Your Branding (cheat sheet guide)

Branding is an ever changing evolution of how companies receive, respond & recalculate their respective businesses. Branding though may sound like this immensely intense, expensive world of internal communication but, if not done right with the right ingredients that best make up who you are...your destined to find yourself soon at the end of the tunnel. Let's take a short dive into our perspective of what we call as a cheat sheet guide while you work towards building your brand out of an idea or a company of multiple thoughts.

Part One: Purpose

For every brand, a purpose is the most pivotal stage while setting themselves up. For an established brand where perhaps all avenues of internal brand communication is sorted is it crucial to still maintain a purpose? Yes! because, brands and their products or services are always going to be defined by their audience. No audience is permanent. Say for instance Apple as we know it helped establish today's digital movement. In fact had it not been for the first gen iPhone that came out in 2007 this whole modern digital revolution that we find ourselves in would have been a distant reality and would have constantly been in a trial and era state of life. They ensured that they took the risk and came out with their device which ensured to offer the world of information and communication right at the palm of your hand. That action of 'What should we do, How do we do it and above all Why should we do it', is what resulted in the evolution of change that is today's modern world. - This is part one: purpose!

Create a purpose, create a reason to define Why you do what you do and eventually how you will do it! If you don't have this, your just another product or service out there holding no definite USP which eventually will bear result. Result that you have understood your audience.

Part Two: Your Brand Promise

What is a Brand Promise? just like how we make promises with our parents, friends, or well wishers to always do our bit to become better people tomorrow. A brand promise is far more personal. It isn't like a family relationship or a friendship which is nurtured by a mutual sense of admiration or inter-personal connections that usually manifests inside humans but, yet a brand promise can really get highly personal and help define who you are eventually as a person. How many times have you heard someone say things like, "Oh! he's an Apple guy, Oh! he only swears by Nike, Oh! they only drink a coke!" and so on and on....what those are...are they're affirmation statements that define the person with the brand they represent so dearly. Let's do another example to help you understand this...Cricket is coincidently not the national sport of India. The national sport of India is Hockey! yet, cricket is a religion that defines and controls the emotional chords of over a billion odd people in this country. So much so that the players are treated as demigods! So any version of this game that's played in India would be revered and accepted with open arms. One such accecptance was T20 cricket. A shorter version of the game which usually is played 50 overs or over 5 days (test cricket). At first the feeling was how would a 20/20 over game work? but, soon it became a rage...Today, rookie or uncapped players are fast turned into legends due to this fast paced format. This thereby establishing an indirect brand promise with its audiences (fans). It's ability to define a values and eventually setup an emotional chord with benefits is what a brand promise is all about.

Part Three: Your Audience

Through part one and two we have understood how a brand is cultivating a space for itself in the market, which all eventually boils down to your audience. No brand is a brand without it's audience. Apple, CocaCola, Amazon, Reliance, TATA, Airtel, JIO and so on these brands would not be what and where they're without it's audience. Today, it's not just brands that represent a product or service but, even institutions today are becoming brands. Say, you want to get the best MBA degree in the country today it's a no brainer that an IIM is a place or you. Though they're equally other institutions in the market. So, from this we are trying to say that when you know your audience you have internally answered two very critical points...who you are here to serve? and what do they want? Don't forget that no doubt if your a brand that's making a good product your products goodness alone will never get you your audience. You will need to look a little more deeper and within your brands character to pick out that one element that sparks your audiences participation. For this let's take another final example, Red Bull. What is Red Bull and why has it become such a brand of repute today that the product content in itself isn't the kind anymore and it's gone beyond that. And how did that happen? To the popular world out there we all know that Red Bull was born in Austria and with the right balance and promotion and eventual associations it's today become a global market player in the 'energy drink' business marketplace. But, that wasn't the case with the brand at first. Red Bull wasn't even formed in Austria, in fact the brand otherwise known as Krating Daeng which was sold in Thailand by pharmacist Chaleo Yoovidhya. When Mr. Dietrich Mateschitz travelled to Thailand and was jet-lagged he happen to have this drink and it worked like a dream for him...eventually over time soon becoming his product of ownership and eventually to be rebranded to Red Bull...soon the brand became immensly popular and it was eventually converted into a uber lifestyle product. Today, Red Bull is a lifestyle brand. It connects people. It makes holding a can of Red Bull still look cool and still be desirable.

So, in conclusion...for any brand to work, you ought to ensure all the 3 above fundamentals are given it's equal attention and focus. because, like any well-oiled engine for it to perform all aspects and all elements need to come together to help create a lasting experience. And at the end of the day that's what brands what for themselves and for the products or services that they represent. So ensure that this is followed with great precision is also a craft of how it can be done smoothly. At the end of the day branding is an emotion, it's goto received on all accords and on all nerves of one's self being.

Building Brand Stories!

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