The most important elements of a brand should be:

Brand Position

• Who is addressed by company’s branded products or services. What the company does and for whom
• The company’s unique value and how customers benefit from products and/or services
• Key competitive differentiators, what makes the brand be chosen, be different from its competitors

Brand Promise

• The ONE most important thing that the brand promises to deliver to its customers — Every time!
• What customers and partners should expect from every interaction, how should they feel as brand’s customers

Brand Personality

• What the brand is to be known for
• Personality traits that customers, partners, and employees use to describe the company. What comes to the (potential) customer’s mind when addressed about the brand

Brand Story

• The company’s history and how the history adds value and credibility to the brand
• A summary of products/services/solutions

Brand Associations

• Physical artifacts: name, logo, colors, taglines, fonts, imagery
• Ideally, it must reflect the all the above statements about the brand and the company

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• Trust – can you deliver ‘on time?’
• Security – Does your program focus on client’s privacy and security?
• Relationship – Can clients IM you, ask questions, follow the project step-by-step?
• Increase Customer’s Potential – Can you offer something no one else can offer?
• Social Standing – Can you make them look wealthier, sexier, more influential?
• Power – Do you have what it takes to increase your client’s power?
• Free – Consumers who are motivated by price can feel they are being ‘treated right’ if they give their clients something real. Not an ebook – but a membership or passing on an association newsletter.

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Here is a checklist of 23 brand health criterias as presented in Peter Cheverton’s excellent book Understanding Brands (Creating Success):

1. is based on a proposition of genuine substance and value to the target customer
2. communicates a clear and powerful brand definition
3. communicates a clear ‘emotional charge’
4. communicates an attractive and relevant personality
5. wins, builds and retains customer loyalty
6. is well known by the target customer
7. is held in high esteem by the target customer
8. communicates and evidences a unique match between the company’s capabilities and the customer’s needs
9. is a source of competitive advantage
10. is an investment of increasing value that others will want to own
11. maintains its relevance over time by evolving in response to changing customer expectations and perceptions
12. increases the profitability of the business is consistent with the business strategy
13. makes sense within the business’s brand architecture
14. provides a protective ‘halo’ for growth strategies
15. provides a barrier to entry for new entrants or substitutes
16. is uniquely positioned in the market and creates a relevant space in the customer’s mind
17. communicates and demonstrates a clear sense of value
18. interacts consistently with the customer on as many fronts and on as many occasions as possible
19. cements the brand definition into the customer’s mind through interactions and positive associations
20. is managed and supported consistently over time
21. has values that can be applied consistently and successfully to all parts of the marketing
22. mix and through all promotional media
23. makes people want to get their hands on it

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Every day we are bombarded by millions of messages. They’re everywhere, from print media to highway billboards, local supermarkets, public phone booths, our mailboxes, radios and television sets.

Add to that the explosive growth of the internet and the new communication opportunities this medium presents, and today’s business owner or manager has a near-impossible task at hand; making his or her message stand out among the noise generated by others.

Next the article is presenting the 5 key strategies for a competitive visual identity (logo) as the first of the two crucial components of branding:

1. Be unique
2. Instantly communicate the nature of the business, product, or service.
3. Be appealing to the target audience
4. Be able to withstand the test of time
5. Be able to work in context of all potential communications’ media

The second and equally important component of branding is a verbal one. It is often referred to as a slogan, tagline or a positioning statement.

1. Be as unique as the company logo
2. Be brief and memorable
3. Be honest

Read more here.

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Name: the First Step

How different would you be if your name were Clem or Matilda? Your company name sets a tone for your brand, right from the start. Names can be generated from invented words (Xerox), initials (IBM) and founder’s names (Johnson & Johnson). Some of the best names, though, communicate a benefit (U-Haul or Budget Car Rental).

Logo: Your Company’s Symbol

A logo is a distinctive symbol or mark that visually represents your company. To get one that passes muster with the quality police, I recommend hiring a design firm. Because your logo is one of the first visual brand elements your buyers see, put some time and money into it.

Taglines: A Memorable Definition

A tagline is simply a short description of a business’s reason for being. It could incorporate elements of its expertise, its target audience, even the markets it serves. A tagline can be both direct and subtle—whatever it takes to get the prospect to say to themselves “Oh, I get it.”

Fonts and Typestyles

Using the proper fonts and typestyles also define your brand. Try to standardize fonts and typestyles that appear routinely in your marketing materials. Use only a select few.

Colors: Creating a Mood
How do you feel when you walk into a yellow room? When you see a sign with a red background color, what is your first reaction? Colors generate emotional reactions, and it is important to carry that over into your branding program.

The Sounds of Your Brand

One company I frequently call on the telephone plays rap over its on-hold system. I don’t know about you, but I believe there is more to music than three bad chords and rotten lyrics. I hate being on hold with that company. And their relationship with me suffers ever so slightly each time I call. If your business has on-hold messaging, or your retail store has background music, make sure it is appropriate.

Even though I find all elements absolutely needed in creating a brand image for a (small) company I find the whole view of things somehow superficial.

I always believed that branding is more than a logo or a tagline, even though sometimes it cannot survive without them. A brand involves blending the image, purpose, and focus of your business, with your core marketing message, and coming up with something which will stick in the minds of people who encounter it. A brand is promise. A great brand is a kept promise.

Read full article here.

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Differentiate

Differentiation is the only alternative to price-dominated competition. However, achieving a sustainable point of differentiation is difficult. Offering base points of differentiation that are effective is generally short-lived as competitors copy them quickly.

A portfolio solution is to create branded differentiators, branded features, services or programmes that provide a sustainable point of differentiation.

Energize

Most brands can use more energy. The energy gap problem is particularly troublesome, ironically, for market-leader firms in mature categories that often have an enviable reputation of high quality, trustworthiness and innovation. Such brands nearly always tend to be viewed as boring.

The portfolio solution is to create a branded energiser, a branded product, promotion, sponsorship programme or other entity that will enhance and energise a target brand. The target brand which may be boring, can be linked to a brand that has substantial energy.

Extend

Most companies desire growth in order to create organisational vitality and to realise the objectives of investors. Even if a growth sub-market is discovered for which competition is modest and an attractive offering is available, a brand asset will be needed to enable the growth option.

A portfolio solution is to create and leverage brand assets. A brand extension strategy leverages brands into adjacent product classes. In doing so it is useful to build brand platforms that will eventually span many products, perhaps using sub-brands rather than looking to incremental extensions.

The concern in any extension decision is the impact that the extension has on the brand – in addition to the help the brand will give to the extension. An ill-conceived or badly implemented extension can damage the brand. Brands can also be used to extend vertically. The super-premium market is attractive as it contains most of the product vitality and attractive margins. Vertical brand extensions are often compelling but they represent delicate brand portfolio issues because moving up involves brand credibility and moving a brand down involves risk.

Clarify

Consumers and employees become frustrated in trying to determine what the firm stands for in the various product-market settings. There is also a lack of brand-building focus, resulting in ineffective use of brand-building budgets. A portfolio strategy can enhance focus and clarity. One route is simply to reduce the number of brands, especially those that are strategic.

Another route is to clarify the roles that the various brands would play, develop them for success in those roles and make sure they are used consistently. Still another is to leverage the corporate brand within the portfolio. This usually represents the people, values and culture of an organisation and it is often ideally suited to being an endorser brand.

Start and end with the consumer

The starting point for marketers is to define categories as consumer do. The marketers need a disciplined way of evaluating their brands’ opportunities, like analizing the need states – the intersection betweet what customers want and how they want it.

Related readings:
Brand Portfolio Strategy by David A. Aaker

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What are the qualities, the attributes, that turn a brand into a great one? I’ll try to put up a list of them here, and I’m looking forward for the readers of this blog to fill in the gaps that might come up:

1. An idea
Behind every brand is a compelling idea, which captures customers’ attention and loyalty by filling an unmet or unsatisfied need.

2. Uniqueness
Does it differentiate you from the other organization in your market?

3. Attractiveness
Does your brand appeal to people? A great brand makes sure that consumers can understand your promise and are attracted by it.

4. Honesty
Customers want to believe the promises made, and they are quick to spot insincerity and over-exaggerated claims. Make sure your brand promises are achievable and can get to the customer.

5. Consistency
Regardless of brand choice and implementation, consistency is one key attribute of a great brand. You must ensure that every aspect of your organization, from marketing materials and Web sites to customer service personnel, maintains the values outlined in your brand.

6. Long term thinking
A long-term approach, makes easier for a brand to travel worldwide, transcend cultural barriers, speak to multiple consumer segments simultaneously, create economies of scale, and let you operate at the higher end of the positioning spectrum. Consumers are looking for something that has lasting value.

7. Relevancy
A great brand has to be relevant. It has to meet what people want, it performs the way people want it to.

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• Consistent
  Using your brand consistently is imperative. The logo should never differ, and your mission statement or slogan should carry through to every element of your business. This is also true of consistency between the online and offline sectors of your business. Your bricks and mortar presence should be interchangeable with the image you project on the Web.
• Visible
  The more you reinforce your brand identity, the more memorable it becomes. For example, each page of your Web site should feature your logo. Market your business with advertising, using your logo and slogan. Get your brand out there whenever possible-on your company vehicles and on the products themselves.
• Unique
  The business world is a sea of brands. In order to develop successful marketing strategies using your brand, your business has to stand out. Emphasize what you have that the competition doesn’t. Tell your consumers what makes your business different than all the rest

.Effective branding carries the message of your business succinctly and consistently wherever consumers encounter you. Your logo, look and feel, and slogan reinforce the values of your business and project your image efficiently to customers. Following these guidelines will help you create a brand that makes you stand out in a crowd-and stay fresh in the minds of consumers.

Tags: effective branding

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Brand identity

is how brand strategists want the brand to be perceived. It is a set of unique brand associations that represent what the brand stands for. These associations imply a promise to customers from organization members. Brand identity should help establish a relationship between the brand and the customer by generating a value proposition involving functional, emotional or self expressive benefits.

Brand image

is a key component in the formation of a clear and recognizable brand identity in the market. Brand image is related to how the brand is currently perceived by consumers. In other words what is the reputation of the brand in the marketplace.

Brand character

is related to its internal constitution, how it is perceived in terms of integrity, trustworthiness and honesty. This is also related with the promise of the brand to deliver the experience associated with its name.

Brand culture

is about the system of values that surround a brand much like the cultural aspects of a people or a country.

Brand personality

is the set of human characteristics that are associated with the brand. It includes such characteristics as gender, age, socioeconomic class, as well as human personality traits such as warmth and sentimentality.

Brand essence (brand soul)

represents the emotional elements and values of the brand. Essence should be part of a long term positioning that does not change with every communication

Tag: Brand Components

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A brand is a promise. A kept promise. With a brand, you set customer expectations. When someone buys your product or service, they count on those expectations to be fulfilled.

The components of your brand promise are based on:

Consistency of experience.

This is the absolute critical component in building a brand. Whether I go into a McDonald’s in Boise or Beijing, I expect my french fries to taste the same, and I expect to see those golden arches.

Consistent look-and-feel.

At the most basic level, to build a brand you must develop a strong brand image. You know you are in a Starbucks even if you don’t see the name over the door. Consistent look-and-feel extends to your logo, colors, typefaces, decor, employee clothing, and more.

Consistent quality.

It’s not enough to deliver a consistent experience to your customer. The experience must also be of a certain level of quality. McDonald’s french fries don’t have to be the best french fries in the world, but they have to be good french fries and they have to be fresh every time.

Distinct competitive position.

A brand must stand for something and differentiate you from the competition. Three strong brands of superstores have very different competitive positions: Wal-Mart, low prices; Target, hip discount. These positions make it easy for a consumer to choose the brand that suits them.

Repeated exposure.

To remember your brand, customers must hear it or see it over and over. Of course, building brand awareness takes money, and that’s a challenge if you are a small company. The key is to clearly and narrowly define your target market. Then, make sure those potential customers see you many times by repeatedly advertising in the same publications and attending the same networking events.

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