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Branding is the most important part of your marketing strategy, without a recognizable brand, potential customers won’t know who you are. The Nike tick, and the McDonalds sign are two of the most popular logos in the world. But there’s much more to a brand than a logo, colors and a slogan. Branding gives your audience insight into who your organization is outside of its corporate name. Therefore, a brand framework that gets results must answer five critical questions, and it starts with defining the vision for your brand.…Story continues…
Source: How To Develop A Brand Strategy Framework That Gets Results
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A brand name is the part of a brand that can be spoken or written and identifies a product, service or company and sets it apart from other comparable products within a category. A brand name may include words, phrases, signs, symbols, designs, or any combination of these elements. For consumers, a brand name is a “memory heuristic”: a convenient way to remember preferred product choices.
A brand name is not to be confused with a trademark which refers to the brand name or part of a brand that is legally protected. For example, Coca-Cola not only protects the brand name, Coca-Cola, but also protects the distinctive Spencerian script and the contoured shape of the bottle. Brand identity is a collection of individual components, such as a name, a design, a set of images, a slogan, a vision, writing style, a particular font or a symbol etc. which sets the brand aside from others.
For a company to exude a strong sense of brand identity, it must have an in-depth understanding of its target market, competitors and the surrounding business environment. Brand identity includes both the core identity and the extended identity. The core identity reflects consistent long-term associations with the brand; whereas the extended identity involves the intricate details of the brand that help generate a constant motif. According to Kotler et al. (2009), a brand’s identity may deliver four levels of meaning:
- attributes
- benefits
- values
- personality
A brand’s attributes are a set of labels with which the corporation wishes to be associated. For example, a brand may showcase its primary attribute as environmental friendliness. However, a brand’s attributes alone are not enough to persuade a customer into purchasing the product. These attributes must be communicated through benefits, which are more emotional translations. If a brand’s attribute is being environmentally friendly, customers will receive the benefit of feeling that they are helping the environment by associating with the brand.
Aside from attributes and benefits, a brand’s identity may also involve branding to focus on representing its core set of values. If a company is seen to symbolize specific values, it will, in turn, attract customers who also believe in these values. For example, Nike’s brand represents the value of a “just do it” attitude.Thus, this form of brand identification attracts customers who also share this same value. Even more extensive than its perceived values is a brand’s personality.
Quite literally, one can easily describe a successful brand identity as if it were a person. This form of brand identity has proven to be the most advantageous in maintaining long-lasting relationships with consumers, as it gives them a sense of personal interaction with the brand Collectively, all four forms of brand identification help to deliver a powerful meaning behind what a corporation hopes to accomplish, and to explain why customers should choose one brand over its competitors.
Brand personality refers to “the set of human personality traits that are both applicable to and relevant for brands.” Marketers and consumer researchers often argue that brands can be imbued with human-like characteristics which resonate with potential consumers. Such personality traits can assist marketers to create unique, brands that are differentiated from rival brands.
Aaker conceptualized brand personality as consisting of five broad dimensions, namely: sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful), excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, and up to date), competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful), sophistication (glamorous, upper class, charming), and ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough).
Subsequent research studies have suggested that Aaker’s dimensions of brand personality are relatively stable across different industries, market segments and over time. Much of the literature on branding suggests that consumers prefer brands with personalities that are congruent with their own. Consumers may distinguish the psychological aspect (brand associations like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on that become linked to the brand) of a brand from the experiential aspect.
The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is termed the consumer’s brand experience. The brand is often intended to create an emotional response and recognition, leading to potential loyalty and repeat purchases. The brand experience is a brand’s action perceived by a person. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people, consisting of all the information and expectations associated with a product, with a service, or with the companies providing them.
Marketers or product managers that responsible for branding, seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics, which make it special or unique. A brand can, therefore, become one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace.
This means that building a strong brand helps to distinguish a product from similar ones and differentiate it from competitors.The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. The orientation of an entire organization towards its brand is called brand orientation. Brand orientation develops in response to market intelligence. Careful brand management seeks to make products or services relevant and meaningful to a target audience.
Marketers tend to treat brands as more than the difference between the actual cost of a product and its selling price; rather brands represent the sum of all valuable qualities of a product to the consumer and are often treated as the total investment in brand building activities including marketing communications. Consumers may look on branding as an aspect of products or services, as it often serves to denote a certain attractive quality or characteristic (see also brand promise).
From the perspective of brand owners, branded products or services can command higher prices. Where two products resemble each other, but one of the products has no associated branding (such as a generic, store-branded product), potential purchasers may often select the more expensive branded product on the basis of the perceived quality of the brand or on the basis of the reputation of the brand owner. Brand awareness involves a customer’s ability to recall and/or recognize brands, logos, and branded advertising.
Brands help customers to understand which brands or products belong to which product or service category. Brands assist customers to understand the constellation of benefits offered by individual brands, and how a given brand within a category is differentiated from its competing brands, and thus the brand helps customers & potential customers understand which brand satisfies their needs. Thus, the brand offers the customer a short-cut to understanding the different product or service offerings that make up a particular category.
Brand awareness is a key step in the customer’s purchase decision process, since some kind of awareness is a precondition to purchasing. That is, customers will not consider a brand if they are not aware of it. Brand awareness is a key component in understanding the effectiveness both of a brand’s identity and of its communication methods. Successful brands are those that consistently generate a high level of brand awareness, as this can be the pivotal factor in securing customer transactions.
Various forms of brand awareness can be identified. Each form reflects a different stage in a customer’s cognitive ability to address the brand in a given circumstance. Marketers typically identify two distinct types of brand awareness; namely brand recall (also known as unaided recall or occasionally spontaneous recall) and brand recognition (also known as aided brand recall).These types of awareness operate in entirely different ways with important implications for marketing strategy and advertising.
- Most companies aim for “Top-of-Mind” which occurs when a brand pops into a consumer’s mind when asked to name brands in a product category. For example, when someone is asked to name a type of facial tissue, the common answer, “Kleenex”, will represent a top-of-mind brand. Top-of-mind awareness is a special case of brand recall.
- Brand recall (also known as unaided brand awareness or spontaneous awareness) refers to the brand or set of brands that a consumer can elicit from memory when prompted with a product category
- Brand recognition (also known as aided brand awareness) occurs when consumers see or read a list of brands, and express familiarity with a particular brand only after they hear or see it as a type of memory aide.
- Strategic awareness occurs when a brand is not only top-of-mind to consumers, but also has distinctive qualities which consumers perceive as making it better than other brands in the particular market. The distinction(s) that set a product apart from the competition is/are also known as the unique selling point or USP.
Brand recognition is one of the initial phases of brand awareness and validates whether or not a customer remembers being pre-exposed to the brand.Brand recognition (also known as aided brand recall) refers to consumers’ ability to correctly differentiate a brand when they come into contact with it. This does not necessarily require consumers to identify or recall the brand name. When customers experience brand recognition, they are triggered by either a visual or verbal cue.
For example, when looking to satisfy a category need such as a toilet paper, the customer would firstly be presented with multiple brands to choose from. Once the customer is visually or verbally faced with a brand, they may remember being introduced to it before. When given a cue, consumers able to retrieve the memory node associated with the brand exhibit brand recognition. Often, this form of brand awareness assists customers in choosing one brand over another when faced with a low-involvement purchasing decision.
Brand recognition is often the mode of brand awareness that operates in retail shopping environments. When presented with a product at the point-of-sale, or after viewing its visual packaging, consumers are able to recognize the brand and may be able to associate it with attributes or meanings acquired through exposure to promotion or word-of-mouth referrals.
In contrast to brand recall, where few consumers are able to spontaneously recall brand names within a given category, when prompted with a brand name, a larger number of consumers are typically able to recognize it. Brand recognition is most successful when people can elicit recognition without being explicitly exposed to the company’s name, but rather through visual signifiers like logos, slogans, and colors.
For example, Disney successfully branded its particular script font (originally created for Walt Disney’s “signature” logo), which it used in the logo for go.com. Unlike brand recognition, brand recall (also known as unaided brand recall or spontaneous brand recall) is the ability of the customer retrieving the brand correctly from memory. Rather than being given a choice of multiple brands to satisfy a need, consumers are faced with a need first, and then must recall a brand from their memory to satisfy that need.
This level of brand awareness is stronger than brand recognition, as the brand must be firmly cemented in the consumer’s memory to enable unassisted remembrance. This gives the company huge advantage over its competitors because the customer is already willing to buy or at least know the company offering available in the market. Thus, brand recall is a confirmation that previous branding touchpoints have successfully fermented in the minds of its consumers.
Marketing-mix modeling can help marketing leaders optimize how they spend marketing budgets to maximize the impact on brand awareness or on sales. Managing brands for value creation will often involve applying marketing-mix modeling techniques in conjunction with brand valuation.Brands typically comprise various elements, such as:
- name: the word or words used to identify a company, product, service, or concept
- logo: the visual trademark that identifies a brand
- tagline or catchphrase: a short phrase always used in the product’s advertising and closely associated with the brand
- graphics: the “dynamic ribbon” is a trademarked part of Coca-Cola’s brand
- shapes: the distinctive shapes of the Coca-Cola bottle and of the Volkswagen Beetle are trademarked elements of those brands
- colors: the instant recognition consumers have when they see Tiffany & Co.’s robin’s egg blue (Pantone No. 1837). Tiffany & Co.’s trademarked the color in 1998.
- sounds: a unique tune or set of notes can denote a brand. NBC’s chimes provide a famous example.
- scents: the rose-jasmine-musk scent of Chanel No. 5 is trademarked
- tastes: Kentucky Fried Chicken has trademarked its special recipe of eleven herbs and spices for fried chicken
- movements: Lamborghini has trademarked the upward motion of its car doo
Nissan Dealers May Foot the Bill for the Brand‘s Price-Cutting Sales Strategy
Source: Forbes
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