Brands fly when they align with a psychographic — and the symbiosis of bringing attention to the brand supporter group in their amplifying the brand. Brand building is all about communications.

Setting out to create a disruptive brand is like setting out to create a viral video — it’s incredibly hard to do, and rarely succeeds. I like the article’s recommendations for starting entrepreneurs. Successful brands are driven by visionary founders who recruit top-notch talent, all of whom work relentlessly towards achieving a brand’s well-defined goals. If a brand is fortunate enough to succeed, it will have found its niche with consumers and, just maybe, it will become disruptive.

You have to know your customer intimately and connect with them on some emotional level. Consumers don’t buy products, they buy benefits — they buy solutions.

I don’t care whether you are building a brick-and-mortar retail store or an e-commerce site, you have to be able to reach your customer with something more than product and price.

Today many retailers are struggling, not because of a push to e-commerce, but because they have lost their connection with their customer. They have lost sight of who their customer is and what they want.

Passion, smarts and a whole lot of hard work! That is what it takes to make any business flourish. For a “cult brand,” double up on passion, add an element of quirkiness that caters to a particular target market and throw in plenty of flair.

In the digital age, it takes these elements of the cult brand and finding a way to truly capture the culture and feel of making sure it permeates every element of the brand image: on social, in-store physically and definitely in the service provided that matches with the cult brand expectation.

Purposeful storytelling is key to launching a successful brand. Consumers buy ideas with a story that gets told through social media, press and products. Today’s brand positioning is the storytelling behind the cult brand.

The best brands have a story to tell. There’s a dialogue with customers that helps with engagement. The best brands don’t try to be “disruptive,” they just have a different, often customer-driven, way of doing things. If customers want to tell others about your brand then you’ve done a good job.

The hardest work happens in the idea/prototype stage, IMHO. 1) Do your due diligence on product and market fit. 2) Be crystal clear and aligned on what problem you are solving for your ideal customer. 3) Ask for feedback from your customer repeatedly and at every stage — then incorporate it.

Some brands that have built lasting value and true loyalty never started out with the intention to be disruptors. However, my guess is that the majority of those did start with that mentality. Take a look at the highest brand values here. There are a lot of brands near the top that definitely intended to disrupt their markets. Those innovators who look at a market or a potential market need to literally throw out all the rules and see what COULD be the way to run a business in that market. From there, these days, disruptors naturally go viral, so awareness often is a self-fulfilling prophecy, almost. A little promotion never hurts, though.

Great brands are born out of a powerful purpose that people believe in. When employees and customers are fully aligned to something bigger than themselves, they become part of the tribe, they share inspiring stories, and they become fanatical advocates. That’s when you have a movement, not just a business or a brand.

Disruptive brands are akin to entrepreneurial ventures. The idea of the brain/heart balance is critical and my observations show that this is unusual in the same person. The idea that the product innovator/designer is the same person to provide analytics and objective decision making is unlikely. The ideal scenario is having a product obsessed innovator partnered with a supportive partner(s) to balance their obsession with practical and speedy guidance.

This topic is nicely connected to the earlier retail pop-ups topic. The best pop-ups utilize disruptive brands. Combine the two together, and you have a little bit of retail magic.

The brands that are able to stay relevant are quick to adapt to a changing emotional landscape. Sites like Mashable and Huffington Post promote trends in CPG categories like beauty with terms like “Vegan” when describing makeup. When these new descriptive terms begin to trend, we see that agile suppliers are able to adapt their message and packaging to fit the new demand and rise to the top of both online retail and the inbox of retail buyers.