Brand Building fundamentals

In today's business environment, the buzz that we seem to hear about is “branding”... Brand this... brand that... But lets focus for a minute. Do we actually understand what branding is about or what it actually entails?

Essentially, I think branding is all about having an identity for your product/service. For example, we all have names and behind each name is an identity. Take for instance, my name's Tim and I'm sure behind my name exist also an identity to Tim which gives me a character and personality.

So when you strip away all the lingo behind this phenomenon of branding you are left with this... A brand is fundamentally an identity / personality / character behind your product or service.

Which then begs the question, if we know what branding is, just how do we go about doing it? In my opinion, BRANDING should be simple. The search for an identity / personality / character behind your product or service should be in essence a search for the obvious. It should be something which is easy to understand and communicate to your consumers be they old or potential new consumers.

So here are the 4 consideration that go into building a brand:

1) What's your differentiating factor?
This is a common among many businesses . Many companies assume that if they have a budget for advertising then they are likely to build a brand or a differentiating factor to their business. It does not work that way. The reason is simple, if your consumers today are so over communicated with advertising from your direct and indirect competitors to your business, are you sure the money your spending on more advertising really working?

Won't it just overload them with more messages which they might not be paying attention to in the first place? The mind is a funny thing, the more overloaded it becomes with information the more it tends to block out e.g. Trying to study for an exam the day before the actual test. Can you actually recall anything you studied the night before? So, first and foremost, creating a clear difference between you and your competitors is top priority.

2) Who are your clients?
This is also important issue to consider, to determine who your clients are going to be. As Jack Trout and Al Ries once put it “you can't be everything to everybody” so the same is true when building a brand. What kind of clients do you want? Price sensitive or quality sensitive? Naturally a price sensitive consumer is not going to be loyal to you if you are not the cheapest in town. They'll only stay with you as long as your prices can STAY LOW. Question here would be how low can you go?

3) Does your Sales material reflect your brand?
In trying to build a brand, its always important to ensure that every communication from you to your consumers must carry the company's corporate identity (C.I) be a brochure, packaging, website, etc. Many a times, most companies and this is true of companies in Malaysia, where they have a different company doing their packaging design and another company doing their brochure design or website. This can be detrimental to building a brand. Are you sure that each supplier understands your brand completely and executes your design requirements in-line with your brand values?

For the sake of your brand, perhaps its better to stick with one supplier. Some of the better suppliers to look at would perhaps be marketing agencies or even reputable brand consultants. I do understand that when you undertake such services they are usually not cheap but there are marketing agencies or even brand consultants out there who charge reasonable service charges. Keep an eye out for them, I'm sure they're keeping an eye out for you.

4) Brand building is about creating MINDSHARE.
I remember reading Jack Trout and Al Ries, where they mentioned that positioning (i.e. Branding) is ultimately a battle for the consumers mind. A place in the mind that is. So, branding is about building mindshare. To more your consumer remembers you ultimately will contribute to your market share. So, do whatever it takes to get into the minds of your consumers. Staying there is a whole other story.

Ultimately, brand building is by far the most successful way to build your business, but alas many businesses for go this step because its either too expensive to hire a brand consultant or a marketing agency to help them. That I believe is the no. 1 reason why most companies think they can go about brand building on their own. However many a times, a 3rd party can provide some direction or avenue to build your brand which you just might not have thought about. After all, they always say that 2 heads are better than one.

Is Advertising Marketing?

As deliberated upon in the previous entry “Just what is not marketing”, it is now timely to apply some sort of meaning to the question, “Is advertising . . . . . marketing?”

From the barrage of advertising spend to so promote or induce consumer trial or generate brand purchase; it seems to be the common assumption that “advertising is marketing” and vice versa; as advertising helps to market products and services & brings it to the consumers. The current practice seems to suggest that. Take a look at the picture below.

The advancement of technology these days, has brought products closer to home (i.e. television) and to personal self via Internet and of course, email and SMS mails both pictorially and verbally. This thrust of technology advancement, had begun a very serious mis-perception & misconception, of what advertising and its role is! Based on what the previous marketing Guru’s have taught before this technological advancement, advertising is merely a tool and is used to help relay information about the brand’s purpose of existence.

The chase for profit taking has further accentuated this misconception as a large part of the Advertising & Promotion budget is coerced to spend on chasing after sales volume.

Advertising in our opinion and in line with the past marketing Gurus advocate, is fundamentally a marketing tool, to be used wisely to further the advancement of the BRAND. The age old rule & role of advertising is to build consumer believability, trust and endeared in the mind of consumers. That should be nothing more and ultimately nothing less.

So to sum it up, is advertising marketing? We certainly don't think so, but that maybe contrary to the beliefs of a lot of advertising companies out there. Till the next time... take care.

S.L. Liew

About the author: The post above is from one of my contributors Mr. Liew Siew Loong. Mr. Liew has been in the marketing field for the last 40 years dealing in FMCG products to food products and even high fashion. To find out more about of his profile, log on to http://www.viscreative.com/

Shopping bags and more

Recently, I have been doing a lot of thinking about my next entry into the blog. Little did I know it would have to do with something so simple which we use in our everyday lives.

It all started as I was looking at the paper bags which I had lying around my office. It suddenly occurred to me that these paper bags did 1 thing fairly well which was to advertise their own brands.

However, I noticed that these paper bags did not communicate as to how an individual could get better connected to the brand on the paper bag.

Imagine this, here you are sitting at a nice little cafe having a latte when all of a sudden someone walks by with this really interesting paper bag (i.e. as per above). You think to yourself, “what an interesting design but unfortunately there's no way I can contact this company / brand.” You then say to yourself, “ I'll probably google the brand when I'm next on line...”

Here's the truth of the matter...I'm pretty sure that in today's uber busy lifestyles, many of us would probably have forgotten about “googl-ing” that brand and probably gone on to do other things when we next get in front of our PC / Mac's.

So I was thinking to myself, why won't companies put their contact details (e.g website) on their shopping bags? Would that not make it easier for potential customers to interact with their brand? After all what other purpose does that bag have other than to expose potential clients to your brand? I imagine it would look like this bag which I found in Hong Kong.

Thus, It is my strong belief that more and more companies should take as many opportunities as possible to communicate their brand presence to potential customers. God knows we get so little opportunities to interact with customers these days... So companies out there, I think the above shopping bag has set an example for us all to follow.

Signing off for now.

Just, What is NOT Marketing???

Many marketing guru’s says that marketing is about consumers, about advertising in any forms (reaching consumers), about placement (distribution avail to consumers), about promotion (allowing consumers to try product), etc… and perhaps, a combination of all the above.

(Source: www.freedigitalphotos.net)

As mentioned in the above, thence, where does marketing start? In advertising, in placement, in promotion, in packaging & labels, in brand names, etc . . . etc . .

(Source: www.freedigitalphotos.net)

There appears to be no beginning and if there is no beginning, what then is not or is marketing?

It is my belief that marketing is not advertising, it is not placement, it is not promotion i.e. any gimmicks that induces consumers to know, test, try the product as we are all given to believe.

The gimmicks in my factual appreciation, are all short term & does little to inject positive influence for the product or brand.Therefore, it is important to tackle the fundamental question of...

“What marketing is NOT?”

marketing compatriots, your views please...

S.L. Liew

About the author: The post above is from one of my contributors Mr. Liew Siew Loong. Mr. Liew has been in the marketing field for the last 40 years dealing in FMCG products to food products and even high fashion. To find out more about of his profile, log on to www.viscreative.com

Update

Dear Friends,

Hi! Its been a while since I've been back to post anything. Been running around to get contributors to the site. So far, I've only found 2 contributors. One who is a marketing consultant which has been in the marketing field for the last 30 years and the other is a retail interior architect.

So I'll be posting their thoughts and their sharing as I endeavour to get more contributors on to my blog.

And for anyone our there who would like to contribute your thoughts and ideas, please feel free to buzz and share with me. We would all like to learn from you! Take care!

A New Beginning...

This title seems to apply more to me than anyone else. This entry represents my first blogging experience and I must say I'm very much excited as well as terrified about the whole process.

Before deciding to embark on this new experience, I actually did some research on blogging and after all that reading... I must say that the most important thing which I picked up was that a blog should discuss a specific topic.



So what this blog is about you ask? This blog will be about all things related to design be it about interior, graphics or even product. My recent trip to Hong Kong has truly inspired me to share my thoughts on design as well as to learn from others about the whole design field.



So I encourage and welcome you; the reader, to comment and even share your thoughts on what I will be talking about. I have always lived with the philosophy that we can learn so much from each other and that 2 or more heads are always better than 1.



So join me on this journey increase and share your thoughts on design and hopefully we'll all benefit more from it.