To ensure that customers recognize a company’s products at first sight, it is necessary to gain the trust of users – this can be done through branding.
What is branding and why is it needed?
Branding goals and objectives
Types of branding
Stages of branding
Brand platform elements
Possible mistakes in branding
Expert advice
What is branding and why is it needed?
Table of Contents
To make a product, service or company stand out from competitors, branding is carried out. These are activities that are aimed at creating, maintaining, developing and recognizing a brand. Branding helps companies strengthen their positions in the market, attract new customers, and increase sales. In addition, a strong brand can become an additional asset for a company that grows in value and brings in profit.
When a customer chooses from two similar products the one they saw advertised, they are not choosing the drink itself, but the brand they know. The American Marketing Association believes that a brand is a name, design, symbol, or any other characteristic that distinguishes one seller’s products from those of another. But it’s not just about formal differences, so the essence of branding can be viewed in a broader context.
The concepts of “brand” and “branding” appeared at the end of the 19th century, when mass production was actively developing as a result of industrial progress. Products from different companies were similar, and sellers who wanted to make more profit were faced with the task of interesting buyers with their products. At first, companies worked on the name, logo, packaging, and later advertising appeared, where it was possible to talk about the advantages of the products.
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Branding goals and objectives
The main goal of branding is to create a company image that will evoke positive emotions, associations, a sense of belonging to a particular group and, ultimately, a desire to buy in potential clients. To achieve this goal, marketers and brand managers solve the following tasks:
● Develop brand positioning
it is necessary to differentiate from competitors, save the company’s resources and sell the product to its target audience. For example, the brand “Selo Zelenoe” is dairy products for city dwellers who choose high-quality and natural food.
● Create a unique brand image that consumers easily remember and recognize
For example, cottage cheese and yogurt “Mama Lama” is the only yogurt with a cute llama on the packaging. It is readily chosen by mothers and eaten with pleasure by preschoolers and primary school children.
● Demonstrate to customers the value of the product and the benefits of using it
The commercial for the new Moskvich car emphasizes that this car helps hundreds of thousands of people every day.
● Develop a promotion strategy
Without promotion, it will be impossible to form a brand image and convey its advantages to the target audience. For example, Apple and Adidas products are known because they are advertised correctly.
● Build interaction between the brand and consumers
This helps to form loyalty to the company and products. For example, brands that maintain social networks and communicate with users in comments inspire more trust than those that remain silent even in response to negative messages.
In the Brand Manager course, students learn from scratch how to create and promote a brand and evaluate the effectiveness of various tools. The course authors and mentors — experienced brand managers — help at every stage. As a result, each student creates a full-fledged project and receives an action template that can be used for branding in any field.
Types of branding
A brand can be not only a product, but also a service, a store, a company, a person, a city or a country, and even a digital platform. Depending on this, there are different types of branding:
● Product or consumer branding
is the creation of a brand for a specific product or service. The goal of product branding is to make the product stand out from the competition, make it recognizable and attractive to users. To do this, the product must be noticeable, which means the brand manager needs to find a difference in this product and wrap it in attractive packaging: think over the design, logo, packaging shape, and select appropriate promotion channels.
● Personal or private branding
It is needed to create the image of a person – a consultant, lawyer, doctor, coach, athlete, actor or musician – and promote his services or products. Personal branding helps to build a reputation, strengthen trust, and make a person popular.
● Corporate branding
is the creation of a corporate recognizable style for the entire organization. A company’s brand works not only for retail and wholesale buyers, but also for its employees and the general public. For example, X5 Group positions itself as a company that follows business ethics standards and expects the same approach from all its employees and partners.
● Place branding
Creates an attractive image of countries, regions and regional products, helps to describe the advantages of the region for tourists, local residents, investors and people considering options for relocation.
Stages of branding
Branding is a long-term process. To build a successful brand, you need to go through several key stages:
1. Goal setting
is necessary to calculate resources and understand what strategic goals the brand has.
2. Analytics
At this stage, brand managers research and draw conclusions on key blocks:
1.● resources and capabilities of the company or product;
2.● market conditions;
3.● competitors’ positions;
4.● target audience, its values, needs, motives and barriers among potential clients.
3. Developing positioning
Positioning is a brand’s advantageous difference from competitors, which allows it to become recognizable. When developing positioning, all the information obtained at the analytics stage is taken into account: the strengths of the product, the target audience, competitors, and the current market situation.
4. Creating a brand platform
This is a complete description of all the characteristics of the product that distinguish it from competitors. This includes the mission, metaphor, character, values, and vision of the future brand.
5. Development of identity
This is a visual and verbal presentation of the brand in all communication channels. When developing an identity , various branding tools are used: naming, creating a logo, slogan, design, writing a tone of voice . All materials are collected in a brand book. Here, correct and unacceptable options for using the logo, fonts, photos and illustrations are also indicated.
Here are the signs of a good identity:
1.● Brand name – simple, easy to remember, and reflecting the essence of the brand and the company’s activities.
2.● Slogan – a short phrase that helps users remember the brand better and then quickly identify the product.
3.● Logo and trademark – text writing and graphic image that help customers quickly recognize the brand. The logo is used on packaging, in advertising materials, office and retail interiors, corporate documents.
● Corporate colors and fonts
used by a brand create certain associations and moods, inspire trust or, on the contrary, repel users. Over time, color combinations become as recognizable as the name or slogan of a company. For example, it is immediately clear that the “yellow-black” mobile operator is Beeline, and the “red-white” is MTS.
● Brand voice
is how the brand speaks to its audience through texts, photos, illustrations and other content. The brand voice, or tone of voice , can be respectful, like Tochka Bank, or bold, like Vizit. It is important that the brand voice sounds the same on all platforms and in all content: this way the company will be remembered and recognized faster.
6. Building a communications strategy
At this stage, they determine how and where they will interact with the target audience and manage the brand, select communication and promotion channels, such as offline advertising campaigns, SEO, corporate media, and social media groups.
7. Control
is needed to understand whether the set business goals have been achieved through influencing awareness, consumption and brand loyalty. In the future, the brand strategy is adjusted if necessary.
Brand platform elements
Creating a brand is a complex and lengthy process that includes the development of the following components of a brand platform:
● Brand essence
is the main idea that underlies the brand. An example is Morpheus bed linen for people who don’t like to tuck in their blankets.
● The company’s mission
is what the brand exists for and what benefit it brings to people. For example, the mission of the PIK Group of Companies is to change everyday life by creating more comfortable, safe and environmentally friendly living conditions.
● Company values
are the key ideas that the brand follows in its work. For example, Dodo Pizza has five values: accessibility, responsiveness, trust, openness, quality. Each of these values works in practice: pizzerias are opening in remote cities, there is in-house delivery, customers can watch their order on video, and dishes are prepared from high-quality ingredients from trusted suppliers.
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Possible mistakes in branding
Branding is a long process, and it is not always possible to avoid mistakes. We have analyzed the most common mistakes that can be made at each stage of branding:
❌ Goal setting
For example, a company that produces sweets decided to produce sausages under the same brand. But the new product was not in demand. The brand manager’s mistake was that he underestimated the difference in the perception of the brand by two target audiences. It turned out that those who do not eat sweets but buy sausages are simply not familiar with the “new old” brand and therefore did not choose it on the shelf.
❌ Analytics
Mistakes at this stage occur if you underestimate competitors or conduct an incomplete analysis of the target audience. For example, a company opened several clothing stores in a region. Three months later, specialists realize that sales are much lower than planned. When they analyzed the situation, they realized that the closest competitor occupies a stronger position, local residents are loyal to it, and it will not be possible to push it out.
❌ Positioning
If the brand has incorrectly defined “its place” and it is unclear what audience it is designed for and what value it has for users. For example, a nutritionist runs her own blog and positions herself as a strict expert with a touch of academicism. At the same time, the expert is a nice girl, a mother of two children, and her serious image is at odds with who she really is. As a result, the blog has low audience engagement and few sales. The expert changed her positioning and became herself: she began to talk about the health problems her children had, how she dealt with them and how she can help her readers. This image turned out to be closer and more understandable to users, engagement and sales increased.
❌ Identity
It happens that young companies and startups create a logo and name “on the knee” and think that they will fix everything later, when they launch the product and it becomes successful. At one time, the example of branding the bar “Darling, I’ll call you back!” became revolutionary. The name was attractive because it consisted of an ironic and recognizable phrase. Later, competitors began to copy the technique, and bars such as “You Can’t Please Me”, “So What?” and the like appeared. As a result, they became copies of the innovator and merged into a common mass at the level of names.
❌ Building communications
At this stage, mistakes often occur if the brand does not have a defined positioning, there is no clearly defined platform, or the performer does not know how to read it. As a result, communications become disjointed or inconsistent. For example, a brand sees itself as friendly and with a respectful tone of voice, while a designer who creates advertising creatives for social networks sees itself as bold. In such a situation, the user gets lost, and loyalty to the brand decreases.
