Branding For Dummies. Chiaravalle Bill

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      ✔ Brands prompt consumer selection. For the first time in shopping history, consumers can shop and buy without any geographic limitation. The Internet and other at-home shopping options allow far-reaching access to any product, anywhere. With a few clicks or keystrokes, consumers find and select products with names they know and promises they trust. In this boundless marketplace, brands rule and no-name products barely survive.

      ✔ Brands build name awareness. For good reason, new businesses and products increasingly go by invented names instead of by known words. For one thing, more than three million U.S. trademarks are already registered, so any marketer who wants to protect a new name practically needs to create a never-before seen word in order to succeed. For another, 99 percent of all words in the English dictionary are already reserved as Internet addresses and are therefore unavailable to new marketers. As a result, most new offerings are launched under invented names, and invented names require strong and diligent brand development in order to achieve consumer awareness, recall, and meaning. (Chapter 7 is full of advice for naming your brand.)

      ✔ Brands increase the odds of business survival. New businesses and new products are being launched at an unprecedented pace. Only those that ride into the market on the strength of an established brand or those that are capable of building a brand name in a hurry can seize consumer awareness, understanding, and preference fast enough to survive.

      Brands have been around for centuries, as the sidebar “The red-hot history of branding” explains. But they’ve never been more important – or more essential to business success – than they are today.

      ✔ Brand: The essence and idea of what you stand for. Your brand starts with a vision and grows into a promise about who you are and what you stand for that gets reinforced every time people come in contact with any facet of your business or organization.

      ✔ Brand identity: The name and visual marks that present your brand, usually in the form of a logo, symbol, or unique typestyle, as well as all other identifying elements including colors, package shape, even sounds and smells associated with your brand.

      ✔ Brand image: The beliefs about what your brand is and what it stands for that exist in the customer’s mind as a result of all encounters, associations, and experiences with any aspect of your business or organization.

      ✔ Branding: The process of building positive perceptions in your customer’s mind by consistently presenting the vision and idea of your brand so others understand and believe what you stand for and the promise you invariably make and keep.

      ✔ Brand position: How your brand fits in with and relates to various other brands within your competitive market.

      ✔ Brand management: Controlling the presentation of your brand identity, message, and promise across your entire organization and through all communication channels, and protecting your brand identity against infringement or misuse.

      ✔ Brand equity: The value of your brand as an asset based on its qualities, reputation, recognition, and the demand, loyalty, and premium pricing it generates.

      ✔ If you bring consistency to your branding program, you build a brand that stands head and shoulders (no branding pun intended) above the others.

      ✔ If you have a clear and passionate vision about what you stand for and project messages to your target market that constantly reinforce how your offering is different and relevant, you build knowledge and, eventually, esteem.

      ✔ As a result of your consistency, you win out over businesses that shift with the wind, regardless of how beautifully they’ve polished their identities or their marketing materials.