BRAND MARKETING
What is a Brand? Is it a Logo? Is it a specific colour palette, or a specific font? Building a strong brand can be challenging if you do not have a clear understanding of what a brand refers to. A brand refers to the company’s identity or personality. It is the representation of the service or product a company offers. It highlights the values of the company, and the quality of the products. Brand marketing is therefore a way of making consumers familiar with the company and form strong associations, and expectations with it. In other words, it is not only bringing awareness to the products but also the company itself.
The instant aspects of the brand identity is communicated through the logo which should be visible on all the products, the website, adverts, possibly followed by a slogan.
KEY POINTS WHEN CREATING A BRAND:
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IT MUST BE EASY TO RECOGNISE.
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IT MUST BE CONSISTENT & SPECIFIC
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IT MUST BE COMPATIBLE WITH THE COMPANY'S
SERVICE OR PRODUCTS.
After creating a brand, it is important to do brand marketing with the goal to help consumers understand the vision of the company. Your brand is the most valuable part of your company, because it represents the identity of your business. Create attention around it, and make it such a recognisable brand that consumers almost automatically chooses it because it is familiar.
Brand marketing is about growing the asset of brand equity (the amount of money that customers are willing to pay just because it’s your brand) through communication, sales, products and services and it goes beyond just adding your logo to everything. Having a good strong brand identity is the most important thing to creating loyal customers. The goal is to not only have people like your product, but create such a strong connection to your brand that your version of a product is the only one they want. The goal should be that if someone goes to buy, let’s say chamomile tea, and the store does not have your brand’s version of chamomile tea, they do not buy any chamomile tea at all. Instead, they go to another shop to find your brand.
YOUR BRAND IS MORE
THAN JUST A LOGO,
IT IS AN EXPERIENCE.
The majority of consumers are not only concerned with getting the product they seek, but also the quality of it, the trustworthiness of the company, and the ethics of how it has been produced. A lot of consumers understand that choosing a specific product is like casting a vote on one brand. Brand marketing is therefore about forming a good company reputation and create trust between the consumers and the company. If a brand is successful with creating a strong brand identity, the mere sight or mention of the name should lead instant associations. Brand marketing therefore helps the customer save time effort by not having to do research about the company. It makes it easier for the consumers to decide there and then if they want to purchase the product or not.
BRAND MARKETING
STRATEGIES
1. Connect your brand
with emotions
Create an emotional connection with your brand. This will help separate it from other brands and create brand loyalty over time. Create content that gives your customers something to discuss and get engaged with. If a customer gets emotionally invested in your brand, feels like they are an important part of it they can function as brand ambassadors.
2. Define your brand personality and story.
Look at your brand like a person with a specific personality, and convey these characteristics in everything you create and publish. Tell the story of your brand, how and why it was created and what the mission or vision is. Make sure the colours, fonts and other visual images you use helps to put an emphasis on the brand personality, and be consistent with it.
4. Let the brand live
within the company
Make sure the interior design in your offices/shops matches the brand. It should look and feel similar. In addition to this have clear guidelines on how your employees should communicate with the customers, for example should they use a formal or a casual language? This should match the overall tone of the voice of the company. This helps to create consistency.
5. Have high
standards for design
Design is extremely important, as it is the visual communication your customers will see first. It is important to give a good and strong first impression. Therefore make sure that your website is organised in the way that it quickly shows the characteristics you want them to associate with your brand. Do the same with your product packaging, campaigns etc. A high standard of design will give the customers the impression that your products are of high standard too.
3. Give your brand
a meaning
Make it symbolic. Some brands have made themselves a symbol of status, whilst others, like the shoe brand Toms, have created a symbolic value around the purchase itself; buy one give one.
BRAND MARKETING
BMW
The luxury car manufacturer targets people that value superiority, performance, reliability, quality and social status, who are successful in their careers and belong to the upper class. Through this target group BMW has developed a brand image that represents quality, technologically advanced, high performance and exclusivity.
BMW is famous for having an exceptional customer service. This focus on not just offering quality cars, but quality service and experience function to strengthen their brand image and causes BMW to develop very loyal customers. Their customers expect not just quality but also exclusivity which is why BMW does not go through car distributers but through showrooms. These showrooms are often located in the prime parts of urban cities, and to strengthen the feeling of exclusivity these showrooms are kept to a minimum. Even in huge cities you can only find 2-3 BMW showrooms.
Most of their TV ads are sleek and in a higher quality than most car adverts, and they tend to focus on look, engine and technology which ties nicely with their slogans ; The Ultimate Driving Machine (USA, UK & Australia) and Sheer Driving Pleasure (Worldwide).
THE BMW BRAND REPRESENTS
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QUALITY
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TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEDMENT
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HIGH PERFORMANCE
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EXCLUSIVITY
BRAND MARKETING
RITUALS
What has made Rituals so successful is that it has tapped into a market of affordable luxury which is done by combining high quality products, beautiful packaging, a good price point, and a strong brand story. It is this together with a strong passion for the brand that leads them to success. Rituals philosophy is written on the walls and reflected in everything they do; their products, customer experience and employees. The details say it all; how you get served a cup of tea as soon as you enter the shop, how they hand over the bag to you in the Asian-style with two hands around the bag. In essence they are selling you a beautifully packaged experience.
However, in today’s digital world, having just a physical brand experience is not enough, it has to be offered online as well. The question however, is how to make this experience as personal as the one given offline. This becomes a challenge, especially when the brand is focused around creating a feeling. One important step to add the «Rituals feeling», was to include visual stimuli through images and videos. With a focus on making people slow down, and create meaningful moments, the images and videos are focused on explaining why this philosophy is important, as well as presenting the products and demonstrating how to use them. In other words, it is more about selling a story than selling the products.
A BEAUTIFULLY
PACKAGED
EXPERIENCE
BRAND MARKETING
NETFLIX
Netflix has a very witty, casual and consistent brand voice, and is very good at embracing trends to strengthen their brand image. In 2010/2011 the term Netflix & Chill emerged, and Instead of dismissing it, Netflix leaned into it and used it, posting a Netflix and Chill meme on their Tumblr. This term is still used today and has been embedded into the pop-culture. It is referred to in songs and also made its way into the Urban Dictionary. The fact that people use this term on social media gives Netflix free publicity via word-of-mouth, and has made Netflix an even more recognisable brand.