” of StrategyOpportunity
for Disruption
Recommended Leverage Points
Position- The farmers, individual and corporate, that you are targeting.

- The need of the agricultural industry that you seek to fill.
3- What technologies do you control that can help you tap into market
segments that you previously thought unreachable?

- What are the potential business alliances you could think about with key players in the segment to serve your customers with integrated solutions? (Serving customers with more integrated solutions example: serving farmers with fertilizers, crop protection and other).
Product- The products you offer, and the characteristics that affect their value to customers.

- The technology you develop for producing those products.
8- What moves are your organization taking to implement Big Data and analytics to your operations? What IoT and blockchain applications can you use?

- What tools and technology could you utilize or develop to improve food quality, traceability, and
production?

- How can you develop a more sustainable production model to accommodate constraints on arable
land?

- What is the future business model needed to serve new differentiated products to your customers?
Promotion- How you connect with farmers and consumers across a variety of locations and industries.
- How to make consumers, producers, and other stakeholders aware of your products and services.
8- How are you connecting your product with individual and corporate farms who could utilize it?
- How could you anticipate market and customer needs to make customers interested in accessing your differentiated products?
PriceHow consumers and other members of the agricultural supply chain pay for access to agricultural products.7- What elements of value comprise your pricing? How do each of those elements satisfy the varying needs of your customers?
Placement- How food products reach consumers. How the technologies, data, and services reach stakeholders in the supply chain.9- What new paths might exist for helping consumers access the food they desire?
- How are you adapting your operations and supply chain to accommodate consumers’ desire for proximity to the food they eat?
- How could you anticipate customer expectation to make products more
accessible to customers/agile supply chain?
- Have you considered urbanization as a part of your growth strategy?
Physical
Experience
- How your food satisfies the needs and desires of your customer.
- How the services you provide to agribusiness fulfill their needs.
9- Where does your food rate on a taste, appearance, and freshness
scale?
- Could the services you provide to companies and farms in the agriculture industry be expanded to meet more needs?
- What senses does your food affect besides hunger? How does your
customer extract value from your food in addition to consumption?
Processes- Guiding your food production operations in a manner cognizant of social pressure.8- How can you manage the supply chain differently to improve traceability and reduce waste?
- How can you innovate systems in production, processing, storing, shipping, retailing, etc.?
- What are new capabilities to increase sustainability (impact on the environment, or ESG) components?
People- The choices you make regarding hiring, organizing, and incentivizing your people and your culture.- How are you leveraging the agricultural experience of your staff bottom-up to achieve your vision?
- How do you anticipate new organizational capabilities needed to perform your future strategy (innovation, exponential technologies needed, agile customer relationship, innovative supply chain)?
- How do you manage your talents to assure suitable development with exposure in the agrifood main challenges/allowing a more sustainable view of the opportunities/cross-sectors?
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