Tuesday, December 18, 2007

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.