Branding is the total of a
company’s identity—from its name and logo to every piece
of communication—to every encounter a customer or
potential customer has with the company.
Branding is the foundation of marketing and is the
mainstay of business strategy. It is, therefore, more than
putting a label on a product. The Design Biz will
assist you in your branding efforts.
As such, a brand is
a combination of attributes communicated through a name or
a symbol that influences a thought-process in the mind of
an audience and creates value.
Branding takes into
account both tangible and intangible attributes, e.g.,
functional and emotional benefits. Therefore, those
attributes compose the beliefs that the brand's audience
recalls when they think about the brand in its context.
The value of a brand resides in the promise that the
product or service will deliver.
Branding is the
blend of art and science that manages associations between
a brand and memories in the mind of the brand's audience.
It involves focusing resources on selected tangible and
intangible attributes to differentiate the brand in an
attractive, meaningful, and compelling way for the
targeted audience.
Is Branding Different from Naming?
Naming is a subset
of branding. Any combination of sounds can compose a name
and perhaps be unique enough as to identify a product or
service without ambiguity. But that is not enough to make
it a brand.
Nevertheless, naming
is a critical step of branding. A well-chosen name
can be so powerful as to become a one-word commercial. It
is especially critical for small businesses, which often
lack of the necessary marketing budgets to promote their
brand effectively.
Does Branding Apply to Us?
The concept of
branding applies to any individual, organization, product,
or service, as long as there is a transaction between
people. Indeed, branding relies on the way our memory
processes, stores, and recalls information. Not to
actively manage one’s brand name is therefore the
equivalent of putting one’s head in the sand and wishing
for the best.
Along the same
lines, branding can usefully help David defeat Goliath
when resources makes the battle seemingly one-sided.
In 1981, the mighty IBM Corp
launched the IBM Personal Computer -- the smallest IBM
computer to date. The IBM PC became an immediate success
and an industry standard, epitomized as
Time
magazine's 1982 "Man" of the Year.
Apple Computer
needed something radically novel to counter the new IBM
PC. Apple decided to wrap its innovative technology into
an equally innovative product design that would contrast
with the boxy IBM PC. This collaboration gave birth to the
original Macintosh, which is now part of the permanent
collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
There are branding
steps that can have a considerable impact on revenues
without the need for big budgets, such as the brand
positioning strategy, the naming of the product, the
packaging design, the delivery process of a service, the
consistency of the brand experience at each contact-point
with the customer, to mention a few.
How Long Does It Take to Build a
Brand?
It takes as much
time to build a brand as it takes a person to build a
reputation. The difficulty is not as much to perfect a
strategy as to be focused, differentiated, and consistent
everywhere, every time. Will it take one, five, ten or
over twenty years? That essentially depends on the memory
and openness of the brand's audience.
For instance, it
took about 15 years for Nike to build one of the strongest
global brands, thanks to (1) a focused brand positioning,
(2) consistent 360-degree delivery, and (3) its
association with All-Star basketball player Michael
Jordan. Blue Ribbon Sports first used the Nike brand in
1971 and introduced the Air Jordan in 1985. By then, all
the pieces fit well together, from the brand strategy to
the product's air technology to distribution in over 40
countries. Revenues soared.
Nike truly
distinguished itself in its ability to deliver a
consistent message. Over a long period of time, Nike
consistently delivered its brand message at each
contact-point with its customers, from product, to
advertising, to distribution, to merchandising, to
website.
How Can Non-marketers Contribute to
Branding?
Although the development of a brand
strategy typically involves a limited number of executives
and their aides, the successful implementation of a
strategy is everybody's responsibility. Often, a major
source of failure in the attempt to build a great brand is
the lack of consistency among all the contact-points with
the customer. In such a case, the brand message makes a
promise on which the organization does not fully deliver.
A sure way to ensure that the customer will consistently
enjoy the brand experience is to implement processes
throughout the organization.
