By Steve Bornhoft
In 1934, General Mills began placing photographs of prominent athletes on boxes of its Wheaties cereal, reinforcing the product as the “Breakfast of Champions.” First to make the box was Lou Gehrig, who was in the midst of his baseball career with the New York Yankees and was synonymous with strength and durability. Notably, a woman, the pioneering American aviator Elinor Smith, made an appearance on a Wheaties box just months later.
General Mills was engaged in brand association, an effort to affect purchase decisions by aligning their product with individuals who were highly admired and respected. Inherent in this may have been the suggestion, too, that Wheaties are somehow performance enhancing. Nike and other athletic apparel companies spend millions to get top athletes to wear and tacitly endorse their products.
This association game is less readily played by businesses in the technology sector, many of whom may not have a tangible product in their portfolio. Still, they may align themselves with people, organizations, concepts and values in ways that communicate the utility and progress that their products and workings represent.
Resident at the TechFarms incubator in Panama City Beach is AeroTech, a company that has developed an autonomous, purpose-built drone capable of detecting and pinpointing the locations of landmines and unexploded ordnance. It has aligned itself with efforts to bring about a safer world, a cause with universal appeal.
AeroTech benefits, too, by its association with TechFarms, given the reputations and resumés of its founder and members of its staff and the contributions the business incubator has made toward building the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Northwest Florida and beyond. The association is a source of legitimacy.
In pledging allegiance to selected values, a company stakes itself to a way of doing business and interacting with its customers. Values statements have become a regular, seemingly obligatory element in business websites, a box that demands checking. Some values statements are dead on arrival, but others live to guide the conduct of companies, influence their community citizenship and play a role in their planning and budgets.
Unfailingly, they are aspirational, and the company that remains mindful of them is sure to earn dividends.
