Unicorns, horses and goats: Are brands just dressed-up unicorns?
The ancient Greeks believed India was filled with unicorns. They told stories of graceful, mythical creatures with the power to transform people and places. They could turn poisoned water pure and guide lost souls back from the brink. Today we believe in unicorns of a different variety.
These modern unicorns have taken centre stage over the last eight weeks as Silicon Valley stars (from mobility brands such as Uber and Lyft; to tool brands such as Slack, Zoom and Pinterest) seek to exit stage left on investment capital into the loving embrace of the market. There are more to come as companies like AirBnB enter the fray in the coming months. The timing is far from coincidental but should we actually believe in unicorns? Are they mythical creators or just good looking horses wearing a party hat? It, of course, depends on your perspective.
Much like anything we believe in, there are a few truths but also many ways to spin the truth. To win, unicorns have to have a couple of things going for them: a differentiated business model that creates ongoing advantage and a distinctive brand that captures the spoils as effectively as possible.
The original intention of the term unicorn was attached to businesses that escaped competition and, as Peter Theil set out in his famous 2012 Stanford course CS183, the business model was a communication game of saying, “We are not the Monopoly you are looking for. Let’s look friendlier, smaller and less like the power we have.” Think Google ‘indexing the world, doing no evil in primary colours’, Facebook ‘connecting everyone in light blue’, and Amazon ‘the worlds wondrous store ‘with a smile in our logo’. These are pure-bred unicorns.
Just horses with party hats?
So are those going to market actually unicorns or are they more like horses with cones on their heads? What is real and why? None of the current unicorns are those majestic creatures, but in olden times the myth of unicorns didn’t just involve creatures that look like white horses. There were also versions that were like goats, those that were a trickster hybrid of human and creature. None of our modern day unicorns have escaped competition but they do come in three types, each using brand in slightly different ways.
The one with wings: Airbnb
As Aaker would say a great brand builds its own sub-category where none existed before. What can get missed in analysis of Airbnb is that there is much more to the business model than connecting people with places to stay. They connect everyone with the ability to stay or experience something unique. They also have content, mainly that no one could access before, or as they would describe it, “the product is the trip”. It is something hotel groups no matter how large they grow can’t do and furthermore Airbnb have an ecosystem that is almost impossible to replicate.
The brand task in instances like this is to build an image and supporting structure that can fully capture the value the business model will create. This generally calls for a brand based on a higher order belief that all humans aspire to and a supporting brand architecture that is master branded. For Airbnb, Design Studio (the team behind the work) distilled this into the idea of belonging anywhere, and brand codes such as the Belo that helped the business present its homes, experiences and promotions in one consistent form.
The dressed-up horse: Uber
While many commentators worry it will never turn a profit because in Silicon Valley parlance it has no ‘moat’, I would argue that Apple hasn’t built a bad business. Uber is just this, a premium play, only in the faster growing area of mobility services. Perhaps not surprisingly with the growth story now firmly put in the sold on the open market bucket the cost of an Uber is quietly ‘premiumising’ now past that of a commodity taxi.
The brand task is to build an “on our best day” positioning where an universally true emotion is attached to the brand and, as the product is less unique, the supporting structure tends to have more flexibility such as endorsed brand approaches.
This in my mind was the evil genius in the recent rebrand of Uber ahead of their IPO. The work from Wolff Olins took Uber back to their beginnings to take them forward. Back to a friendlier time when Travis wasn’t falling intoxicated out of the service he ran and telling the independent contractor who he doesn’t employ to go do one. As a result the brand has switched from a confusing long-winded version of superiority to the simply understood premium, ‘connectedness’. Simple promise, supported by optimistic language.
The goats: everyone else
Brands like Slack, Zoom and Pinterest are the tools of modern digital life. Like any good goat, they are just a superior version of a lawn mower.
For example, most people use emails and possible an antiquated shared file system to work on, plan and share their projects. Enter Slack, a single place for messaging tools and files, which claims to save time and empower people to collaborate. Everything is linked, everything is searchable, and technology that people use every day in their personal lives like messaging is utilised apparently to its fullest potential. But it’s no unicorn. At it’s best Slack is a goat - a hybrid creature of a brand, which could be more slight-of-hand than change-your-life.
The brand positioning task here is to position them as a positive alternative against a known source of frustration. They also tend to ever only be one thing. If they extend areas of service they start a new brand, so can end up with a large portfolio of services such as Salesforce. They anchor themselves in feelings like liberation, speed, youthfulness.
We need a new beast altogether
The bigger point though is that brands are like a mirror: markets tend to reflect things we value. What should give us pause for thought is that these versions of unicorns are merely new versions of old things. For instance, not one of these companies is focused on solving our climate emergency but that is a column for next time.
Be better to each other.
