Chapter 21

Ten Branding Truths to Remember

In This Chapter

Understanding the traits of great brands

Benefiting from great brand experiences

The best name, logo, ads, and efforts can’t compensate for a weak brand. But what’s a brand? And how do you build a strong one? The ten truths presented in this chapter summarize the key points you have to know.

Branding Starts with Positioning

Your position is the birthplace of your brand. It’s the unique space in the consumer’s mind that only your offering can fill. You need to determine and stake your position before you develop the brand that will live there.

Positioning is the process of finding an unfulfilled want or need in the consumer’s mind and addressing it with a distinctively different and ideally suited offering.

Remember these rules about positioning:

• Your position must be open. Otherwise, you’ll need to dislodge an existing brand — and that’s big and costly challenge to tackle.
• Your position must be based on a unique point of difference that’s believable, meaningful, and attractive to consumers.
• Your point of difference must be one that you can deliver with such consistency that every experience with your brand reminds customers of why they chose and remain loyal to your brand.

Chapter 5 helps you determine and stake claim to the position for your brand.

A Brand Is a Promise Well Kept

Brands are promises that people believe in.

You establish a brand, in essence, by building trust in a promise about who you are, what you stand for, and what unique and meaningful benefits people can count on you to deliver.

You build your brand by reinforcing your promise every time people come in contact with you or with any facet of your organization — whether as customers, prospects, investors, employees, suppliers, friends, neighbors, or others; whether in person, online, through word-of-mouth, or through personal experiences; whether before, during, or after a purchase; and whether they’re interacting with you, your staff, your products, your marketing or social messages, or any other form of encounter.

Your promise is the pledge upon which you stake your brand reputation. For help defining your promise, turn back to Chapter 6.

Branding Happens from the Inside Out

The way you present your brand to the world has to align perfectly with the values and purpose of your organization. Otherwise, your brand messages and promise won’t sync with the identity that resides at the core of your business, and people will sense the lack of credibility and tune out your marketing efforts as a result.

To arrive at a brand that accurately reflects the essence of your organization, begin the branding process by writing three essential statements:

• Your vision statement, which defines the long-term aspirations of your organization and the ultimate good you aim to achieve.
• Your mission statement, which defines what you do for others and the approach you’ll follow to achieve your vision.
• Your brand statement, which defines what you do and the positive difference you promise to make in the lives of those you serve.

Chapter 6 includes statement templates and step-by-step advice to follow in writing these statements. Chapter 9 helps you win understanding and buy-in for your brand within your organization before you announce it to the outside world.

Consistency Builds Brands

After you’re clear about what your brand stands for, be prepared to reinforce it by delivering your product, promise, and brand experience with total consistency. Doing so puts the odds strongly in your favor that you’ll win out over brands that shift with the wind, regardless of how beautifully they’ve polished their identities or their marketing materials.

Create a brand that customers can recognize and count on by

• Displaying a consistent look
• Projecting a consistent brand character
• Delivering a consistent level of quality in all communications, products, and services
• Staying consistently true to what your brand is, stands for, and promises

The chapters in Part III help you present your brand through publicity, advertising, social media, and online communications. Chapter 13 guides development of an unfailingly consistent brand experience.

People Power Brands

Brands are made or broken by human encounters that either advance or erode brand promises. Passionate employees and passionate customers — in that order — power great brands. If you develop brand understanding, enthusiasm, and commitment within your organization, customer understanding, enthusiasm, and commitment will follow.

A great brand name, logo, promise, and communication program are essential ingredients for brand success, but nothing tops the need for an internal team of brand champions, beginning with the leader of your organization and including every single person who affects the consumer’s experience with your offering.

Turn to Chapter 13 as you prepare to suit up and train a team capable of delivering a brand experience that ignites customer passion for your brand.

Brands Live in Consumers’ Minds

When people see your logo or hear your name, they automatically conjure up impressions and memories that determine what they believe about you. Their notions may be the result of firsthand encounters with you, your products, or organization. Their notions may be based on communications they’ve seen or heard — anything from your ads to displays, signs, news articles, even your identity on Little League hats. Their notions may result from web searches, social-media posts, or secondhand recaps of other customers’ experiences that are passed along online or by word-of-mouth.

Regardless of whether the beliefs customers hold about you are many or few, good or bad, or accurate or inaccurate, they comprise the image of your brand and they influence how people think and buy.

Your brand image lives in your customers’ minds whether you intentionally put it there or not. Good branding is how you make sure that the brand image you have is the brand image you want. The chapters in Part III provide tips and best practices for capitalizing on every brand communication opportunity.

Brand Names and Logos Are Like Keys that Unlock Brand Images

Your brand is a set of memories that’s tapped each time people see or hear your name.

The right name establishes your brand from the day it’s announced, and it grows with your business and your vision as you reach into new market areas, new geographic regions, and even new product areas.

A great brand name should

• Reflect the brand character of your business.
• Describe your offering and convey an association to the meaning of your brand.
• Convey or be consistent with your brand promise.
• Be easy and pleasant to say and unique and memorable so that, over time, it appreciates into an asset that you can harvest through premium pricing, licensing, or even a sale to a new owner.

Naming your brand is the most challenging, momentous, and necessary phase in the process of branding. Count on Chapter 7 to walk you through the steps involved. Then turn to Chapter 8 as you begin the process of designing a logo to serve as the visible face of your brand.

Brand Experiences Trump Brand Messages

In branding, what you say pales in comparison to what you do.

When consumers gravitate to one brand over the others, their decisions are rarely based on reactions to marketing messages alone. Instead, people rely on their own experiences or on what they’ve learned about the experiences of others. They choose and stay with brands that they believe will keep their promises based on what they’ve personally seen and sensed.

To create a brand experience capable of moving markets and instilling loyalty, be ready to convey and reinforce your brand promise through every encounter with your organization — from the office of the CEO down and from the first inquiry to the final service call. If one portion of the experience falls short of consumer expectations — from one poorly handled phone call to one erroneous invoice — your brand image suffers.

“Be the brand” isn’t just talk; it’s the key to branding success. To develop a team of brand champions prepared to deliver a great brand experience and to put your brand experience to the test, turn to Chapters 9 and 13.

Brands Need to Start and Stay Relevant

To win and keep a slot in the consumer’s mind, your brand needs to begin and remain credible, competitive, current, and relevant to customer wants, needs, and interests. That means you need to tune in to market conditions, consumer preferences, and cultural trends not only when you establish your brand but also on a regular basis as your brand ages.

Markets change, and businesses change. When they do, brands that remain stuck in times past pay a high price in terms of credibility and competitiveness.

Follow the advice in Chapter 5 to conduct customer and competitive research before you launch your brand and afterward. Then use Chapter 16 as your guide as you determine what kind of brand update may be in order — from an evolutionary revitalization of your brand name, logo, and look to a revolutionary, full-scale rebranding following a major merger, acquisition, or redirected business strategy.

Either way, the revised brand strategy that you adopt should represent your brand vision for at least ten years, which is about the frequency that brands should undergo major change.

Brands Are Valuable Assets

In the world’s most successful businesses, the brand is often the most valuable single asset. When companies with great brands are sold, the value of the brand often accounts for as much as half of the sale price. Plus, brand value translates into everyday economic benefits, including

• Premium pricing and reduced price sensitivity
• Lower costs of sales and promotions
• Higher market share
• Reduced threat of competition
• Greater employee satisfaction
• Higher recognition by consumers, industry leaders, media, investors, and analysts

Count on the information in Chapter 15 to help as you assess the value of your brand, as you plan how to protect and leverage brand value, and as you pursue brand extensions, licensing, and cobranding opportunities.