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What’s the trouble with branding? The problem is that branding is being peddled as a brand in itself. Like a hot commodity, entrepreneurs and businesses rush to stock up. Let’s face it; if you do it right, branding your business can deliver a sharp competitive advantage. Business plans spill over with branding objectives and strategies. An initial search on Amazon.com for branding and you’ll get at least 210 books, search Google and you’ll get 46,000,000 results. And so they read branding books, listen to branding gurus and include branding themes in pitches to customers, investors, and key constituents. So, with all this stuff out there, how do you get your business to branding nirvana?
Building a viable brand takes, commitment, work and time; it’s that simple. Effective branding flies in the face of today’s hyper business speed of quarter-to-quarter measurement. A brand is a result of integrated activities that happen over a period of time bringing together various parts of the enterprise to achieve consumer preference, affinity and ultimately drives growth. Launching a brand is one thing, but becoming a brand is entirely different. I believe that when businesses talk about branding, they mean, “becoming a brand” but act as if they are “launching a brand.” And so teams are mobilized, resources allocated…launch, then what? It’s the “then what” part where brands are built and real value is made.
Below is a discussion that speaks to the heart of the branding problem and offers some real solutions.
Branding Today: It’s a Whole New Game
Businesses must recognize that they are operating in a new world. Today, we live in a connected world where the old advertising model is broken but continues inexplicably to sputter along. Today, the consumer controls your brand as much as you do. We continue to be bombarded by marketing messages from consumer and business, and we have technology at our fingertips to control what we want to see, and what we don’t.
Web 2.0, the ability for business to meaningfully interact with markets on the web is another game changer. Leveraging the power of Web 2.0 and social networking can help or hinder your brand depending on how you choose to use it. Not only can you take a strong position and distribute your brand on the web, you must monitor the web for anything that works against your brand.
Relevancy: That’s one of the secret ingredients in this new model. And relevancy comes through engagement of your customers and market, just as much as buying the right number of impressions to reach the target audience. In many ways, the empowered consumer provides business and entrepreneurs with unprecedented opportunities, the key is to execute against those opportunities.
Branding Is a Process and Occurs Over Time
In a time where performance is measured from quarter to quarter, history tells us that strong, lasting brands are built over time. Branding is not an activity, it is a result of your total integrated marketing communications strategy, and business operations, and it happens over time – Think Coke, Intel, Dell, Gucci. There is incredible staying power in these names that only comes with longevity and execution in the market place, consistent market messaging, and product and service excellence.
If brands can be rolled out, they can rolled-back. It’s that simple. If your company is considering a branding campaign, then the cornerstone ought to be market driven strategy. Create a hierarchy for your marketing and PR activities and integrate them. Link those to key products, services, or business lines that you wish to promote and grow. For example, if taking a position in the market place by advertising, then consider developing an aligned public relations campaign and web campaign to fully engage the market. This way you have multiple touches in the market place around a singular effort for more efficient and effective outcomes.
Branding Is Not About Your Creative
Well, that’s not entirely true. Your creative is one, but important, element of your brand. However, I have seen entire businesses spend hundreds of thousands in both real dollars and or opportunity costs, or come to a temporary halt over things like logos, fonts and colors because a brand manager, or executive didn’t like way it looks – samples of one. While creative is important, and we all want to get it just right, the reality is no one drives by McDonald’s saying, “Hmmm, I don’t really like that logo,” or so closely examining the Dell logo and are appalled by the stylized “e.” We need to back away from the creative ledge and focus on the over all goals of the brand.
If your creative is appropriate, then the development and execution of your brand distribution strategy is vital. After all, what good is a great business message, product or service, if you have no way of getting it out to your customers and creating value for your business?
Your total image has more to do with how you conduct business, the service level your provide and how competitive your products are relative to your competition, the value you bring to the market than anything else. When you have product and services are market ready, your marketing communications program should have four important elements that will contribute to your brand:
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Message - The focus and relevancy of your message relative to your customers and the value of your product and service.
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Reach – How, where and how effectively are you reaching your market place?
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Frequency – Do your messages have enough frequency in the market place to be effective?
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Consistency - Product and service delivery must match your market messages. Your market messages must be distributed consistently across all of your customer touch points including, web, brochures, sales collateral, CEO speeches, on-hold message, and everywhere and anywhere that may be relevant to your brand distribution strategy.
The Role of PR in Branding
Public relations ought to be an element of any serious branding strategy. Think of concentric circles, now think of public relations as the largest circle and the inside circles being media, constituent, primary, secondary and tertiary markets, and employee relations among other key defined markets. With that in mind, construct a communications plan for each of these markets, and that may encompass events, engagement of the press of course, newsletters, email, websites, social networking, and even sales. Again, define each activity, link it to your key market objectives and execute.
Again, in the old model, business think of PR as “get me in the papers,” but in this new dynamic effective brands look for market engagement, which may include events, conferences, social networking, and Web 2.0 strategies.
Execution is Key
Planning is key but execution opens the door to the kingdom. Flawless execution allows us to learn about our approach, market reaction, and change tactics if need be. And so if we buy the concept that branding is a result of what you do, not what you, that result can only be achieved through execution. So, execute.
More to Come
The dynamics of branding will continue to change, as demographics, tastes and technology changes. Successful brand managers are able to recognize these important events and leverage the communications forces in the market, including cultural phenomenon, to distribute their brands to forge lasting, emotional relationships with their customers.
Abe Kasbo is CEO of Verasoni Worldwide, www.verasoni.com, based in Little Falls; New Jersey is a fiercely independent, diversified strategic marketing and public relations firm. With clients in financial services, healthcare, media, entertainment, specialty retail, hospitality, Verasoni delivers innovative marketing strategies across various traditional and non-traditional platforms. He is an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University’s Center for Public Service and blogs at www.verasoni.com/vblog.
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