Featured image by Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH / shutterstock.com
Whether you are involved in business or you are not, we regularly hear talk in the media about brands, from “brand Beckham” to the “Coca Cola brand”. In fact a common phrase that we hear is that “you are your brand” but for many people they are unsure of exactly what a brand is! In this article I will look at what is a brand and give you some tips on how you can create or improve your brand for your new or existing business.
What does this brand suggest to you?
Many people believe that their logo (which is important) is their brand but your brand is much more than just a logo. The American Marketing Association define a brand as “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”, even a scent can be part of a brand, for example did you ever get the aroma when you enter an Ambercrombie and Fitch store? This implies that your brand is a combination of features that customers associate with your product or service and they can immediately identify as your brand.
Over the last few years, we have witnessed the rise of the “personal brand”, celebrities such as David Beckham, Sean Combs and Kim Kardashian (In fact all the Kardashians) have created a public persona that has transformed them into massive worldwide brands that can generate huge profits through sales of merchandise and public appearances. As early as 1955, Gardner & Levy (Harvard Business Review, 1955) suggested that a brand is more than just physical features, they identified a brand as a symbol that represents a variety of ideas and attributes that tells the consumer many things by the way it sounds (literal meaning if any) and via the body of associations it has built up and acquired as a public object over a period of time. The net results is a public image, a character or personality that may be more important for the overall status (and sales) of the brand than many technical facts about the product (Fanning, J., 2006).
What this tells us is that your brand has a personality and as we all know, people buy people! As a business person, your goal should be to create a brand with an image that represents your business and all it stands for, and create a brand personality that your customers will love. Here are three tips to implement for any business:
- Ensure that you have a well designed Logo, preferably choose a logo that will stand the test of time. This will ensure that your customers, with no effort, can immediately identify your product or service.
- Choose a tagline that tells people what you do and represents your business aim. It is extremely important to use your tagline to position your brand in the mind of your customer, for example Enable Marketing’s tagline is “We do branding and digital for small and medium sized enterprises who want to grow their business” or Ryanair’s tagline is a great example of this “Low Fares, Made Simple”. Use your tagline to tell your customers what it is you do!
- Develop a mission statement for your business and ensure that you and all your employees live by that mission statement! I would recommend printing it and displaying it in a prominent position in your office. Our mission statement is “to partner with SME’s and organisations to enable them to successfully market and grow their business online and offline.” If you live by your mission statement it will ensure that the right things are done within your business to deliver the service and quality to your customers that will give your brand a personality that your customers will love!
Whether you are an existing business or new a business, if you implement the three tips above I guarantee you will see the difference, for the better, in your business. Best of luck.
Apple image source: pixabay.com
References:
Fanning, J. (2006), The importance of being branded, Dublin, The Liffey Press
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