The Power Of Branding..

Brand: a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name.

Branding: the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.

• A brand is an intangible marketing or business concept that helps people identify a company, product, or individual.
• People often confuse brands with things like logos, slogans, or other recognizable marks, which are marketing tools that help promote goods and services.
• Brands are considered to be among a company's most important and valuable assets.
• Companies can protect their brands by registering trademarks.
• Types of brands include corporate, personal, product, and service brands.

A Brand is an intangible asset that helps people identify a specific company and its products. This is especially true when companies need to set themselves apart from others who provide similar products on the market, including generic brands.?

This now leads me to write about Brand Equity witch is a marketing term that describes Brand Value. That value is determined by consumer perception of and experiences with the brand. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity.?When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints to the point where people recommend that others avoid it, it has negative brand equity.

Positive brand equity has value:

• Companies can charge more for a product with a great deal of brand equity.
• That equity can be transferred to line extensions – products related to the brand that include the brand name – so a business can make more money from the brand.
• It can help boost a company’s stock price.

Examples of Negative Brand Equity:

Achieving positive brand equity is half the job; maintaining it consistently is the other half. For example oil and gas company BP lost significant brand equity after the U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. One negative incident can nearly eliminate years of favorable brand equity.

How Brand Equity Develops:

Brand equity develops and grows as a result of a customer’s experiences with the brand.

• Awareness – The brand is introduced to its target audience – often with advertising – in a way that gets it noticed.
• Recognition – Customers become familiar with the brand and recognize it in a store or elsewhere.?
• Trial – Now that they recognize the brand and know what it is or stands for, they try it.?
• Preference – When the consumer has a good experience with the brand, it becomes the preferred choice.?
• Loyalty – After a series of good brand experiences, users not only recommend it to others, it becomes the only one they will buy and use in that category. They think so highly of it that any product associated with the brand benefits from its positive glow.

For Example, Apple, ranked by one organization as “the world’s most popular brand” in 2015, is a classic example of a brand with positive equity.

What Is Brand Identity?

Brand identity is the visible elements of a?brand,?such as color, design, and logo, that identify and distinguish the?brand?in consumers' minds.

• Brand identity is the visible elements of a?brand,?such as color, design, and logo that identify and distinguish the?brand?in consumers' minds.
• Consistent marketing and messaging lead to consistent brand identity and, therefore, consistent sales.
• Building a positive brand image?can bring in consistent sales and make product roll-outs more successful.
• Building a positive, cohesive brand image requires analyzing the company and its market, and determining the company's goals, customers, and message.
• Social media is a powerful driver of brand awareness.

Building Brand Identity

The steps a company should take to build a strong, cohesive, and consistent brand identity will vary, but a few points apply broadly to most:

• Analyze the company?and the market.?A complete?analysis that includes the entire firm—a look at the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—is a proven way to help managers understand their situation to determine better their goals and the steps required to achieve them.
• Determine?key business goals.?The brand identity should help fulfill these goals.?For example, if an automaker?is pursuing a niche luxury market, its ads should be crafted to appeal to that market. They should appear on channels and sites where potential customers are likely to see them.
• Identify its customers.?Conducting surveys, convening focus groups, and holding one-on-one?interviews can help a company identify its consumer group.
• Determine the personality and message it wants to communicate.?A company needs to create a consistent perception rather than trying to combine every conceivable positive trait: utility, affordability, quality, nostalgia, modernity, luxury, flash, taste, and class. All brand elements, including?copy, imagery, cultural allusions, and color schemes, should align and deliver a coherent message.

A brand is considered to be one of the most valuable and important assets for a company. In fact, many companies are often referred to by their brand, which means they are often inseparable, becoming one and the same. This is why it's important for companies to protect their brands from a legal standpoint. Trademarks identify exclusive ownership over a brand and/or product, along with any associated marketing tool.

Types of Brands:

Corporate Brands:?Corporate branding is a way for companies to market themselves in order to give themselves an edge against their competition.

Personal Brands:?As mentioned above, branding isn't just for companies anymore. People use tools like social media to build their own personas, thereby boosting their brands. This includes regular social media posts, sharing images and videos, and conducting meet-and-greets.

Product Brands:?This type of branding, which is also known as merchandise branding, involves marketing one particular product.?

Service Brands:?This kind of branding applies to services, which often requires some creativity, as you can't actually show services in a physical way.

I’m going to dive deep into Service Brand because that’s what I am.

Service branding plays an important role in the contribution to value creation and economic growth at the company level. Unlike products, services are not tangible. They need to be experienced — and experienced as you intended. Here, you are setting an expectation for the standard of service. Services do not even exist until they are purchased. Service branding, then, becomes doubly important. First, you must convince a prospect that the service is worth purchasing. Then, you must convince that now-customer the service is worth using, sharing, and upgrading. Services are produced and consumed simultaneously in space and/or time. So services cannot be stored, exchanged, or returned. Unlike a product, a service can only be provided when the customer is involved. The immaterial character is the typical feature of a service – we cannot look at it and touch it. Customers cannot assess its quality in advance, so the purchase risk is higher. This is why experience and recommendation are even more important when it comes to services.