Branding is destined to help remember, to get the customer closer to your already excellent product, not to replace or complete the experience. Your business need a good branding strategy, but if someone imagine that a good branding strategy will replace some missing promises of your product, or an incomplete experience then is in a deep mistake.

The logo or the packaging  will definitely help customers recognize your brand, but considerig these as branding is kind of shallow. Branding is way more than the visual part of it, usually associated with the branding process. Brading consist in a more strategic thinking that should be focused on the customer experience, promises made and kept.

A good branding cannot save a crappy product or service, but will amplify  the message of a good product for sure.

A article in inc Magazine debates controversially on the subject. But, if you keep in mind the „disclaimer” in the start of the article,

By “branding”, I mean the panoply of marketing activities like brand-focused advertising, packaging, marketing materials, logos, taglines, and so forth. In almost every case, money spent on these activities is money wasted.

and read it with that key in mind, it kind of makes sense.

Once customers start thinking your product is garbage, there’s no amount of “branding” that can change the perception.  In fact, attempting to use “branding” to fix a product problem always backfires. All it does is call attention to the difference between the brand message and what the customer knows is true.

By contrast, if customers love your product, then the brand will reflect that love.  Of course, you can use the some of the tools of “branding” to help spread the word, but the keystone is always the customer’s experience

Link

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We will now discuss some important elements that will allow you to save your brand identity from getting distorted by frauds and cheats.

First Thing First – Create Your Presence:

The first thing you need to do is to create your presence. Find the most famous sites and create your accounts there. For example: Facebook, YouTube, Digg, etc. You can easily get a list of some of the most famous social media sites. After you create your account, you need to personalize your profile with your company information.

Logo Design plays a crucial role in building your brand image. Thus, it must be on every profile page that you create on all different websites. You need to also mention your contact details, so potential clients or interested people may contact you.

Create Personal Pages and Videos:
After you sign-up and upload your logo along with necessary details about your business, you should now work on creating personalized business pages and videos. This will enable you to represent and promote your business and products. Plus, who is better than you to represent your business?

If you create a Fan Page, make sure you mention that it’s the official fan page of your business. This is what other businesses do as well to stand-out from fake pages created by competitors or other people to distort your business image.

Start Adding People to Your Network:
The next thing you should do is to start expanding your network by adding people, especially from your own industry. Start interacting with them and avoid posting excessive marketing and promotional material and discount offers. The first thing you need to do is to win the trust of your network. Only then it will be right to promote your products.

You Have Now Created Your Presence on Social Media:

After following the steps mentioned above, you will be able to create your presence on social media effectively. Plus, all the information about your business will be authentic because it will be posted by you.

It’s Time You Search for Thugs and Frauds:

Once your presence is created, it’s time you start searching for frauds, cheats and thugs who are planning to distort your business image by creating unethical pages and creating wrong videos in your name.

At least once a week, you should visit all the social media sites where you have created your presence and search for information about your company posted by others.
Let’s say you come across a fake fan page, you will be able to report it and it will be removed. So, this is an ongoing process where you will have to create your presence and search for cheats who are trying to destroy your brand identity.

This is a Guest Post by Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is the Alliance Manager at Logoinn, a custom logo design company. He writes about the effect of design on marketing and brand identity and helps small businesses find design solutions for effective marketing.

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“I thought I’d be able to tell the difference, but I couldn’t — I looked at the ingredients and they seemed almost the same,” says 30-year-old Ms. Mills, a stay-at-home mother of two in Ardmore, Okla. On her next shopping trip, “I’m going to buy the store-brand moisturizer and cleanser — it’s less money.”

Many Americans are changing their everyday purchases and abandoning brand loyalty, prompted by the persistent financial pressure of rising food, gasoline and electricity prices. 

Retailers are also sensing more shopper experimentation. This fall, supermarkets Safeway Inc. and Kroger Co. noted that sales of their store brands are on the rise. “In this economy, customers are much more willing to try a private-label item, and we’re seeing signs that this is happening more and more as the year progresses,” Kroger CEO David Dillon said on a conference call.

To be sure, overall sales of name-brand goods are still higher than those of store brands. Still, about 40% of primary household shoppers said they started buying store-brand paper products because “they are cheaper than national brands,” according to a September report by market-research company Mintel International, which interviewed 3,000 consumers. Nearly 25% of respondents reported that it is “really hard to tell the difference” between national brands and store brands of paper products. Store brands on average cost 46% less than name-brand versions, Mintel found.

The above paragraphs are extracted from todays WSJ’s article At the Supermarket Checkout, Frugality Trumps Brand Loyalty .

Crisis provides brands a challenge and an oportunity. Is the time that most of the brands will be put to test by tougher buying conditions or pricing beyond brand as a final buying argument.

It’s the time new brands can made their way up into the consumers minds and benefit later from surviving these harder times.

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In general, the leader should never attack or name the competition. Instead the leader should promote the category. By attacking a competitor or responding to an attack ad, the leader only legitimizes the competition and the existence of a choice. Neither is good.

If under attack, a leader should instead address any problems with PR. Never with advertising. When Apple says consumers are frustrated with Vista in its advertising, Microsoft shouldn’t run ads saying everybody loves Vista.

That above, is just a quote. More, with examples and details on Ries’s blog here.

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A good brand does express identity,  Cheryl Heller, the founder and CEO of Heller Communication Design said. But great branding goes one step further. You must think of your brand less as a tool for communicating identity, and more as a tool for conveying a promise.

1. Be brief. Be clear. “Clarity and brevity do not come naturally to entrepreneurs with a mission,” Heller lamented. Use the Ritz Carlton promise as an example. Notice it does not include words like “luxury” or “hospitality.”

2. Don’t clutter your brand promise with references to how you differentiate yourself.“Who you are and what you do is core to your brand promise,” Heller said. “How you do it, that changes as you grow.” Wizbang as your technology is, it is only one of your tools. Don’t mention it.

3. Avoid common words used by other companies. Heller’s examples: strategy, core values, mission, vision, operational excellence, efficiency, value-added, character, integrity, positioning, sustainability, corporate citizen, cause.

4. Speak to all your constituents: customer, partner, investor, or employee.

via

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Perhaps it’s the tight economy and the idea that the way to grow in a recession is at the expense of your rivals; maybe the presidential candidates have set the tone for TV advertising; or it could be the influence of those masterful and highly effective Mac vs. PC spots. Whatever the reasons, comparative ads — some of them pretty aggressive — are all the rage.

First there were the Dyson vs. Hoover ads, the Miller Lite vs. Bud Light spots (remember the Dalmatian leaping off a truck?) and Huggies vs. Pampers (delivering a literal brickbat with a spot showing a mom diapering a brick). 

Now Time Warner has said it will go after Verizon in its new campaign, serving a counterpunch to its rival’s claim that Fios internet service is “10 times faster than cable.” In a seeming homage to the Apple ads, the Fios spots feature its installer humorously interacting with a hapless cable installer. 

You can read more about this in a very interesting AdWeek article. The subject pointed here is very interesting. It seems that the number of ads in this field are continuously increasing. All these while in Europe and in most parts of the world this kind of ads are banned by market regulators.

The question which come up is obvious: How this kind of ads influence a brand over time?

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1. Focus on the Customer
2. Monitor the Competition
3. Own the Brand.
4. Find & Direct Outside Vendors.
5. Create New Ideas.
6. Communicate Internally.
7. Manage a Budget.
8. Understand the ROI.
9. Set the Strategy, Plan the Attack, and Execute.

As per the 3rd point in the list Rob is saying:

The perceptions and feelings formed about an organization, its products / services, and its performance is what is known as its “brand.” The Marketing Department is responsible for creating meaningful messages through words, ideas, images, and names that deliver upon the promises / benefits an organization wishes to make with its customers. Furthermore, the Marketing Department is responsible for ensuring that messages and images are delivered consistently, by every member of the organization.

I cannot agree more with the this, with only one point to add. While it’s true that the marketing department is usually the one that gets the praise or blame for a good/bad branding I believe that both the ownership and message delivery of the branding message / image are the responsibility of the entire organization.

Read detailed list here.

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Starting with William Arruda on his excellent Personal Branding blog:

All successful branding is based in authenticity – that is – what’s true and genuine and unique about you. Brands are uncovered, not fabricated. The myth that branding is about spin or packaging and image management needs to be replaced by the truth that “you can’t be someone you are not.”

More on Bobby Lehew in Your Brand – Authenticity rules:

I think the field has been covered well, but to state (again) the obvious: branding is not about conveying something you are not but about revealing who you are.

Last, but not least on ThinkingSparks, excellent point raised by Pepita:

Authenticity isn’t necessarily good. Nor does it mean good. I think of Al Qaeda, IRA, ETA, the mafia, street gangs etc. They would qualify as an authentic brand

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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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The experts cited understanding of Customer/Target frequently. This mirrors the finding in this report that metrics and brand research are key tools. Communication and Creative effectiveness were also frequently mentioned as critical aspects of successful branding.

These open-ended responses provide a useful counterpoint to the other findings in this report. They reflect the classic tenets of branding and marketing, which are focused on knowing the customer, maintaining a consistent brand in the marketplace, and delivering winning content and creative.

study says.

Here is the list of the top 10 aspects of successful branding, as resulted from the study:

1. Consistency (36.0%)
2. Understanding of Customer/Target (18.2%)
3. Message/Communication (14.7%)
4. Creative/Design/Brand ID (12.8%)
5. Relevance (12.4%)
6. Differentiation/Uniqueness (12.0%)
7. Key Stakeholder Buy-In (10.9%)
8. Positioning (9.7%)
9. Clarity (8.9%)
10. Connection to Customer/Target (8.9%)

Read the study here.

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