What is Brand and Brand personality? I’ll teach you the trade secrets that the best brands use.
What is Brand?
The term branding came from how we brand cattle, not sure if that joke landed or not hard to tell over the internet, more info about visual branding is in my other article here.
The theory behind branding is the driving purpose of the business, the brand is the company’s most valuable asset, and it is more important than its staff, more important than its product. Whilst staff, products, and services, are all important, without brand there is no revenue, without revenue there is no staff, there is no service, there is no business, so a business strategy should be a brand strategy. With there being much more interest in brands than there was 10 years ago, brand building is at a peak as far as how important it is to the customer. Brand is a promise to consumers when they do business with you that you will deliver what you say you will deliver.
Brands mean something to culture, if a brand consists of ideas, attitudes, values and experiences, then why can’t they create the culture. Branding isn’t scientific it’s also spiritual, certain brands have the ability to touch us deep in our souls creating societal change.
Some companies value brand over their products. Nike in the 1990’s knew that their products were being stolen and also pirated, they let this practice continue as it was more important to get their branded clothing out in the public domain. Nike became cool by mixing their brand with inspirational figures such as Michael Jordan. Nike became so cool that people want to have the Nike logos tattooed onto their own skin. Please do me a favour and search google images for yourself, you will be shocked at what Nike-orientated tattoos people had done.
What is Brand equity?
Brand equity is the value that a brand name or symbol holds for a company. This can be in the form of brand recognition, customer loyalty, and positive customer sentiment. Strong brand equity can help a company to weather tough economic times and compete effectively against other companies.
Building brand equity requires time and effort, but the payoff can be significant. Some of the ways to build brand equity include:
- Developing a strong brand identity
- Creating positive brand associations
- Delivering consistently high-quality products and services.
Investing in branding equity can pay off in the long run by helping a company to maintain its competitive edge and grow its market share.
In 2001 Thailand’s economy was worth $115bn at the same time Coca Cola and Microsoft were worth $134bn.
If a brand acts ethically, is accountable, behaves, and innovates, then people will part with their money. Greedy companies that don’t act ethically, are not accountable, don’t behave, and don’t innovate will have the opposite effect and in some cases can expect trouble with the law. If you improve the community and improve people’s lives you can make money at it.
What is Brand equity?
Brand equity is the value that a brand name or symbol holds for a company. This can be in the form of brand recognition, customer loyalty, and positive customer sentiment. Strong brand equity can help a company to weather tough economic times and compete effectively against other companies.
Building brand equity requires time and effort, but the payoff can be significant. Some of the ways to build brand equity include:
- Developing a strong brand identity
- Creating positive brand associations
- Delivering consistently high-quality products and services.
Investing in branding equity can pay off in the long run by helping a company to maintain its competitive edge and grow its market share.
In 2001 Thailand’s economy was worth $115bn at the same time Coca Cola and Microsoft were worth $134bn.
If a brand acts ethically, is accountable, behaves, and innovates, then people will part with their money. Greedy companies that don’t act ethically, are not accountable, don’t behave, and don’t innovate will have the opposite effect and in some cases can expect trouble with the law. If you improve the community and improve people’s lives you can make money at it.
Why build a brand?
Who you don’t know and don’t trust you probably won’t want to buy from.
It is important to try things that can’t easily be measured, right now there seems to be a trend more towards metrics-driven marketing which is very useful, I would say all of your competition will be doing this, not all of your competition is branding building though. They’re only really focused on the short-term metrics which are easy to track and guide your marketing efforts.
Coca Cola’s share price was around $136bn in mid-2002 but its actual book value was $10bn, so the value of Coca Cola came from the confidence in the brand, and the owners to manage to brand to profitability.
The best service brands are ones based on a unique idea or a compelling vision which compels the employees to be excited about the concept and they will in turn show their commitment through this passion in their work.
Interbrand study on brands.
A study by Interbrand by JP Morgan concluded that on average brands account for more than 1 ⅓ of shareholder value.
The Mac Donalds brand accounts for more than 70% of shareholder value
The Coca-Cola brands account for more than 50% of the shareholder value, this is over and above the Fanta and sprite brands.
Samsung spends 7% on intangible concepts such as R&D, and another 5% on communication.
Brands rose in the 19th century as a way of protecting the company with many of those cases having marketing departments that were once an expense now a money-making engine turning the intangible into profit.
Without brands there is no customer loyalty, there is no guarantee of reliable earnings, without reliable earnings, less investment and employment, less employment there are fewer potential businesses to then employ more people and in the end, there is less growth in the economy
Without brand, the investors are less likely to invest in innovative ideas
There are obvious advances in innovation when a brand is invested in
Medical tech
Transportation
Rockets
AI
Search engines
Free software and online services
But not just innovation, r & d can be put into more efficient processes making the brand more profitable.
Had apple not been the brand that it was would you be reading this article on your smart device or perhaps your mac book, and since Windows copied the mac there may never have been a personal computer market at all.
In order to prosper these benefits need to be offered to the consumer
Value
Choice
Effectiveness
Functionality
Convenience
Brands also offer protection to their customers, when Johnson n Johnson saw that their products were laced with cyanide they didn’t need a gov regulator to tell them what to do.
Brands use global health standards, Mac Donald’s if using local regulation most likely would stain its own reputation and thus has some of the best food safety standards in the world.
More often than not brands pursuing social change do this only at a superficial level and don’t actually do anything meaningfully about these issues.
How to Build successful brand.
Great brands today hope to be unifiers,
Coca Cola wanted to teach the world to sing
Nokia wants to connect people.
Budweiser made heroes of the blue-collar works of the land of the free.
I challenge you not to feel something watching this
I challenge you not to feel something watching this
New brands need to create new stories that create social cohesion and solidarity and contribute to social progress.
Nearly 90% of all consumers have a choice between a company that is doing good in the world and one that doesn’t choose the company that does good in the world.
What makes a good brand.
Good brands have values, the brand needs to be consistent with those company values. If you don’t create strong branding you create commodities which lead to lower prices in order to compete.
For example with a health care brand, the brand promises might look like this:
“We’re committed to improving the lives of our patients”
“Our products must be safe and effective”
“We help people achieve their goals and maintain a healthy lifestyle”
Let’s say you make healthcare products. Your products help people with joint problems. Your brand drivers might look something like this.
“We help people with joint pain feel better are the gym”
“We ease joint pain at the gym”
“We ease joint pain for people who travel “
“Better quality time with their family”
Brand drivers
Functional benefits – a basic job the product or service does
Emotional benefits – how it makes us feel
Economics benefits – how it saves time and money
Self-expressive benefits – how it makes us appear to others
Other types of benefits – benefits to society
What great brands share
1. Consistency and delivery on their promise
They communicate their promise to the market
They must deliver on their promise
Nike has innovated to such an extent they lead in most sportswear
2. Superior products and services
Brand leaders must offer products and services that are superior to others
Nokia can not rely on suppliers alone, so it is buying them up
3. Brand experience
Ikea has opened up great in-store displays, the restaurant, all above what others do
They’ve managed to create a personal experience
Most other experiences are
Their turnover tripled between 1994 and 2002, from €4bn to €12bn
4. Alignment of external and internal commitment
Marketing and branding managers should focus on the customer
To shape its internal culture
Staff commitment should help customer commitment
If the staff can’t commit then the customer won’t either
5. An ability to stay relevant
Brands that know their customers, plan ahead, being innovative helps secure customer loyalty
Make it authentic
Give it relevance
Maintain consistency across all touch points
Keep brand promise
What experience do you want them to have?
The strongest brands always work on personal identity.
How to develop the new brand.
During the initial conception stage of a brand or a rebrand, you have to stand out from the competition. There are 2 sides to branding, you have design that covers: logos, typography, colour pallet, and illustration style. Then you have the marketing side of the branding, and this covers: Positioning, messaging, tone and voice, value and what you stand for in your core values.
- Define the brand and its entirety.
- Position the brand.
- Express brand.
- Build brand awareness.
- Determine brand equity.
Creating emotion in people through branded content.
Emotionality generates memorability. The brand that is remembered is the brand that is bought.
Just because your competitors are boring doesn’t mean you have to do this as well, it’s almost as though B2B seem to be using the same playbook, keep your head down, say the same thing as everyone else play it safe. Your competitors are most likely playing it safe, be bold don’t be boring.
Differentiation marketing.
Differentiation in marketing is the process of creating a unique selling proposition for a product or service. This can be done through various means, such as pricing, promotions, packaging, and so forth. By differentiation, businesses hope to attract more customers and stand out from the competition.
Differentiation is important because it allows businesses to communicate to customers why they should purchase their product or service over others. It is a key aspect of any marketing strategy and can be used in conjunction with other strategies, such as mass marketing or segmentation.
Purpose driven.
You have to be a purpose-driven company, you can’t be a purpose-driven brand. A brand can create tear-jerking content, but this doesn’t make you a purpose-driven company. To be a purpose-driven company you need to demonstrate how you do this, superficial efforts have superficial effects, customers and staff can quickly see through this, not to mention the disgruntled staff.
Building a brand drives growth, and partly that is done through experience. Unless your brand is felt throughout the staff, it’s harder to build an authentic brand that is repeatable leading to repeat loyal customers.
The purpose is who you are when you don’t think anyone is looking. This really shows who you are and what you believe in. The CMO is often the voice of purpose. If people don’t believe in the purpose then purpose falls apart, and you start to become a company solely based on profits.
Brand Persona
Brands over time become people, much like the customer persona, you should create a list of personality traits that you want the brand to have. The following are the most desired traits people want to see in a leading brand.
You need to select traits that create a unique brand persona. When you select these, you can do this based on your customer persona and what they want in a brand. This creates a more trusted brand and authenticity. Authentic brands are reflected in the people that deliver the service.
In the book: Dimensions of Brand personality by Dr Jennifer Aaker, she identifies the quality most enjoyed by people in brands.
Segmentation.
This means dividing the market of potential customers into similar groupings. There are 2 principal historical ways in which marketers have segmented in the past, which are demographical and geographical.
We used demographics for 100 years because we didn’t know any better. Now we know what customers like, are interested in, and how they behave, these are psychographics, now we can seak them out.
This doesn’t mean that targeting is now too vague and that we appeal to people, it’s quite the opposite we’re appealing to people’s emotions and that is what is important.
The more we can appeal to people on a personal level the more they are likely to buy from us, people buy from people like them, likewise with brands.
References:
Book: Brands and branding – Rita Clifton with 9 other writers
Book: No Logo – Naomi Klein
Book: Brand Identity – Sheldon Leonard
Book: Unleash possible – Samantha stone
Book: Positioning, The battle for your mind – Al Ries and Jack Trout
Linkedin Learning: Agile branding is the new normal – Wes Kao
Linked in learning: Branding Foundations – Drew Boyd
Interview: CMO Norman de Greve, CVS Health
Interview: CMO, Suzanne Kounkel, Deloitte
Interview: CMO, Alicia Tillman, SAP (B2B)