Sunday, December 6, 2009

Brand building

'Brand' is such an over-used word that sometimes it becomes a filler or impressor phrase. But there is a lot of depth to this term. I've been thinking of how to crystallize my thoughts on Brand Management to be able to pen them down for my own reference.
If somebody wants to build a brand (product or business) he or she needs to build their brand first. Now why is this important you may feel? If there is an existing brand that you want to manage.... you have to be able to demonstrate that you can manage it better... and for that you need to build your brand...If you're launching a new brand... you need a strong brand (your own of course) to be able to create alliances and prove your brand (product, business) is the right choice.

I'm going pen down what Vertebrand Management Consultancy has to say about brand building...

The best way to start would be to clearly define the industry the brand is in... once that is established, it is essential to understand

A. The industry to see how competitors are:
- functioning
- talking
- dramatizing
B. What your strenghts, weakness', stories and vision, mission, objective are are - figuring internal capabilities is extremely important because every company will have some peculiarities which can be highlighted and communicated into brand stories.
Figuring these two out lets you understand what the brand needs to have to belong and what it needs to cultivate to stand out by creating a distinc brand identity and personality - i.e. essentially be top-of-mind when a consumer thinks of buying a product in that category


C. Target Customers & their wants - As cliched as this is, inspite of brands claiming to be customer centric they don't always know what the customer wants or arn't able to deliver it... which means with solid customer relationships (which take time to build) a brand will know what to offer in keeping with trends and how to communicate it. Understanding customer segments and their buying behaviour will allow the brand to be able to constantly tweak its delivery, communication and hopefully over deliver leading to customer delight

All these facets of the business will eventually let you figure out what your brand's core values, differntiators, identity and personality are. This in turn allows for a more synergistic logo, positioning statement and marketing strategy.


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