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✔ If you’re developing a product, business, or nonprofit brand, your vision defines – for every person in your organization – why you’re doing what you’re doing and the ultimate good you want to achieve through your success. Establishing a clear vision keeps your entire team on track and makes branding an almost-transparent process. You don’t have to tell people why upholding the brand promise is important. By understanding the long-term vision you’re working to achieve, the brand promise becomes a commitment that’s caught, not taught, throughout the organization. Chapter 6 guides you through the process of putting your brand into words.
Great brands stem from the beliefs, personalities, and values of those leading the brand. They result in a brand culture that’s authentic and heartfelt.
Branding to win trust and increased value
Instinctively, you’ve proven the influence of brand trust thousands of times over. Think of the last time you reviewed job applicants, or scrolled through screen-after-screen of shoe choices, or scanned reviews for movies playing in town. You had to make a choice, and chances are good that you opted for the offering you thought you could trust. Branding, or lack thereof, led to your selection.
If you viewed all the choices as similar and fairly risk-free, you probably let convenience or low price tip your decision. That’s because no single offering inspired your trust or presented distinguishing benefits, so you went with the quickest, least-expensive option. (The section on commodities earlier in this chapter has more on the topic of undifferentiated offerings.)
But if, after scanning all your options, you settled on an offering that took you out of your way or caused you to pay a little or a lot more, your decision was likely based on a sense that the one you selected was worth the price or the trouble because you believed it wouldn’t let you down. That trust, almost certainly, was the result of good branding.
You can build a brand for a product or service, a small or huge company, or a nonprofit organization. You can build a brand for yourself, called a personal brand, which is a brand category so hot that we’ve given it its own chapter (Chapter 4). In this section we give you an overview of all the kinds of brands you can build.
Product brands
Products are tangible, physical items that you can hold in your hands or see with your own eyes before you make the purchase.
If a product lacks any perception of distinct quality or value, it’s known as a commodity (think salt). When a manufacturer wins awareness in the marketplace that its product has characteristics that make it different and better than others in the product category, that commodity turns into what’s known as a consumer brand (think Morton’s). (Refer to the preceding section for more on commodities.)
Branding is a powerful way to differentiate a product in ways that create consumer preference and premium pricing.
Service brands
People buy services sight-unseen. Unlike tangible, three-dimensional products that shoppers can see and feel and try out before buying (or at least look at on your website), people buy services purely based on their trust that the person or business they’re buying from will deliver as promised.
✔ People buy your service based entirely on their belief in your brand promise. People need to have faith in you, your ability, and your reputation before they decide to commit their business.
✔ Before signing on the dotted line to purchase a service, customers need to believe that their expectations will be met. If they know nothing about you or lack confidence in the quality of your service, they’ll take their business elsewhere.
Examples of globally recognized service brands include Google, eBay, H&R Block, Charles Schwab, and FedEx. For examples of local-level service brands, think of your region’s leading law firm, best hair salon, most innovative homebuilder, or most trusted medical clinic. Each earned its reputation by building a clear identity and consistently conveying a believable promise that people trust in while they wait for the purchased service to be performed and their high expectations to be met.
Business or corporate brands
Many large companies and corporations build product or service brands in addition to their business brands. (The section later in this chapter titled “Brand Architecture 101” describes how business and product or service brands relate to each other.)
Procter & Gamble, for example, has a corporate brand in addition to a portfolio of consumer brands. On a smaller scale, you probably can think of a local land developer that builds product brands for each new residential community in addition to a brand for the land development company that holds the individual brands.
Table 2-1 summarizes how product or service and business brands differ from and complement each other.
Table 2-1 Comparison of Business Brands and Consumer Brands
If you build only one brand – and that’s the advice we give to any business with limited marketing expertise or budget – build a business brand because business brands accomplish the following:
✔ Lead to awareness, credibility, and good reputations
✔ Pave a smooth road for product introductions
✔ Inspire employees
✔ Attract the interest of job applicants, investors, and business reporters
✔ Contribute to customer preference for your products and services, often accompanied by a willingness to pay more for the association with a leading, high-esteem business
Branding individuals (namely, yourself)
Individual brands are a hot topic and the focus of Chapter 4. They come in two types: personal brands and personality brands.
✔ Personal brands reflect personal reputations. They differentiate individuals by creating awareness of who they are, what they stand for, what they do best, and how they contribute to the world around them. By developing your personal brand, you establish yourself for your expertise, enhance visibility, develop preference, gain influence, and power success toward your personal goals. You prepare yourself to take every opportunity to make a great first impression.
✔ Personality СКАЧАТЬ