Branding

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Therefore it makes sense to understand that branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.

To succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wants of your customers and prospects. You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact.

The color palettes, the fonts, every graphic, every dash and comma involuntarily triggers an emotion, a passion and a connect that is hard to explain but simple to achieve through strong brand practices.

Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence and some that you cannot.

A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. With this prelude, a good piece of communication can be defined as one that is acted upon, a message potent enough to germinate a favourable thought in the consumer. And only such a message with a probable impact over the listener is received, scrutinized and mulled over by the consumer. Still it is only

Communicating

It’s easy to get caught up in the short-term activities and tactics that drive business today, but when it comes to building a brand, that’s a big mistake.

Communication is as simple as we talk to a friend, especially when we understand the needs and sensibilities of the listener, more so when we are honest in our disposition. But what we presently see around as brand communication is a quagmire of theories with fascination for meaningless creativity and glitz. What we ought to understand is this ‘make-believe experience’ is only a hallucination. Its fruits are temporary and short-lived and any amount of Adspent to keep this hallucination alive can never result in a lasting experience. Rather it will only bind one into a cycle of escalating expenditure.

On the contrary a good product with a definite value invariably reaches the seeker of the value. Here the role of communication is that of an earnest middleman who carries the value of the product to the consumer who needs it.

With this role identification for communication, we stand by the consumer and speak for the consumer. While others still strive to make the consumer buy an illusory idea to make him buy a product. So communication can be effective, to-the-point and poised with unwavering objective provided the effort of communication is attributed to delivering value. And such communication endeavour, centred on the value of the product will in turn bring forth a revolutionary introspection and augmentation of the product.

Ultimately when the consumer runs through a piece of advertising hence created will be able to envision the experience he will have when he consumes the product. So with no snake charming or producing a thicket of smoke, simply with a picture-perfect and a word-perfect display of value to be delivered our brand communication never fails to strike the chord with your consumer.

Strategy

By definition, brand strategy is a long-term plan for the development of a successful brand in order to achieve specific goals. A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments. But what does that really mean?

As we develop a brand strategy, we start at the beginning. In other words, we begin by setting your business goals. Why are you creating a new brand? What do you hope to achieve by launching the new brand? Are we trying to reach a new audience? Your brand strategy for achieving that goal is likely to be quite different from a business that wants to steal market share from a category leader, and that’s why goal definition is a fundamental starting point for any brand strategy. The first question we have to answer is, “Why?”

It’s easy to get caught up in the short-term activities and tactics that drive business today, but when it comes to building a brand, that’s a big mistake. Brands aren’t built overnight, so our brand strategy will not be focussed on short-term tactics but rather on long-term goals and sustainable growth with flexibility to adapt to changing market conditions - all within the ethos of the brand strategy. Without a strong brand foundation built on a well-defined strategy, brands have little chance for success.

Of course, the best brands stick with their strategies, but those strategies leave room for flexibility as the market, consumers, and competitors change. Just as your goals in life might change over time, so might your brand goals. Similarly, just as you might modify your plan to achieve your goals in life, so too might your brand marketing plan change.

Creative

“The creative is expected to carry a two pronged message, one about the product, the other on the brand.”

What should a Creative do? Grab absolute attention of the perceiver? Entertain? Create awe and interest? Convey the message intended effectively? Ideally, a perfect creative should combine all these. The medium of artwork intends to achieve the end called ‘conveying a message’ through the means called ‘artistic infotainment’.

The next important element is relevance of the creative with the subject. Rather than correlating anything with the subject, related elements ‘meticulously created’ can bring forth meaningful focus wherein all elements of the Ad converge on the subject or the message. On the contrary linking unrelated elements in the name of creativity will only result in meaningless divergence.

Coming to the core of the creative where a message for the viewer is carefully placed within the medium of artwork, the creative is expected to carry a two pronged message, one about the product, the other on the brand. A candid message on the product with unique and consistent brand centric imagery has to be brought forth in every piece of communication to achieve a brand perception that will translate into impressive market response.

And since this may happen, not necessarily when the prospect makes a conscious effort to understand the creative in a particular way the clarity, uniqueness and consistency of the message must be present across the spectrum of communication. On the ground level every part of the artwork, even those otherwise termed ‘unimportant’ must be well defined and bear significance in creation, as subtly they all add to the collective value of the total message. Such creatives win soaring points when an event calls for contemplation or recollection of the hence said message.

Placement

Still many believe that invasive and intrusive advertising is necessary to ensure that the consumer is ever reminded of the brand and its products.

Where a prospect consumes communication there the message must be placed. Like how retail market carries a product almost to the door steps of a consumer, the information on the product must be carried to the consumer for introspection. Now with media becoming all pervasive, a brand stands to gain or lose by the way it chooses its medium of communication.

The discretion of time, place and circumstance applies even to brand communication in order to ensure that the message is consumed by the prospect without distortion and consumed with the desired perception.

It is also equally important to note what runs alongside an Ad. To be precise even a medium and its affiliations convey a message. And since people tend to build social personification around these factors media planning is essential to ascertain the appropriateness of the medium for the cumulative success of the branding exercise.

Still many believe that invasive and intrusive advertising is necessary to ensure that the consumer is ever reminded of the brand and its products. They opt for luring the consumer through building hype or causing impulsive buying. However the fruits of such efforts are short-lived. So they spend exorbitantly in order to keep the consumer in the loop always, by some way or the other.

But often they end up replacing the efforts meant for empowering the brand (by enhancing the product) with excessive (needless) communication. And what they gain by doing so is a steep but fragile market share wherefrom reducing even a percentage of market presence through advertisements will make them look wiped out of the market. So even market presence should be gauged and planned carefully, ironically to create a sustained interest it requires only far less but focussed energy.