Brand as a Promise
This are set of expected value proposition, pattern, feel and culture that is associated with your brand.
That is whenever consumer comes in contact with you, the expectation they have about you. It tell customers, either explicitly or implicitly, what they can expect from your company, its product or service. It sets their expectations on the quality of your products or services.
So, brand promise is a value or experience your customers can expect to receive every single time they interact with you. The more you deliver on the promise, the stronger your brand value in the mind of customers and also employees.
In a nutshell, the brand promise had to be simple, memorable, inspiring, credible memorable…
Brand as a Driver of Choice
The brand is that thing that make a consumer to choose a particular product/service over another. It is the subliminal and intangible factor that uniquely differentiate you from the others.
Various consumer behavior researches have indicated that price is seldom among the first two considerations in choice making, rather the brand promise and experience. You wonder why people will do everything to own an iPhone rather than a Tecno that is less that 1 fift of the former.
Regardless of the volume of budget on beautiful advertisement; as necessary part of the marketing mix as adverts are, without first taking the energy to build the brand, it might not yield so much results.
Adverts tell a consumer what to do, but branding tell him on how to do it.
Branding is objective and deeper. It defines trajectory, while adverts are subjective and defines tactics. Branding is long-term and it is macro, but advertising is short-term and micro.
Brand as an Experience
Brand is the thought or image that comes to mind when a consumer comes in contact with you or any of your collections. This is formed based on previous experience or someone else’s narration. That is why most things are now experiential.
The good and bad part is, your company’s real name is the customer’s experience. You better ensure they have good experience.
Brand Build Confidence
Customers trust that the organisation, its product(s) or service(s) will do exactly what they already believe it will do, particularly based on previous experiences.
Its been said that people often buy impulsively and justify later. Here, the brand is the justification.
If you are offered a bottle of Coca-Cola in a foreign land, at a deep night, you never bother to check again, so far you already sees the trademark.
Branding is Strategic
Branding is strategic as has been proved repeatedly, while marketing is tactical. Branding determine the depth and the flow of all other activities, engagement and it influences culture.
From practical point view, the brand is what remains after the marketing has swept through the room. It’s the connecting point that associate your mind process in choice decision with a product, service, or organization, regardless of if you are making an immediate purchase or not.
That is why branding, though might attract good cost, is a worthy investment that always return loyalty – from employees whose job have become easier because they don’t have to spend all day convincing consumers (their minds are already or almost made up), to the consumers who have become ambassadors and fans of your product or the organization.
When done rightly, it doesn’t just make consumers choose you ahead of competitors, but position you as (like) a ‘sole provider’ of the particular service or solution to their need. Isn’t that good?
Brand is Valuable
Brand in summary has become one of the most valuable asset of a corporate organisation. From a financial point of view, a brand can be worth dozens of times the company’s book value.
Though intangible, it is often the determinant of the sustainability of a business. This fact makes brand management indispensable.
I remember the story of partnership business where one partner was pulling for buyout and the other simply said “Take all the money, asset and products and give me the brand, and in 5 years, I will be better than you”