How does branding work

Although eclipsed by the two technology giants on that particular chart, Coke too continues to use its brand clout to create the closer connections with people that today's communications landscape demands. A great example of that is the 'Share a Coke' campaign they launched in the Summer of , allowing people to buy a bottle of Coke with their name on. Branding can help you stand out from your competitors, add value to your offer and engage with your customers. Effective branding elevates a product or organisation from being just one commodity amongst many identical commodities, to become something with a unique character and promise.

It can create an emotional resonance in the minds of consumers who choose products and services using both emotional and pragmatic judgements. The result is that the brand appears more premium, distinctive and perhaps even more daring than its competitors. People are generally willing to pay more for a branded product than they are for something which is largely unbranded. And a brand can be extended through a whole range of offers too.

Tesco, for example, began life as an economy supermarket and now sells a wide range of products, from furniture to insurance. But a consistent application of the Tesco brand attributes, such as ease of access and low price, has allowed the business to move into new market sectors without changing its core brand identity.

This obviously adds value to the business, but consumers also see added value in the new services thanks to their existing associations with the Tesco brand. Creating a connection with people is important for all organisations and a brand can embody attributes which consumers will feel drawn to. By moving into music and film, Apple redefined what the company did and shifted its brand association to something that connects with larger numbers of people outside computing or creative community.

They continued this shift with introduction of the iPhone, iPad and App Store bringing portable computing and its software into mainstream consumer culture. In doing so the brand has become more and more entwined on the lives of consumers making it incredibly powerful. In this section we outline the four cornerstones of any good brand using examples from the business world.

If you can start to answer these questions with clarity and consistency then you have the basis for developing a strong brand. The big idea is perhaps a catch-all for your company or service.

The other ingredients are slightly more specific, but they should all feed from the big idea. The big idea is also a uniting concept that can hold together an otherwise disparate set of activities.

Ideally, it will inform everything you do, big or small, including customer service, advertising, a website order form, staff uniforms, corporate identity, perhaps right down to your answer machine message. To pin down your own big idea you will need to look very carefully at your own business and the marketplace around you, asking these types of questions:.

Once decided, the articulation of these ideas can be put into action through branding techniques such as design, advertising, events, partnerships, staff training and so on.

IKEA is good example of a company with a big idea. Its brand is based around the notion that good design is for everyone, not just design snobs. Their branding plays on this central idea of the democratisation of design. In the last few years they have created advertisements featuring house parties in IKEA homes, campaigns where customers could appear on the front cover of their own IKEA catalogue and in they demonstrated their commitment to providing design for everywhere even the smallest spaces with the smallest IKEA store in the world.

In stores, products are given individual names and customers stack up their trolleys from the warehouse themselves saving IKEA money in the meantime. Generating a vision for your company means thinking about the future, where you want to be, looking at ways to challenge the market or transform a sector.

A vision may be grand and large-scale, or may be as simple as offering an existing product in a completely new way, or even changing the emphasis of your business from one core area to another. Although corporate visions and mission statements can often appear to be little more than a hollow dictums from top management, a well-considered vision can help you to structure some of the more practical issues of putting a development strategy into action.

An example of vision on a large scale comes from Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who knew exactly where he was going with his company even in the early days:. And this comes from a company which until had never actually made computers.

The vision lies in seeing where the market is going and asking where you want to be: in this case, providing the operating software for the computers that sit in offices and homes around the world.

The Microsoft brand which resulted is inextricably linked with computing. Most PCs come with Windows as standard, even though the computer hardware can be run with a number of different operating systems. Like the word brand itself, the term brand values is perhaps a little over-used in design and marketing circles, but it does relate to important aspects of how people see your organisation. Firstly, everybody wants the same kinds of values to be associated with their business.

A survey by The Research Business International now part of Synovate found that most companies share the same ten values, namely: quality, openness, innovation, individual responsibility, fairness, respect for the individual, empowerment, passion, flexibility, teamwork and pride.

And lastly, any values you portray have to be genuine and upheld in the way your organisation operates. Branding and design consultants can help you clarify what your organisation or business stands for and then they can develop ways for you to communicate that effectively. This might be through graphic design, language, advertising, staff training, the materials used in product manufacture and so on. Pret A Manger makes a big play of valuing fresh food and minimising wastage.

So, all its food is made on location each morning with no sell by dates and any left over at the end of the day is given to homeless charities and shelters. In this way the company has laid out a value and has followed it through with the way it runs its service. Burberry is an example of a brand that for a while, lost it's core values and was beginning to underperform. Originally a luxury manufacturer of raincoats it had become near ubiquitous.

The famous Burberry check was appearing on everything from dog leashes to t-shirts. Consistency of the brand had been lost, with customers around the world getting a different experience. In new CEO Angela Ahrendts brought luxury firmly back to the agenda, appointed a single creative director to oversee the brand worldwide and ruthlessly cut away the baggage that had begun to attach itself to the brand reducing the product line back to the luxury, high-end of the market.

The way you decide to present this communication — the tone, language and design, for example — can be said to be the personality of your company. Personality traits could be efficient and businesslike, friendly and chatty, or perhaps humorous and irreverent, although they would obviously have to be appropriate to the type of product or service you are selling. It need not have anything at all to do with the personalities of the people running the company; although it could, if you want to create a personality-driven company in the way that Richard Branson is very much the figurehead for Virgin.

And for smaller companies, the culture and style of the business can often reflect the founder, so its values and personality may be the same.

As companies grow, their personality and values are reflected more in internal culture and behaviour than through the characteristics of the founders. This personality then defines how the companies express their offer in the market. The use of the celebrity Peter Kay to front recent campaigns was a natural fit. And once these are all in place, you can think about hiring designers to turn your brand blueprint into tangible communications. When it comes to communicating your brand to the public, there are a few techniques and issues that are worth considering:.

An established technique in branding a business is to tell its story through communication elements such as corporate identity, packaging, stationery, marketing materials and so on. This can be quite low key, but it paints a picture of the provenance of the company and its products. Sheffield butcher John Crawshaw, for example, hand-picks the meat sold in his three shops, whilst most of his competitors have their meat delivered in vacuum packs from an abattoir.

For example, a Yorkshire drainage company called Naylor launched a range of lifetime-guaranteed flower pots, but the Naylor brand was inappropriate to market this range because it was associated too directly with the drainage side of the business.

So the company set up a new brand called Yorkshire Flowerpots, with its own tone of voice, personality and visual identity so that it could sell the products with greater credibility. Get this right and your organisation will stand out brightly against your competitors. Construction company Hilti provides an example of differentiation in a sector. Part and parcel of creating differentiation is engaging with your customers or users. When Orange launched in the mobile phone market in , its identity, language and offer were very distinctive from its established rivals.

It presented an optimistic vision of the future based on technology, but from a human rather than technical point of view. Its logo and name were abstract, creating stand out against BT Cellnet, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and its services were organised into simple talk plan packages. What is your point of difference?

What makes your brand any difference to the next one offering similar products? Why should consumers purchase your brand over your competitors? Your value proposition should answer these questions. This becomes the essence of your brand positioning strategy, which is where you sit in the market relative to competitors.

Your brand must communicate your unique offering, to try and entice customers to choose your brand. A promise of value you deliver. With globalisation and the rise of digital marketing, this has brought intense competition.

It is how you are recognised and judged. Brands must focus their advertising and marketing to target a certain group of customers. Otherwise, your brand can become diluted, and you spend precious time and money on people who are never going to be a customer. One of the foundations of a strong brand is consistency across communication.

Colour schemes should be consistent across branding and marketing, and your copy should have a consistent tone, vibe and style, with consistent imaging. Content needs to illustrate who you are, and the unique experience or value that your brand represents.

Consistent messaging throughout your marketing funnel will help convert leads into customers. Brand associations are an anchor for customer assessments and opinions of a brand and what it represents. New associations are continuously made with brands, with each interaction. Customers value brands and experiences that reflect an aspect of their own personalities, so they generally choose brands that they feel reinforce who they are and what they want to be.

The content you create and share on your social media influences perceptions of your brand. It defines your brand. Authentic brands must be committed to their values and delivering on promises. Customers want to relate to brands in the same way they relate to people.

Two important aspects of this that brands need to express are warmth and competence. If you really know and understand your target market, you position your brand to be as attractive as possible to this group of customers market segment.

If you can create a meaningful connection, you form a relationship, and this is one of the drivers of loyalty. A fundamental of marketing is forming relationships with a group of customers or segment of the market that likes you and trusts you. This is called relationship marketing. It starts by forming a bond, and eventually creating an attachment to your brand with the customer. If you have a large organisation, all staff members must buy into the brand promise and show a commitment to delivering on it.

The company should also regularly take feedback from customers, to see if the brand is delivering on their promise. This will keep the relationship strong, promote customer loyalty and purchase intent. Trust is synonymous with brand originality, ethicality, genuineness, warmth, and competence.

From the consumer perspective, these brand attributes are deeply interconnected. Our definition of branding, even if seemingly more ambiguous than the other, gives much more sense to the concept when diving deeper into its meaning. Here is a rough breakdown:. Perpetual process Branding is a perpetual process because it never stops. People, markets, and businesses are constantly changing and the brand must evolve in order to keep pace. Cumulative assets and actions Your positioning must be translated into assets e.

Perception of a brand Also known as reputation. This is the association that an individual customer or not has in their mind regarding your brand. This perception is the result of the branding process or lack thereof.

Stakeholders Clients are not the only ones that build a perception of your brand in their minds. Stakeholders include possible clients, existing customers, employees, shareholders, and business partners. Each one builds up their own perception and interacts with the brand accordingly. Branding is absolutely critical to a business because of the overall impact it makes on your company.

Branding can change how people perceive your brand, it can drive new business, and increase brand value — but it can also do the opposite if done wrongly or not at all. The result can be a good or bad reputation. Understanding and using branding only means that you take the reins and try to control what that reputation looks like. This is why it is recommended to consider branding from the very beginning of your business.

Branding involves a consistent mix of different competencies and activities, so its cost can wildly differ from case to case. High-level consultants and flawless implementation will, of course, be more expensive than anything below it.

Likewise, branding an international, multi-product business will be much more challenging and resource-heavy than a local business, for example. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

This makes it a more appealing investment opportunity because of its firmly established place in the marketplace. The result of the branding process is the brand, which incorporates the reputation and value that comes with it. A strong reputation means a strong brand which, in turn, translates into value. That value can mean influence, price premium, or mindshare.