Business Branding: Why You Can’t Ignore the Value of Being “Cool”

Style without substance is the worst misappropriation of cool. But if you think that’s what this article is all about, guess again. In fact, cool is a valuable brand asset that no small business can afford to ignore.

Simply put, you’ll need a perception of cool on your side if you’re going to engage in the freedom to innovate, the ability to charge a higher price point for your services and a reputation that others will vouch for and reinforce.

Cool is not something that only a select few businesses are born with, it can be created or uncovered. In your uniqueness and authenticity, your small business is already cool. You just need to get in touch with it.

What is Cool?

At its best, cool is a bridge. To be cool, your brand must have one foot in two different worlds, one high one low. To be cool means you can transport someone from one of those “worlds” to another.

Cool is so desirable because it is a vehicle for change.

For instance, that’s why Apple gets laid (figuratively), because they understand how to communicate a lifestyle consumers want to identify with; how you want to be perceived and who you want to be.

Remember the snarky, award-winning “Get a Mac” campaign? Their series of TV commercials cemented Apple’s cool status. Which frenemy do you want to be? The fumbling PC or the cool Mac who gets it?

In it’s simplest form, cool is a matter of offering people what they want, by making it accessible and exclusive at the same time.

Eliminate the exclusivity and it becomes common and passe. Eliminate the accessibility and it becomes snobbish and elitist. Brands that can give you the best of both worlds have learned to balance the two.

How to Make Your Business Cool

Although the definition of cool is subject to interpretation, the function is the same. To be cool in business you must successfully become familiar and “down with” two communities. You must fit in with two different groups of people. Those who have made it and those who want to assimilate and become the former.