Forget the aesthetics or aspirations. Those are mere tactics. If you want to be a lifestyle brand, you need a rock solid understanding of the values that you want to explore with your consumer.
Start with the conversation, not the lifestyle
A FEATURES
How Lifestyle Branding is Eating the Tech World Lessons from Lifestyle 2.0 By JASMINE BINA
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ifestyle and tech brands have had an intimate relationship for quite some time. Apple created a strong lifestyle around its hardware, and many nontech brands like Nike and The New York Times have incorporated tech into their lifestyle world. They’re brands that allowed us to pursue lives of our own choosing, regardless of our lot. We could find our tribes and rally around the ideas that stirred us, whether they are aspirations of freedom, creativity, or individualism. But today, consumers are changing. People are becoming more sophisticated in the brand vernacular, and more demanding of the brand value they pay a premium for. We find ourselves with new users who are looking for self-discovery instead of being pushed to purchase aspirational products. We’ve gone from the outer world to inner world. It’s a much more intimate and personal relationship that adds a layer of intrinsic value to the product. The successful tech companies of tomorrow will actu48
JUMPSTART MAGAZINE
July 2019
ally be lifestyle brands. With this new perspective, let’s look at some of the elements that should go into your brand blueprint if you find your company on this trajectory.
lot of brands falter from the very beginning because they don’t understand what a lifestyle brand actually is. A lifestyle brand initiates a conversation that happens at specific points in a consumer’s life. Forget the aesthetics or aspirations. Those are mere tactics. If you want to be a lifestyle brand, you need a rock solid understanding of the values that are worth exploring with your consumer–the ones that help them move down the path of self-discovery. Values are provocative and revealing, and you either really care or you really don’t because as a consumer, you immediately know if that value will get you to someplace deeper within yourself. Peloton has squarely planted themselves in the lifestyle space, despite the fact that they are a tech company on both the hardware and software side. Over a million Below: The Peloton Bike streams fitness classes to users live and on-demand. Photo courtesy of Peloton. Top and right: Outdoor Voices’ flagship store in New York City. Photo courtesy of Outdoor Voices.
