What brandtechs are and what they teach about resilience

The meme that illustrates, in practice, who has accelerated the process of digital transformation in many companies runs through the networks. And it wasn't the CTO, the new digital tools or the changes in consumer behavior, but the coronavirus. The joke illustrates how much a crisis of the proportion experienced today caused many companies to abandon strategies and start creating contingencies. This dynamic also occurred in the areas of marketing and technology, or rather, at the junction of them. The combination of branding and performance, which was already a premise of many digital companies and which valued balancing these two pillars, became even more important. The term brandtech, originated from the combination of brand + technology is used more frequently abroad, but reflects a trend also among companies operating in Brazil. The report with the analysis on the modus-operandi of brandtechs can be accessed, free of charge until the end of this month, in the Collection section of the portal Meio & Mensagem. In it are strategies of Rappi, Stone, Creditas, Amaro, PicPay, OLX, Original and 99 to balance branding and performance. According to Gustavo Hansel, CEO of GH Branding, the term explains how big startups think about their brands. Everything is connected to technology in some way." According to Hansel, the concept is much broader than the area of marketing or branding. "It is a representation of what we understand as a new way of organizing companies in this process of digital transformation. Before, these areas were completely divided are now joined by two completely new ones that are growth and CX," says Hansel. Eduardo Tomiya, executive director of Kantar Latin America, explains that although the term is not yet popularized in Brazil, it reflects a movement that had been gaining momentum. "For a long time, the culture of performance has remained separate from the concept of branding and what has become increasingly proven is that one feeds back from the other and that it makes no sense for them to act separately."