The Brand is the Business!

The brand makes the symbolic and psycho-emotional mediation between organizations’ products, services, and ideas and their audience, especially customers. However, the way this phenomenon echoes in brand relationships, experience, and businesses’ outcomes is not fully understood yet.

Originally written for Brazil, this article discusses elementary and fundamental issues of Branding, which for local markets whether for the global Market.

Prof. Renato Manzano*

“Have you ever asked yourself why do big brands have much higher market value than the tangible assets of a company? To illustrate it, according to Interbrand’s ranking, the most valued brand on Earth in 2020, for the second consecutive year, is Apple: USD 322.9 billion! This equals to 12 times the company’s tangible assets value, taking into account the net assets!

It’s simple to answer the starting question: brands make the symbolic and phsyco-emotional mediation between who offers products and services and who buys them: consumers. Taking into account that every buying decision, with no exception, starts with the emotional system and, then, becomes something rational, we’ll understand that brand is the key and decisive element of the purchase decision making, consciously or not.

According to the Connected Shoppers Report 2019, realized by Salesforce in 20 countries, including Brazil, 62% of Brazilians buy their products or services having brands as their primary reference! This rate has been growing, year after year. In some developed countries, this percentage may achieve 75%. And, more and more, intangible factors influence purchase decision-making - increasing the trend of looking for references of a well-positioned brand.

A study performed by Accenture in 2019 shows that 83% of Brazilians, when buying products or services, look for brand positioning which aligns with their values. In this same study, 87% of consumers declared they wish more transparency on the origin of products, work conditions of employees, tests with animals, social and environmental accountability, etc. In other words, brands bring feelings and perceptions of trust, pride, safety, ethics, social and environmental accountability, comfort, and achievement, besides other factors, such as status, belonging, portraying ideas, etc. And these items, as we have seen, are more and more crucial when buying products and services and forming an opinion about a company.

I usually say and write in my lectures: THE BRAND IS THE BUSINESS! All the rest are processes focused on delivering the Brand promises of value. For no other reason, global economies are “intangibilizing” so fast. It’s a fast process of market feedback and undoubtful transformation.

A Branding-driven organization

There is engineering for creating and launching a brand. Also, a brand architecture. The first relates to the structuring aspects of the brand. The second to the technical and aesthetic aspects. And both, to the ethics and relational aspects of the brand. The first great brands of the planet were intuitive creations that were able to create deep relationships with their audience - which, according to studies over the years, showed key features that started the scientific process of decoding the elements that form brands: Branding - the strategy and management of brands.

Procter and Gamble was the first company to organize their management effectively guided by their brands, in the 30s... The one who noticed intangible relationships with brands were much stronger than mere deliveries and the quality of products or services was a young visionary man, a 27-year-old, of P&G: Neil McElroy. He started as an apprentice in P&G and, years later, would become one of their most emblematic presidents. McElroy changed the consumer goods industry when he noticed that not only publicity and communication sell, but the emotional relationship of consumers with their brands, and once established, they could be replicated through publicity and communication.

McElroy truly focused on consumers and their journey - understanding and making them the way to generate value for clients and the company, as a consequence. And, from this perception, guided all the company’s efforts through brand bias. Something that most companies still struggle with, as they’re too concerned with the hardcore of the business, contemplating their own navel, keeping their corporate ego, profit for profit, etc. - very often, they forget what values most: human beings, their desires and needs and their huge universe of emotional and symbolic connections. Yet, this is a mandatory adaptive process to organizations and this scenario is demanding new attitudes, and quite fast.

A brand carries powerful archetypical symbols, which speak straight to a region of human perception that is way beyond and comes before reason itself. These symbols are not only in the graphic elements, as one may think. This is, let’s put it like this, the more visible side of the Branding. These fundamental elements are mainly, in a logical nature - in the deep acceptance of the “logos” - which may be successfully set and reproduced, once there are technique, knowledge, and willingness to do so. The so-called brand engineering assures coherence from the beginning to the end.

So, we can talk about a Branding-driven organization. This organization has some main concerns. I have been working for over three decades in the perception and codification of successful brands and their key factors, which I list below:

1)  Focus on consumers.

2) True desire of building, delivering, and bequeathing ideas and solutions to improve people’s lives through products and services.

3) Clarity of the “core branding”, in other words, which is the effective value that they want to build, deliver, and bequeath.

4) Effective Positioning, which is more likely to make the brand stand out among others working in the same market, building a unique and irreplaceable personality.

5) Commitment with the Pillars and their Value Attributes, their promises, and the delivery characteristics with unequivocal quality!

6) Efficient mapping and usage of the Key-Messages by the audience, perfectly aligned with the previous statements, showing how the brand acts and relates with all the stakeholders.

7) Efficient communication: the ability to establishing deep, true, and long-lasting connections with their audience.

8) A fascinating Brand Experience, once this materializes, to customers and all the audience, in every touchpoint of the brand, the “time of the truth”: it’s the time when we find out if the brand walks the talk or not. 

9) Deep understanding of the Consumer Journey! The organization must to be opened to listening to clients, understand them and be empathic for their longings, desires, doubts, requests, suggestions, pains, perceptions, distresses, joys, and other feelings arising from the direct or indirect experience with the brand’s products and services. And, finally:

10) The ability to guide the whole organization by Branding and, thus, achieving Business Strategical Alignment, taking all the previous steps into account.

So, I repeat: THE BRAND IS THE BUSINESS! If organizations don’t understand this promptly and for once, they’ll face challenges to prosper in the New Market.”

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*Renato Manzano is a Brazilian consultant, researcher, Graduate Professor, specialist in Branding, Culture, and Organizational Communication, Strategy, and Business Management. Key speaker, strategist, and mentor for executives and entrepreneurs, with 35 years of experience in the market.]

English version: Renata Collaboni Manzano