How To Create A Brand – Build Your Brand Development Strategy

Posted on April 16, 2021 by dayat

How To Create A Brand?

There are four effective steps in brand development strategy to create a brand:

Choose the brand name and logo
Establish the brand in the minds of customers
Brand Sponsorship
Develop the brand
What Is Brand Equity?
How to create a Brand is no way different from founding your business. It takes time. Gradually you can create Brand Equity. Brand equity is the differential effect when consumers react more favorably to a brand than to a generic or unbranded version of the same product. Whenever we think of buying a smartphone the very first name strikes us is – the iPhone. Ask why? It’s because of comfort and authenticity delivered by iPhone to its users.

Apple throughout their years of research and experience has created a state in our mind of ultimate luxury and comfortability in using their products. There may be a few more similar products of others in line with Apple iPhone and may be superior to that, but the identity of iPhone gives it the edge over others- no matter what the price tag is. This edge is the Brand Equity.

4 Steps of Brand Development Strategy

1. Choose the Brand Name and select the Logo:

While building a brand development strategy name plays a vital role. A good name and style can add positives to a product’s success. It is the most difficult task to start with. Simplicity is the first step. The name should be easy to pronounce, recognize and remember. Moreover, it should suggest something about the product’s benefits and qualities.

Names like Google, Nike, Facebook, Apple, KFC etc. are among the most established brands all over the world. Interesting fact about those names is that they are easily translatable in different languages around the world. Hence the meaning of a particular word should not be something which indicates bad, wrong or negative.

Again the name should be extendable to cover up multiple product lines. For example, Amazon.com started its business with bookselling and now has been extended to multiple product categories.

Once chosen, the brand name should also be protected. Means in many instances brand names were eventually mixed up with the product category and people cannot differentiate the brand identity from the product category.

For example, Xerox is a company builds copier machines, but doing a photocopy is often termed as doing xerox.’Xerox’ is to be pronounced as a noun and not as a verb. Many people find it hard to distinguish between the product and the service which ultimately hampers the brand name of the Company.

2. Establishing the brand in the minds of customers:

An interesting saying by a marketer- Products are created in the factory, but brands are created in the mind. This can be done in multiple ways- At the basic level, it starts with introducing the target customers the product and its distinguishing characteristics.

Let’s took the example of Amazon’s Kindle- e-book reader. Amazon targets its customers, saying that it’s an e-book reader having a distinguished feature of reading books in a virtual format. In this stage, they are simply introduced with the product and has a very low level of impact.

The more effective way a brand can be positioned by associating its name with desirable benefits. Thus, Kindle is beyond an e-book reader- it is lightweight, on the go dictionary, stores thousands of books which are easy to search, no glare and zero distractions.

The strongest brands go beyond establishing features and benefits in customers’ mind and positions itself on strong values and beliefs, rooted to a deep emotional bonding. Like reading books in Kindle is an absolute pleasure and presents itself as booklover’s new best friend. When placing a brand in human mind, the marketer should establish a mission for the brand and a vision of what the brand must be and do.

3. Brand Sponsorship:

Brand sponsorship can be of three types:

Private Brand sponsorship
Licensed Brand sponsorship
Co-branding
Private Brand Sponsorship:
Lots of advertisements and social marketing strategies work behind the big brands to emerge and are termed as National brands. But for smaller Companies, it may not always be possible to endorse brands with a huge out of pocket expenses. In those scenarios, brand sponsorship is very important. As against National or Manufacture’s brands, there are Store brands. In recent decades store brands are gaining more from the market. Here’s why?

Big shopping malls like Big Bazaar, Walmart resale products at significant discount rates especially the generic or no-name brands. They endorse the products citing its advantages or putting side by side comparison with the top brands. The association of the big resellers with less known products works as an aid in uplifting the brand value of the product once termed as ‘no-name’.

Private brand sponsorship is also followed in online shopping too. As we can see small or lesser known mobile manufacturers are recently tying up with Amazon to sell their phones. In fact, this strategy is working great as the ‘no-name’ brands are getting the support of the big brand stores be it online or offline.

Licensed Brand Sponsorship:

In this brand sponsorship, some companies buy the names and symbols of other manufacturers or creators with a fee and endorse its products under such brand name. This is a common thing in the fashion industry like Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci, Armani etc., where the Companies are using the names and initials of well-known fashion innovator. This type of branding turns out as an added fillip but with a pinch in the pocket.

Co-Branding:

Under such a brand sponsorship strategy, to established brand names of different companies are used on the same product. Because each brand dominates in a different category, the combined brands create broader consumer appeal and greater brand equity.

For example, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance where Bajaj is a dominant player in the automobile sector and Allianz is a German financial service major. Now since Bajaj wants an entry in the insurance sector and Allianz wants an entry in the Indian market, they jointly made a brand ‘Bajaj-Allianz’ to reap the fruits of the Indian insurance market.

Co-branding carries some limitations too. Such relationships usually involve complex legal contracts and licenses. Co-branding partners must carefully coordinate their advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing efforts. The onus lies on both the partners to carry the co-brand with trust and dignity.

4. Developing Brands:

To augment the brand equity it is very important to prepare a brand development strategy incommensurate with changing business scenarios. There is no hard and fast rule to dictate over.

Line extensions:

Brands name of a product can be extended to an existing line of products to accredit new forms, colors, sizes, ingredients or flavors of an existing product. However, line extensions involve some risks. An overextended brand name might cause consumer confusion or loss some of its specific meaning.

Brand extensions:

It happens when a current brand name is extended to a new or modified product in a new category. For example, Nestlé’s popular brand of noodles Maagi has been extended to its tomato ketchup, pasta, soup etc. A brand extension gives a new product instant recognition and faster acceptance. But one should be careful while extending brand as it may confuse the image of the main brand.

Multi-Brands:

Multibranding offers a way to establish different features that appeal to different customer segments, lock up more reseller shelf space and capture a larger market share.

For example, a reputed company sells multiple varieties of soft drinks under different brand names. These brands are fighting each other to reign the market and as a result, they individually may have a smaller share of a pie, but as a whole, the Company is dominating the soft drink market. The major drawback here is the individual brands obtain only a small market share and may not be very profitable.

Conclusion

Brands are not created in a day or two; you ought to have the patience to grow it. The above – mentioned points suggest some best practices to build a brand, but the real test begins in the field. Brand development strategy differs from place to place, even urban branding and rural branding are way different in their practical applications. Remember that behind a successful brand development strategy, there lie lots of endeavors, a vividly clear vision and above all an uncompromised quality of product or service.

Author Name: Deep Sikder

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Branding a Winery and Its Wine Is Expensive, Necessary and Benefits the Consumer No Matter the Size

Posted on March 16, 2021 by dayat

discussion about branding is generally not a conversation anticipated with excitement. If you’re a marketing type it can be characterized as maybe interesting. But, promising most people an indepth discussion on the subject of wine branding; heck, we might have no one accepting an invitation to our dinner party. In reality, creating a brand image for wineries and wines can help the consumer to be smart buyers.

Because margins can be small for producers and a perponderance of producers are small, small margins impact the small producer profoundly. Branding can be expensive. So what can be done to entice consumers to try a brand they have never heard of before? Now we are talking about branding and it can be risky, even with great planning. Further, it is a lot of compromising.

What impact did branding have on the last bottle of wine you bought? Did you buy that wine because you knew some enticing fact about the winery, winemaker or their wine making processes? Did you buy a wine based upon a friend’s recommendation because they knew your preference for a certain varietal? Have your preferences for a wine changed over the past few years? Do you buy your wine based upon a random trial and found you liked that particular wine? Whatever the process you went through in buying a wine you have been impacted, to some degree, by branding. If you simply selected a wine based upon its price or label design, branding was involved.

Recently, I have had discussions concerning the process of business branding from a corporate perspective and a product perspective. Most of the emphases of these discussions have been specific to the value of branding a winery and their wines; predominately with small producers. Like most everything in business, decisions are generally based upon compromises in budgets, approach, etc. Obviously, the product of a winery is bottles of various varietal wines which are a disposable product that is consumed based upon ever changing sensory perceptions–mostly taste. I submit that the juxtaposition in branding a winery and their products makes this discussion difficult. For example, many wines I like and buy frequently, I don’t even know who produces them. Further, winery brands I recognize, some of their wines I don’t like for various subjective reasons.

Point being, in most branding discussions relating to the wine industry become convoluted. Wineries produce multiple labels and these labels are subjected to consumer reviews that are based on innumerable personal influences. With so many variables, the task of presenting a positive image about a corporate winery brand is difficult.

We all are influenced by branding to some degree, even minimally. For example, a few years ago Tide was going to stop sponsoring NASCAR races. Surprisingly, they found that Tide had a rabid and loyal following with female NASCAR fans and Tide is still a sponsor. The brand had made a commitment and now wanted to change it.

Another example of branding impact is Schlitz beer. In the late 1960′s Schlitz decided to change their formula for brewing their beer. Immediately they went from a premier label, ahead of Budweiser, to being virtually extinct. In 2008, they went back to their original formula of the 1960′s, but the damage to a great brand was permanent.

These examples of powerful brands are obvious. In the case of Schlitz it shows how fragile a brand can be if the consumer is betrayed. However, wine is not a mass market product (like beer) that is as ubiquitous as beer or a laundry detergent. Compared to wine, consumers do not build beer cellars in their home and collect beer. So, wine is a very unique product that is expensive to brand on a per customer basis (this is especially true when consumers understand the discounting needed for distributors to sell and promote a label (discounting is part of the branding strategy).

The demographics for the wine market are broken down into 5 segments with some under 21 years old in the millennial category. This is according to a Wines and Vines Newsletter. The largest segment of wine drinkers are the millennia’s and Generation xers making up 70% of the 5 market segments (Baby Boomers included). Wine Business Monthly estimates 1 of 4 drinking consumers do not drink wine but prefer beer or spirits. Of the 130 million adult populations it is estimated 35% drink some wine, according to Live Science. This illustrates the finite size of the market and the precision required in branding to be effective in developing a consumer’s perception of a corporate winery brand.

For this discussion on winery branding, Wines and Vines tells us that the average price of a bottle of wine keeps inching up and is now approximately $12. The real sweet spot is in the $10-15 per bottle range. When a winery looks at the cost of raw materials, marketing, packaging, sales/discounting and facilities and G/A the margins are restrictive when planning a new or improved branding program. Wineries in this position need volume and a 5,000 case run makes branding challenging, but not impossible.

Using the best information available for this discussion, we assume there are about 44% of the populations who do not drink any alcoholic beverages. Based upon population distribution within the 5 demographic segments there are approximately 65 million people who drink some wine at least monthly. We will assume here that they will buy approximately 3-4 bottles of wine per month (probably a generous assumption). This information could account for the purchase of approximately 220 million bottles of wine in the US. These purchaseswould be for home consumption with an additional amount for restaurant sales and meeting/convention sales.

Here is where the branding issues become real. There are 8,500 wineries in the U.S. 80% of these wineries produce 5,000 cases or less of wine. To add perspective, Gallo produces in excess of 80 million cases of wine in a year for worldwide sales. Keeping with the small producer for the moment, this wine is sold via the winery tasting room, winery wine clubs, on-line (Direct to Consumer), retailers (which includes grocery stores) via Three Tier Distribution that requires discounting to the distributors for retailer discounts, sale commissions, promotions and their advertising.

Remember, there has been no discussion of the wines that are imported from Italy, France, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. This is important because these producers/importers are worried about branding their products also; this causes a lot of clutter in the market.

It is probably apparent there are large producers, from all over the world, selling wine in America. Some wines do enjoy strong brand recognition such as Yellow Tail from Australia or Gallo from Lodi, CA. Beringer, Mondavi, and Coppola in Napa Valley are also high in brand recognition. In Sonoma we have Kendall Jackson and Rodney Strong. Interestingly, it takes strong revenue and profits to build a brand and if you are a small producer the money it takes for consumer branding activities is prohibitive. We need to always remember every brand (corporate or product) must be positioned differently as an image.

We see that sales of 4 or 5 bottles of wine per month to U.S. consumers is a daunting task just to get trials of the product. This is one of several reasons why wineries are spending more on improving direct sales through their tasting rooms, wine clubs, on-line (Direct to Consumer) sales and social media.

Let’s talk about corporate winery branding. The industry needs an honest relationship with consumers. Otherwise the customer belongs to the 3 Tier Distributor or wine store and the sale becomes exponentially expensive going forward. A winery must define their image, product niches, consumer profile and be targeted to the consumer with a message specific to their targeted consumer. Wine Business.com reports that the vast majority of wine consumers buy wine based upon taste. But, taste is only one of the differentiators. Obviously, wineries have to get the taster.

Branding

Effective branding is about bringing a corporate name, the company’s products, or the services to be top of mind awareness for the customer. A product may even have more recognition/branding than the company name. For example, Kleenex is more recognized than Kimberly Clark which manufacturers Kleenex. That is fine.

Wine is mostly sold, not by a winery name or a label but first through price. Of the 10,000 plus varietals in the world, California has mostly focused on maybe 25 varietals for wine and wine blending. This fact makes it even harder to brand a winery when people look for price first and varietal in third place according to Dr. Thach and Dr. Chang. Number two is branding.

Now consider the changes impacting the wine business. The industry is now impacted with labels and brands announcing: organic wines, sustainable wines, and bio-dynamic farming wines.These add a new twist to branding considerations. Over the past few years there are some trying to brand lower alcohol levels, and medals. Talk about branding overload.

Branding Impact

Wineries must recognize, after the decision is made to add focus to the company and/or its products, the company branding effort must be impacted throughout the organization. It will require constant development, refinement, monitoring, and administration. Finally, a corporate identity must become the culture at the winery. In Dr. Thach and Dr. Chang 2015 survey of: American Wine Consumer Preferences, 61% of their respondents had visited multiple wineries in California alone. This means, if a branding message being put out into the marketplace is not part of the winery culture the brand will be diminished. Consumers will see that culture in action at the winery.

Marketing is not all there is to branding, but it is significantly ahead of number two. Marketing is part of branding because it touches and introduces the brand to consumers, retailers, vendors and the community. There are many large companies that spend vast sums of money on building corporate brand without selling specific products. Boeing is such a company; consumer does not buy $300 million airplanes however they do respond to image.

Finally, companies/brands must protect their image at all costs. Once the Branding Plan (akin to a business plan) is developed, with a good foundation of research and winery metrics, that plan will dictate many things. For example: product launches and new product launches, dictate the messages coming from the company, employee hiring, PR, packaging, and the list encompasses every department is a winery.

Elements to Illustrate Branding Tasks

· Bottle labels and winery logo-Label creativity is still at the mercy of the TTB (Alcohol & TobaccoTax and Trade Bureau) relative to label content. Still it is part of the image that appears to the consumer on the shelf; it’s an identifier.

· Marketing/advertising/sales/collateral materials/PR/Sponsorships are front and center. The consumer facing image is throughout–club, on-line and tasting room sales and mailing list. Give consumers value beyond just the product.

· Training plan-Training must be centric to developing and reinforcing a new branding strategy. Employees at all levels must buy into the corporate and product positioning, not just public contact employees.

· Packaging is an element that ties the label and logo message together. In wine branding even the bottle shape and weight, closures (screw caps/cork/synthetic cork), capsules/foils, all go into the branding perceptions.

· Product consistency-Consumers who eventually accept a brand expect consistency. As the saying implies-If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

· Website, blog and social media are major elements to create, reinforce and maintain branding for products and corporate. Customer feedbacks will give almost immediate indications if the brand strategy is generating desired results and achieving benchmarks.

With wineries producing many varietal and blended wines under their corporate brand it is probably more important that the winery brand be face forward. This is a personal opinion and probably will vary based upon ownerships’ strategies for the business. For example, if a winery wanted to position the property for a sale then branding would have a different approach than a launch of a new label.

If you are a wine consumer the branding activity can be entertaining and enlightening. For example, as a consumer we enjoy winery tastings, but the chances of visiting more than a handful of wineries may be out of the question. But with so many wines and so little time, part of the fun is exploring new wines. For a winery, branding really becomes important and especially if your small but want to create a brand that meets your business expectations for a 5, 10 or 20 year time frame.

There are many occasions when I go into a Total Wines or BevMo or our grocery store, just to do fun research. With a note pad and a magnifying glass (required because of age and fine print) I will read labels for information-winery, blending, and a little of the hype. Coming home I will look up the winery website, read about their wines and form an opinion about the brand simply based on the feel of the site, label designs, the winemaker, and past awards (although that is not all that important). If I am interested I sometimes even call a winery to ask questions about the winery, owners and style of winemaking.

Amazingly, the majority of the time the people answering my questions are ill prepared.

Importance of research is not appreciated by consumers and producers. Research focuses on industry matters, winery/winery products and competition concerning the following: image, price, products, promotions, lace, historical data and competition (brands). This data will eventually direct the Branding Plan efforts.

Knowing the consumer, defining the future plans of the winery and product directions, now is the time to get to work on the business of branding. Half of the effort is about where the winery wants to go and how the winery gets there. Research gives a path. A branding without a written plan bought into by employee implementers is called gambling.

For the purpose of discussion we will assume a winery has not really focused on branding and this would be an early effort at branding. Or, maybe the current branding is not generating the desired results; then a change is in order. Sometimes branding is only to build awareness or it is image branding. If a customer can’t tell a winery’s researcher their perceptions/attributes of a wines brand then branding efforts have weaknesses.

Moving forward with the data points from industry research and the research initiated by the winery, a branding plan must be developed that focuses on the corporate brand image as well as the wines (products).

Mission Statement versus Objectives is always confusing. Some companies want a Mission Statement as a starting point of a branding plan. I am the exception to this rule; most Mission Statements I have been involved with are actually too esoteric and enigmatic to be useful throughout the organization. However, most everyone can relate to an “objective” statement as opposed to a “mission”. Here is the Mission Statement from Constellation Brands who owns Robert Mondavi-”Building brands that people love. “Their Vision statement reads-”To elevate life with every glass raised.” Do these statements resonate with you as a wi

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The 7 Pillars of Branding

Posted on February 16, 2021 by dayat

Although the question of branding has always been essential part of marketing and has been approached with multi-dimension models, sometimes these studies have been made without systematic approach or with full of redundancy or ad-hoc views. Unlike marketing which has the widely-known and usable, practical 7P-model, branding still misses such a sort of basic structure which makes the skeleton of all branding story.

Here I am making an outline of such a simplified model to help people in successfully designing brands and also to better understanding the already existing ones. I collected 7 layers of the branding with 7 different tasks to be completed in everyday actions. I hope this can be useful for the readers, too.

Right before entering this syllabus, we need to define what brand and branding is: in our view brand is a vision that is related to a specific company, product or any specific entity which lives in people and materializes to them. Branding is the art of deliberate control over the whole process.

First pillar: Publicly known

A brand always defines a smaller or bigger group of people who are somehow aware of the product or the service in question. This is the prerequisite or trivial condition of all brands: if you are the only one who knows a specific service or uses a specific product and no information is publicized, the service or product is unable to evolve into a brand. This is the primary task of all marketing efforts, making our specific product or service (along with its whole branding costume) widely known on the addressed market: the majority of the marketing budget is used for this purpose. At this point we normally pay attention to the details of the publicity of all brands: target segment(s), its content, geographic, demography, media, communication methods, timing etc.

Task 1: design and make your publicity

However, the fame of a product or service is not exclusively based on the publicity gained (mostly depending on the money available for promoting the brand) via frontal, push-type of promotion. Money spent on communications is a very important factor to reach the second stage of publicity: the people involved in the communications flow will probably share the information with each other and start a – sometimes very simple and few words – discussion about the product or service heard. The act of sharing the information with each other happens or has happened with all known brands. Suggestions, opinions made in public are very important in articulating brand and thus creating or strengthening/weakening brands. This is why the importance of Facebook in contemporary marketing cannot be overestimated enough, or, with similar effect, the customer service/problem handling has always been focal point of customer satisfaction and branding, too.

The publicity of branding therefore incorporates all means of sharing the information related to a specific brand or service. There are two basic type of publicities: there is of course the strictly controlled information sharing method (typically: marketing communications) and we also have to face a second publicity, the huge uncontrolled means of communication. When we are thinking on designing a new brand or just examining an existing one, we have to enlist all the ways how the specific brand gains publicity and sort them by relevance with regards to the public coverage and effect, making special attention to the uncontrolled ways of publicity.

The success of controlling publicity is a key to profit from branding, however, public control will never mean information monopoly over the media and over the outcome: even situations when a company has theoretically 100% control over the situation (e.g. customer care desk at the office or shop), it is always a challenge to control what is exactly happening there, what is going to be told or heard. Thus, from micro to macro level the publicity always carries a huge uncertainty factor with regards to reach, direct effect and future implications.

Second pillar: Associative and narrative – stories around

The discussions initiated and information shared publicly about a brand (or a branded product or service) would show up the next major characteristic of brands, that is, the power of the coupling or association related to the branded products or services. In other words, branding means that we create stories around a brand. Brand identity or personality, brand vision, brand promise are the official stories reflecting the narrative of a generic brand on different levels. Marketing creative planning is exactly doing the same around a specific product of a brand (e.g. ‘The environment friendly Toyota Prius’ as a story), while general brand stories (I mean the Toyota brand in the example) or associations are on higher level only. We therefore have to consider several layers of brand stories or narratives when examining them. It is very useful when these stories are consistent and formed professionally and are not contradicting to each other.

Brands are incorporating many stories and ideas not just from individual products and services determined by the company but stories and ideas also coming from the public. Unfortunately – as we mentioned above – we cannot control the majority of the perceptions of our brand. Individual opinions, perceived qualities, good or bad experiences are building the narrative universe, or more simply, the stories of a brand.

Task 2: define and drive brand stories

Notwithstanding the above, we can drive these brand stories and narrow them to the desired ones on at least two-three different areas. The mission statement of a company/organization is the very source of official brand stories and determines the branding direction via its written values and operational reasons. Secondly, the slogan or the tagline of a brand (like LG’s Life’s Good) is meant to embody the driving narrative story and works like a magnet: collects all the associations around a brand. The third layer of story comes along with specific products or services: repeating the slogans, taglines while inserting the logo of the brand on individual products/services makes the specific product or service painted with the general brand’s associations and qualities. The individual story of a product or service is like a topping on the branding cake. Pure brand campaigns on the other hand are always aiming outlining and fixing the desired main stories and narratives of qualities in the customers.

Controlling publicity cannot be done without controlling the stories attached to a specific brand and seems the major task of all branding and communications managers. Here, we have to highlight a related issue which behaves like the blind spot of the branding: rebranding. Rebranding campaigns are to change the very basic story of a brand. This is the reason why these campaigns fail many times and real rebranding is a very seldom event.

Third pillar: Concrete and multiplicative form

In real life we always give tangible forms to brands because we want to make profit from our money spent. Brand without concrete product/service to buy (or without a related person when we talk about personal brands) is useless or just a promise (like the newly planned Jolla mobile OS with only a demo video). The embodiment of a Brand is an essential part of its very nature.

Normally we use the power of a general Brand Name for many individual products. An already existing brand hands over its potentials (its stories of qualities, usage, value etc.) to specific, individual products and even when we see a new product of an already known brand we are already having a presupposition or sense of certain expectations towards the brand new product. A VW car is perceived for many as a reliable one; however, it may happen that a much lower quality is introduced in a new model than what the brand had fulfilled at its predecessors.

Task 3: make several appearances to utilize brand power

Most times we may say that a brand is transferred into several products and therefore it is multiplicative. It is very seldom that an earned reputation of a brand represented in only one product or service. For example the perfume 4711 seems to be transferred only into one product for a long time, but the brand’s product portfolio today consists of more than one item: after shave or even shower gel is also produced. Start-ups typically own only one product and normally the first product is the one that determines and forms the brand later on. Initially, the brand is typically built upon on only one product or service and this is why it is very sensitive when entering a market with a new company and a new product: it also determines the future brand and products the company assessed with.

Personal brands, seen superficially, are not multiplicative: a person who has double face (see politicians) and therefore not able to form a consistent and concrete personal brand, are subject to lose their reputation and their face rapidly. This is because brands can have only one concrete (credible) story, without major contradictions. The multiplicative nature of personal brands should be investigated from another perspective. In case we regard a person’s appearances in public as concretizations and multiplications of his/her brand, we are closer to the truth and we understand better why celebrities and politicians are so keen on public appearances.

Fourth pillar: Unique proposition

The history of branding is stemming from the wish of making a producer’s goods identifiable. This is not just to ensure the identity of goods but also to prevent from copying and forgery. The brands around us are still carrying these old attributes: the logo of the company/brand is expressing the uniqueness of a brand (supported by law as trade marks) and helps us to identify a specific brand in the universe of brands and signs.

Sometimes it is very hard to make distinction based on the products/services alone: Pepsi and its rivals put in a neutral glass next to each other are unidentifiable, so the use of branding techniques is crucial for gaining profit for both companies. Just like in the cola case, the technological industry also heavily relies on the branding when selling its products or services: PCs, laptops, smart phones or internet accesses are very similar to each other. Or, a tax advisory service consultant firm is facing real challenges to provide specific brand vision.

Task 4: find and use the means of brand differentiations

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Avoid The Celebrity Brand Wagon

Posted on February 16, 2021 by dayat

Using your own name to brand your business may appear a simple solution, but in the long term, it’s a much more difficult way to create a recognised and respected, stand out brand.

What about Lorna Jane, Donald Trump or Coco Channel?

Of course it has been done and there are well known name based brands, but what may seem an easy way out at first, could create a rod for your own back.

The human brain ‘sees’ brands with emotion and attaches these to a memory in order to recognise and recall a brand when the need arises.

Having your name on your business could disenfranchise the very people you are trying to attract.

Donald Trump creates an emotion of wealth and power… but what has that done for his business brand, especially in the political arena?

Lorna Jane creates an emotion of vibrant fitness, one which alienates women who aren’t a particular shape and size.

Celebrity Chef Pete Evans healthy brand emotion, now seems to be quite frankly, a bit nuts.

As for Coco Channel, the brand emotion is chic and classy… but then, that wasn’t actually her real name.

It’s easy to use your own name because it saves you having to come up with something else, making branding a no-brainer.

But your brand still needs to generate an emotional reaction in order to stand out and become memorable for the right reasons.

Do you know what you want to be memorable for?
Because if you brand using your name, your personal reputation is on the line.

Benjamin Franklin once said:
“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation and just one bad one to lose it”.

The biggest risk you run when you brand with your name, is that every public and private move affects your brand.

When a company stuffs up, personal brands like Richard Branson or Gary Vaynerchuk are responsible for the reputation of their businesses, but they focus on building the brand culture rather than on promoting their own name over that of their brand.

The question to ask yourself is, do you plan to spend many years and a great deal of money to build yourself into a celebrity brand or would you rather spend your time and money on marketing your services and how you help people?

Brand awareness takes time, you want to make sure you are investing yours in the right way, right from the start.

Your brand is also asset, like McDonalds, Adidas or Coke, these are all brands worth millions more than the actual company. If your brand is your name, it’s going to be difficult to cut yourself off from it when you need to.

Tempting as it may be to brand with your own name when you provide a service, because ‘you are your business’ to start with, it can also make you indispensable. And that’s a problem if you want growth.

Personal trainers, photographers, real estate agents and business coaches who name their business after themselves have clients who expect them to show up at their door and no-one else will fill their shoes.

Like it or not, you generate a trust currency for your brand and when your company is named after you, the only exchange clients want is engagement with you.

So go ahead and brand with your name but be prepared to front up.

You are probably building your business to give you a lifestyle, otherwise you’d just be working for someone else right? If you are considering branding with your name, ask what what sort of life do you want to have while you are building your brand?

If you want to grow a successful business that can run without you, so you can focus 100% on the work you really love, you are best to choose a name that’s not your own.

From experience in helping hundreds of professionals to develop their personal brands, it’s going to take about 3 years for your brand to really ‘get known’ to the point of industry respect, where you get referrals and clients, media interviews and speaking requests, from sources you didn’t even know existed.

Yes, having your name out there as the go-to specialist for what you do really well is vital, but do you really want all that attention on your personal life, or on your business brand?

To really be successful, you need your business to feed you, not to run you. If you want to be able to grow your brand, venture into new markets, add a variety of services or franchise and duplicate, a personally brand named business could hold you back and stifle your options.

Most importantly, your brand is actually not really about you, it’s about engaging and connecting with your ideal prospects and enabling them to know, like and trust you, from a simple interaction with your brand, not necessarily having to actually meet you.

A brand can do that for you, if you are prepared to understand your target audience and build the subconscious triggers into your brand identity that ‘speak’ to their brain.

Neurobrands Fedex, Amazon and Baskin Robbins do this with ease.

If you really still want to use your own name in your branding, one option is to use it as an endorsing brand – ONEactive by Michelle Bridges is a clear example of brand extension which enabled a celebrity brand to branch out into the apparel market.

If you don’t use your name to brand your business, you can choose from one of these three proven formats:

The best brand names are either created, abstract or descriptive:

Created brand names include;

Google – a googol is a very large number – a ’1′ followed by a hundred 000′s – the idea being that Google delivers the most search results
Xerox – which has become an eponym (the echelon o brand names like Hoover, Kleenex and Band-Aid) where a proprietary name is used as a verb, or to describe a general use
Adidas – is Adolf ‘Adi’ Dasslers name joined together, interestingly his brother Rudolf’s brand is Puma, which belongs in the next category of abstract names.

You can certainly create a brand using your name like Adolf Dassler did, or play around with ancient languages or Greek mythology like Nike – the goddess of victory, to find a name that tells your brand story and create emotion.

Abstract:

Apple – a fruit or tech company
Twitter – a social media platform or a noise a bird makes
Dominos – a pizza chain or a child’s game

These incredibly well known brands are easy to identify because they are simple, short, catchy and easy to pronounce so the brain loves them even though they theoretically used out of context.

Descriptive:

The Cheesecake Shop
carsales.com
Jims Mowing (and many other variants including Jims Cleaning and Pet Washing Services).

Most service providers prefer the idea of a descriptive brand name over the other options. They feel they need a name that explains what they do, yet the most iconic created and abstract brand names do nothing to explain brand benefits and have massive recognition.

It’s also untrue that your brand name needs to be descriptive in order to be SEO friendly. All the web developers and SEO experts I’ve talked to agree it’s more important to be consistent with keywords and focused content, than to have a brand name that includes a specific word.

Oh and by the way, you should avoid using an acronym for your brand name too…

What’s wrong with using letters given IBM, ANZ, UPS and a host of others brands do exactly that?

Remember what I said about the importance of generating an emotion with your brand?

How can three letters of a brand name generate any sort of emotion? IBM and ANZ at least use blue in their branding to create a feeling of safety and reassurance. UPS is brown and gold, indicating down-to-earth but quality service.

But the brain doesn’t think in words, it thinks in pictures and it’s just too difficult to instantly convey a brand essence with an acronym, especially when you are starting out in business, so avoid it if you can.

Brands help your brain make unconscious choices and an engaging brand name works hard to make it instantly easy for your ideal client to choose you.

You can brand your business with your name, but be aware of the issues before you jump on the celebrity brand wagon.

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When Brands Hack Your Brain and Work As Placebos

Posted on February 16, 2021 by dayat

In the previous article we discussed how placebos are excellent problem solving tools. They are ideas that are planted in our minds. When these ideas stick, they trigger beliefs. And beliefs trigger change. In a sense they hack our brains.As instruments of change, placebos have an important role to play in medicine, marketing, product development, religion etc.

It doesn’t really matter what the facts are but belief in the potency of a weird tasting energy drink, military flags and uniforms, homeopathy, a swoosh sign or some female beauty exotic potion have led to creation of large companies, institutions and brands. These ideas or brands are long-lasting since they trigger a significant positive change in their consumers or followers.

Placebos, in the field of medicine, have helped alleviate chronic pain, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, angina, asthma, ulcers,Parkinson’s disease and even cancer.Placebos in medical terms are ‘pharmacologically inert medications’.Medically speaking, placebos can be a pill or an injection.In a non-medical world the placebos could also be ideas or brands, a good-luck charm, a ritual, a perfume that we wear on a first date.

In this article we explore the thesis that powerful brands are not any abstract, obtuse constructs. Good brands are effective placebos. Brands work because placebos do. In this article we explore instances of how brands work as placebos. We also give a preview to how the brands harness the phenomenon of placebo effect to trigger a set of beliefs in their consumers.

The ‘Real Thing’ is not so real after all

For those who swear by their brand of cola (it’s unique taste, flavour etc.) it is pertinent to ask whether ‘the taste’ is really such a big deal. Do you actually ‘taste the thunder’ or ‘taste the feeling’? Or is it all in the mind, a placebo. The effect of a brand as a placebo was proven when Baba Shiv and team proved that a cola tastes very differently when the respondent knows that it is the ‘real thing’ (a Coke) versus the same cola being labeled as a generic brand. Subsequent researches by other researchers showed that if the image of Coke was shown the perceived impact of the taste was higher.

Are you having a ‘branded headache’?

Another study done on women respondents in the UK, regularly suffering from headaches by Daniel E. Moerman highlighted the impact of branding on efficacy of analgesic pills.Women respondents were given four options- a branded analgesic (of a widely advertised and known brand), generic analgesic, branded placebo, generic placebo. The branded analgesic was perceived to be more effective than the generic analgesic, similarly the branded placebo was more effective than generic placebo. The branding of the pill enhanced the perceived effectiveness of both the active and the inert drug. Thankfully, the active drug was perceived as more effective than the placebo inert drug. Thank God, for small mercies.

Is the money spent on expensive branded shoes worth it?

Similarly a study by Frank Germann answered the question whether you will golf better with a branded putter? In other words it poses a question that all of us want an answer to – whether all the money that we have spent in buying expensive shoes or sport gear is worth it. And the answer is ‘Mostly Yes’.

In the Germann study the participants were tasked to complete putts on a putting green using an identical quality of putter. Half of the golfers were told that they were using a Nike putter, and the other half were not told the brand name of the putter. On an average participants who thought they were using the Nike golf putter needed fewer putts to sink the golf ball.

In a similar type of experiment conducted in a very different arena (of a scholarly maths test as opposed to a sporty golf game) the results were very similar. The participants of the study were given the same quality of foam ear plugs during a maths test to improve concentration. One half was told that it was a 3M ear plug and another half didn’t know the brand. Akin to the golf experiment, the group wearing 3M ear plugs got more questions right.

Germann’s results indicate that strong performance brands can cause an effect akin to a placebo effect. The use of an iconic performance brand which performs a related task, boosts the confidence level of participants by providing greater self-esteem and lowering the performance anxiety of the participants. This leads to better performance outcomes.

Another interesting observation was that the impact of the performance brand as a placebo was strongest in novices. The efficacy of the placebo effect was inversely proportional to the skill level of participant. In other words, expert golfers or brilliant math students received little or no performance boost through usage of the performance brands. This explains the ‘Mostly Yes’ part of the answer. So unless you are a good mathematician or a brilliant golfer, the money spent on the performance brand was worth it, at least in part.While we are on this topic, an interesting trivia is that when Nike signed up Michael Jordan in the 80s, and named a shoe after him, they expected sales of 3 million US dollars in a year. They eventually ended up selling 100 million plus worth of “Air Jordans”.

Does a ‘Beauty Patch’ work?

Dove conducted an actual ‘placebo test’ called the beauty patch experiment wherein they claimed that the participants who took part in the experiment would enhance the perception of their own beauty after the use of the ‘beauty patch’. Participants reported a significant increase in their perception of their own beauty and was surprised to discover that the patch was a placebo. Dove was truthful in a sense that they told their participants that this patch would change ‘perceptions of beauty,’. The patch managed to change perceptions fairly effectively, as echoed by the participants themselves.

So there is overwhelming evidence that brands work like placebos by improving performance or changing perceptions. Brands as placebos give us a confidence boost, reduce our anxiety in doing tasks and help us perform better.

The role of brands as placebos in the urban jungle, rat race

While we are at it, let us discuss the need for brands as placebos in our fairly stressful life in a fast paced urban environment. Living in a dense city and a hyper-competitive environment is quite unnatural and very stressful for a human being (who until a couple of centuries ago was living in villages). As a result, we require a fair dose of self-esteem building,confidence-inducing placebos to help us navigate the urban jungle & the debilitating rat races. Brands thus play a crucial role, and act as placebos boosting our confidence, improving our performance, changing our perceptions and altering our beliefs.

Jonathan Haidt talks about self-placebbing, wherein we spend a considerable amount of time administering a placebo to ourselves. These placebos work as signaling mechanisms to ourselves and our peers. Many products that we use have a utility and an ulterior placebo function. At a utility level, a Ferrari is car which does the job of transporting you from A to B. In dense & congested cities, in terms of utility it is a rather average means of transport, where a two wheeler is generally faster. But at an ulterior placebo level, Ferrari serves as an excellent aphrodisiac, a huge confidence booster or a very effective signal to humiliate a business rival.So even though a Ferrari goes at twenty kilometers an hour in a bumper to bumper Mumbai traffic, as a confidence or self esteem boosting placebo, it rather outclasses a Honda Civic.

Is 10x priced wine, 10x more tasty?

Likewise, there are a lot of luxury brands that have a basic utility function, but deliver extremely well on the ulterior placebo function. Expensive suits, thousand dollar cigars, gadgets, obscenely priced single malts etc. are all products that deliver strong placebo effects to the rich & famous men. An expensive wine is not ten times more enjoyable than a good affordable one, but it does administer a huge confidence-inducing social status placebo.

The female beauty industry is not just about beauty

So while men splurge on their placebo toys, the women have perfected the usage & rituals of self-placebbing into a fine art form. They have patronized a huge industry that delivers powerful doses of placebos to womankind- the female beauty industry, which is bigger in size than the education industry. A lot is made of utility function of the industry i.e. of enhancing the beauty or ‘the sex-appeal’ of women. The fact of the matter is it takes very little to attract the attention of the opposite sex. You need basic grooming and a sexy outfit to attract attention of the opposite sex. It does not take a long and tiresome regimen of two hours to appeal to the opposite sex. The two hours of beauty regime is actually a process of administering a confidence placebo to oneself.

In India, marriages are great occasions to observe these self-placebbing rituals. In North India, one usually finds that marriage procession are generally delayed. One of the primary reasons for this is that the women on the groom’s side take ostensibly long to get decked up. And amongst the women folk the grannies, usually take the longest time and have to be literally begged to finish their beauty regimen. On occasions they need to be dragged out of beauty parlours so that the marriage procession can depart. One would imagine that the grannies would not be very keen in attracting the attention of grandpas that would show up at the event. But they have an acute need to give themselves a big confidence placebo. One of the grannies I know went for an expensive set of teeth transplant just so she could smile confidently in marriage pictures.

Placebos need to be slightly absurd to work and need to follow a certain set of rules to be perceived as effective. We discuss these rules in the forthcoming article. Suffice it is to say the cosmetics work well as a placebo because they follow some of the basic rules of an effective placebo.The cosmetics are insanely overpriced (and therefore assumed more effective) and very time consuming to administer(a lot of extra effort heightens the placebo effect).

In mature markets, the ulterior placebo attribute is critical to differentiate

Firms spend a lot of time innovating and crafting a differentiated product proposition focusing on the features and utility function of their products. However in mature markets where products and services are more or less similar, tapping into a belief system, and positioning the brand based on its ulterior placebo attribute may be a more potent way for the brand to gain traction. In fact to take this argument a bit further, building in product or packaging attributes or usage rituals into the product or service may heighten the placebo effect and therefore the perceived value.

Having said that, not every placebo works with everyone, and the efficacy of a placebo also differs based on various factors, which we shall cover in subsequent articles. For a brand to take a shot at being an effective placebo, the brand has to tell a story which latches onto the belief system of a subset of population. This subset must believe your story to be authentic for them to buy into the story of your brand. They must connect with the story at a deep, meaningful level and ‘perceive’ it to be true. This encourages trial for the brand. Recently, there has been a huge outrage in India concerning Hindustan Unilever’s brand Fair & Lovely, so much so that the brand has to re-name & position itself as Glow & Lovely. But there was a time, when a big subset of population brought into the insecurity linked with dark skin colour, and the brand delivered a steady dose of fairness linked confidence placebo to millions of

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Opportunities in Real Estate Web Development

Posted on February 18, 2019 by dayat

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