Branding as a subject has evolved over years. It has become apparent that branding is crucial for the enhancement of businesses. Branding has become an important subject in the modern business that ensures propensity and profitability of firms. Although sometime it is hard to establish the contribution of branding in the realization of profits or benefits attained by the firm, yet the contribution of branding in management of the firms can be scientifically projected.
According to H. Panke, branding is a promise that has to be fulfilled everywhere, at any time. People hear branding and what comes to their minds are TV adverts, radio adverts, bill boards and promotions, but branding goes beyond that, it’s a bundle of promise you made to the customer. Let’s say your bundle of promise to customers is comfort and luxury that must be fulfilled exactly that at all times and everywhere without given an excuse or compromise.
Branding is about connecting to the hearts and minds of the people with objective of owning their wallet. And owning the wallet of the customer is what every business is working for and hence branding should not be seen as an extra work but the main focus of the business. It’s of this reason that John Stewart, former CEO of Quaker Oats, once said, “If this business were split up, I would give you the land and bricks and mortar, and I would keep the brands and trademarks, and I would fare better than you.” A former CEO of McDonald’s declared, “If every asset we own, every building, and every piece of equipment were destroyed in a terrible natural disaster, we would be able to borrow all the money to replace it very quickly because of the value of our brand.”
Branding is a particular challenge for startups because they have no skills and knowledge on how to brand or has no time to handle branding activities like that of the large organisations. However, they still need to brand to help encourage customers to buy, create customer loyalty and advocate, price well, create demand for their product or service, make higher profit margins and be able to grow organically. The above challenges build the basis for this article that formulated eight (8) simple cardinal pillars that can help startups build a strong and a big brand from the scratch.
Specialty or Specialisation
What’s your specialty? Identify your specialty and focus on your specialty area. What special thing will people remember when they hear of your business, what comes to their mind? Is it quality, reliability, comfort, style, fit, speed or innovation? Branding requires that you build a specialty as soon as you enter into business so that a competitor cannot copy that specialty. For instance, if a food joint touts his methods of cooking that can be copied, but if he focusses on ambiance, a place to relax and speed this might be difficult to copy by competitors.
Therefore, you have to make a strong decision and choice as to which specialty to concentrate on, this because if your brand involves too many attributes, it will be unclear to the target customer. The brand should do only one thing, otherwise, it confuses. Even a brand that creates new uses and net markets should be directed toward a specific, clear, designed specialty.
Leadership
To become eventually a big brand, your brand should aim leadership from the beginning; thus, how do you lead in terms of that specialty (quality, reliability, comfort, style, fit, speed or innovation) you have chosen? How are you going to ensure that when it comes to your specialty, you are leading? Are you going to stay true to your core specialty and extend your brand where you feel it’s relevant to customers? Or what? This may require that you have a brand strategy in place.
Brand strategy will help you Coordinate all the functions of your organisation so that they are all working together to create and maintain a strong brand for leadership; Concentrate your resources so that they are used most effectively for leadership; Communicate to those involved with the brand (employees, customers and other stakeholders) for leadership. Fundamental essence of a brands strategy will be to build a distinct and compelling image about your product or service in the minds of your target audience to own their heart and minds to help you obtain leadership in your specialty area.
Personality
There are times we get things wrong by trying to take ourselves purely from the business. There’s no way you can fully disassociate yourself from the business brand as business owner because people buy products because of the personality behind that product or service. A brand is not omnipotent; a brand cannot succeed if the product or service you offer does not match your personality type. People want to buy products or service from people and companies they like and if they don’t like a type of personality they will never buy. “Battles are not won with systems; they’re won with that supreme weapon; the personal factor”-Anonymous
Lifesaver asserted that “there are people out there that get every single new Apple device just because Steve Jobs was its creator”. This typically demonstrated the power of personality. This means that when a customer brings his bicycle, motor or car to your fitting shop for servicing or repairs it’s because of you the owner (your kind of personality to the customer) could be the major reason. Ken Iverson the former president of a fast-rising steel manufacturer said, “our efforts are to project a character or personality to make the customer comfortable doing business with us.” People buy products for dozens of reasons; but it’s found that most people are motivated by the personality.
Distinctiveness
How distinctive or unique are you going to be different from the rest of the pack? Let say innovation, everyone innovate, how distinctive is your innovation, what is that unique selling preposition (USP) that you are going to sell out which will make your business different from any other businesses in the world. For instance, Trump brands are said to be distinctive with comfort, style, fit and with business success according to D. Sexton. The distinctiveness of your product or service consist of those benefits that are of higher priority to your target customers and that your organisation can provide that benefit better than any of your competitors. The distinctiveness of your product or service may consist of ideally just one or two or at worse three benefits that separates you from the pie.
Don Debelak asserted that “you don’t have to be better at everything, or every market-you just have to be better in one aspect of your business and in one market. The secret of being better is to have a sustainable advantage.” Pick out the market leaders or fast-rising firms in any market, and you’ll always find they have one distinctiveness edge. The edge might be quality, status, innovative image, a combination of product features, a unique sales strategy, or in-depth technical support. For example, Toyota had quality advantage or distinctiveness over General Motor (GM) and Ford in the 1970s and 1980s and that gave Toyota a sustainable advantage that was able to turn into a significant market share.
Visibility
To boost your bottom-line, strengthen the brand visibility because revenue is vanity, profit is sanity and brand visibility is the king. The path to sustainable business is visibility, credibility and profitability and therefore, anything that is bright and kept in a corner will never shine. You have to create the needed visibility in front of your customers and other stakeholders for them to see you, you can’t hide it. You have to sell or reach out to people with your brand product or service for them to see it, believe it and buy it. Simplicita!
Another thing about brand building is that, if you don’t consciously create the brand well and make it visible, customers will form their own perception of what your product or service stands for and that will become your brand position to them which could be dangerous for you, so you better consciously create it or customers create it for you, choose the one you like. When people have to buy a product or service right away, they often buy from a brand name that’s visible to them and comes to their mind first amongst which a choice will be made, this what we call “Evoked set” in marketing.
You don’t have a business if you can’t make your brand visible and easy to find. For many products there is a certain place possible customer will look for information, if that’s the case for your product, be sure your brand is visible wherever prospects are going to look.
Utility
The utility bit of branding is an integration of what you say and what you do. Are there gaps? It’s the blend of message and product provided or service deliverer together. The inside (the promise) must be the same as outside (product provided or service deliverer), you can’t separate the two. Brand utility focus on providing meaningful products or services that will improve people’s lives and add value to the user. People must become better than before after using your product; thus, your product must deliver higher standard of living for the customers.
To differentiate your offers beyond simply making products and services, you must add value to the customer through distinctive product benefits creating customer experiences with the brand or company. A brand utility might invoke happiness, create relaxation, convey care, prove efficiency, increase confidence, promote ease and easy to use. These will further help you to catalyze customer engagement, increase purchase, attract customers, inspire sharing and change the world.
Persistent and Consistent
A brand is very difficult to build overnight, it requires relentless consistency, over time and over market and it usually takes five to seven years or more to build a desire brand. “Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart brand was just this great idea that turn into overnight success…, it was about twenty years in the making”, Sam Walton once said. Even though at a point you may like to pull out, but hey, you have to get back to the line and stay focus, then you persist, remember it was about twenty years in the making for Wal-Mart.”
Building a brand that that sell out doesn’t happen overnight, you may have to work a while to establish your reputation and brand, but the consistency will be the standard to beat in your chosen industry-Donald Trump once said. When Helmut Panke, former CEO of BMW, was asked how they kept the BMW brand consistent, he replied, “the biggest task is to be able to say ‘No. Because in the end, authentic brand management boils down to understanding that a brand is a promise that has to be fulfilled everywhere, at any time. So, when something doesn’t fit, you must make sure that that is not done”. For example, BMW said “no” to producing a minivan since they did not feel it was consistent with BMW brand position they desired at the time. Consumers gain confidence when they are familiar with a company because of its consistency; thus, consistency leads to familiarity and familiarity lead confidence and confidence lead to sales revenue.
Goodwill
Goodwill is the final product of a brand. A well build and managed brand worth a lot of money you can imagine. The best global brands in the world are worth billions of dollars, and hence to most companies brand represent their single most valuable, admirable, endurable and income generating asset. A well build and managed brand may represent a significant portion of the value of the organisation when valuing the value of the organisation. According to Sexton, a brand has a similar financial impact regardless of the size of the organisation. For instance, dry-cleaner with a brand that stands for stain-removing expertise will earn more than a dry-cleaner without such a reputation. A building contractor that stands for reliability will earn more than a building contractor without such a reputation. A fashion designer or a hair barber that stands for fast and reliability will earn more than its competitors without such a reputation.
Conclusion
A good brand can add greatly to a startup’s success. However, creating the best brand is a difficult task for startup business. But as startup’s began to grasp the importance of branding, the key question begging for answers is what are the eight simple cardinal pillars of branding to build a strong and a big brand from the scratch.
Mali Albert Shiebila is a resourceful professional with expertise in marketing and accounting. He holds CA in accounting and B.Sc. in Marketing and since graduation, he worked with impact driven organisations and is passionate about supporting the growth of small businesses using unique marketing strategies as a tool. He writes about relevant marketing and business topics and pieces.
Email: malialbertking@gmail.com/malialbert@yahoo.com
