A scientific approach to Branding

If you have plans to rebrand your company or start from scratch, always use a mix of leadership decisions that marry both brand and strategy which culminates into a lead brand strategy.

Let me explain how?

Both branding and strategy are two different ideas that run parallel to each other but you need both to keep your train (Your company) on track.

Branding typically refers to the ability for your company to position the product/ service creatively while strategy refers to the approach for the brand from a business and marketing standpoint.

Strategy: By definition is a plan of action that is designed to achieve a long-term of overall aim.        

Strategy is that indescribable, intangible term, many of us use generously but sometimes it gets lost in its own translation.Strategy by definition is a plan of action that is designed to achieve a long-term of overall aim.

Why many companies don’t have a proper brand strategy?

This further highlights the fact that they have either a Marketing Strategy or maybe a Business Strategy. While each of these are equally important to consider and implement, a brand strategy sits somewhere between both these and that’s where many a times a disconnect happens.

We will discuss both Marketing strategy and Business Strategy in the coming posts, but first, let’s focus on Brand strategy and the fundamental points that drive the science behind it.

A well-crafted Brand Strategy outlines and enunciates several layers of your brand which includes the following, and as brand custodians professionals will have to look at all the below areas as part of their overall Brand Strategy:

Your core Customers (Or Target Audience)

A target audience refers to a specific group of consumers who are most likely to want your product or service, and therefore, this group of people are exposed to your brand or the associated ad campaigns. A target audience may be defined by parameters such as age, gender, income, location, interests or a many such factors.

What is your Brand Purpose

Usually a Brand’s Purpose addresses the eternal question “WHY” and the reason for its existence. The reason it exists what it stands for. The “Why“ stands for the Customers it serves and the Niche it expects to address.

Your Brand Architecture

Brand Architecture is a classification of sorts that brings together brands, products and services to help customers express, access and relate to a brand. Brand architecture helps towards a formal structuring brand portfolio so that customers can easily express which brands they are affiliated to and at what level.

The brand Archetype

Carl Jung, the noted psychologist theorised that humans generally tend to associate symbolism to understand complex concepts in an easier fashion. As a result of his research, he thus stated that: “There are forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time, as individual products of unconscious.”

In his work, Jung further maintained that over a course of time, people use certain paths to larger understanding remains timeless and recognizable. And these paths to the greater understanding should be further categorized since they exhibit personality traits that are easily understood—and in the case of brands, by the customers and by the companies who are trying to define their customer audiences. He termed them as Archetypes.

There are 12 distinct brand archetypes: The Innocent, the Outlaw, the Explorer, the Creator, the Magician, the Lover, the Everyman, the Hero, the Caregiver, the Ruler, the Jester and the Sage        

“These archetypes are engraved and hardwired into our psyches.”

Core Competitors

A competitor brand is a rival brand who offers similar products or services for the same set of people as an existing brand, and tries to gain a larger market share, augmented revenues, profits, visibility, audience and outgrow rival brands by claiming their customers with better executed marketing strategies.

Your Brand Promise

A brand promise is a value or experience a company's customers can expect to receive every single time they interact with that company. The more a company can deliver on that promise, the stronger the brand value in the mind of customers and employees.

What’s your brand positioning

The process of positioning your brand in the mind of your customers is Brand Positioning. It is more than a mere tagline or a fancy logo. (This is where many brands get lost and focus only on this aspect) Brand positioning is the strategy that you need to adopt in order to set your business apart from the rest of the competition.

Your Brand Platform

A brand platform establishes a main framework or a foundation for the organization's core identity, messaging and visual presentation. Additionally, it also serves as a basic and most important framework for all internal and external communications, as well as a road map for how internal operations will be performed. A well-established platform will serve as a great channel, medium and means towards effectively engaging with your customers. Marry this with effective messaging.

The Messaging

The only way your consumers can establish a solid and everlasting relationship with your brand is through messaging. The way in which your brand communicates its unique value proposition and its personality through its verbal and nonverbal communications or messaging. Your messaging can inspire, motivate your customers, thereby making them want to buy your product.

#Qurious #StayingQurious #Brand #Branding #BrandIdenity #Perception #BrandIdentity #ScienceofBranding