Customers are becoming more demanding than ever and their requirements don’t stop at the product but go deep into the brand’s values and company culture. What a brand means has grown more and more complex and there is a multitude of layers to be taken into consideration when building relevant brands.

The average attention span of a consumer has lowered from 12 seconds in 2000 to less than 8 seconds nowadays. As a brand, you have 8 seconds to make sure you grab the attention of a consumer. If anything is a race, this is. Those 8 seconds can make or break you, it takes just those 8 seconds to validate your work and effort.

Brands lose customers faster than ever and they can become irrelevant in a few seconds...literally. New generations of consumers have different demands and expectations from the brands they engage with. This puts a lot of pressure on companies, especially on the ones that have a history. As you have created a certain identity at some point and have developed a communication pattern that worked, it’s a big challenge to switch and change everything. Change is always uncomfortable, risky, even scary at times, but considering the business context around you is continuously evolving, you might lose a lot more if you decide not to embrace it. Being able to adapt to new contexts is essential for any brand and in most cases adaptation begins with reassessing your strategy and reviewing your identity. Your brand has to make sure it remains a solid option in the market context. This is created through strategy, communication and through solid brand values.

Being relevant means focusing on the consumer and forging your brand so that it responds to all his needs and expectations. Relevance can mean a lot of things for him and in order to maintain it, you need to be active on many different layers. From communication to the logo, it all needs to align and build a solid brand story. After all, being relevant actually is the quality or state of being closely connected or appropriate.

For an established brand, these efforts might feel more difficult, as there is more complexity behind your organisation and there are many processes that need to be fitted to the new brand identity. From your existing clients to your employees they all need to feel connected to your new brand.

Relevance becomes a high stakes game that seems to require an intricate strategy to be won.

The secret is that there is no big secret, it’s a matter of self-evaluation and honesty. All you have to do is to take a step back and go through an internal audit to set everything in place. Having an objective view over what you stand for will help guide your way back to your audience. The new consumer needs a deeper connection with the brands he engages with. He requires honesty and good brand experience to feel like his needs are met. You do not have to change who you are, you just need to make it clear. It’s your why and how that matters most. People need to tap into that pool of hidden values and feel like a part of your brand. The only strategy you need is inside your company, you simply have to uncover it.

“Stay relevant!” is the best advice anyone can give a brand, as new generations of consumers avidly seek meaning. Deeper connections, a state of understanding that surpasses the commercial exchange and a high capacity of adaptation are essential if you want to burn your brand’s name into the minds of the new consumers. But you already have that, you’ve been doing it before, you simply have to learn to do it again.