Brand as a promise…
Imagine yourself getting ready for a date. I guess you’ll never throw on sweatpants and a stained T-shirt, will you? Instead, you carefully pick out clothes that exhibit some confidence, and competence. Why do you have to do that? Exactly, you want to impress your counterpart by showing him/her how neat and reliable you are so that they can envision a future with you based on the values that you’re subtly communicating through your appearance. This is what we call ‘having a brand’.
“Do not think about your brand as merely a static logo labelled on your products, instead try to think about it as the expectation, the feeling that people may have the next time they see you.”
Thang Chu
A brand serves as a promise to your customers. Do not think about it as merely a static logo labeled on your products. Instead, I would recommend you think about your brand as the expectation that people have for your company the next time they see it. Now, let’s think about this. What would you expect to experience the next time you go to Disneyland? Is it a feeling of living in a magical world? Is it a feeling of entering a living storybook with costumed characters, and whimsical music? How can we expect to have this experience? Simply, because we’re talking about Disney! We’re talking about the promises that the name ‘Disney’ gives us. Disney forms our expectations by promising to give us the feeling of being in a magical world! That’s the power of a brand as a promise.
Brand as a differentiator…
“A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.”
American Marketing Association
Do you think having a brand can differentiate us from other competitors even though our products are ‘technically’ the same as theirs? To me, the answer is an absolute Yes. Why do some people prefer Coke and why do some prefer Pepsi when they taste almost the same? Why do more American people prefer Coke over Pepsi even though the blind taste test result shows the opposite? I guess most of us know the answer. That’s the power of the brand as a differentiator.
More than just identifying the maker, brands become shortcuts in our buying process nowadays. Past experiences and marketing build associations that let us quickly judge if a product aligns with our needs. Each brand tells us a distinctive story, and positions itself as a specific thing in our mind. Every single brand tries its best to win a word in our minds. It’s like we think of Volvo as the safest car manufacturer on earth, Google as the place to go to when searching for information, and Facebook as the place where we can share beautiful moments in life with others.
Why do we have to manage our brand? Here’s the art of brand management
“Branding is an act of managing and sustaining the congruence/ fit between brand’s identity and brand’s image.”
Thang Chu
The importance of having a brand leads us to a second term – ‘branding’. To me, brand management is an act of managing and sustaining the congruence/ fit between the brand’s identity and the brand’s image. Brand identity is what you want your brand to become. It can be a type of personality that your brand would have if it was a person. While brand’s image is what people perceive you at the end of the day. It is the result of what you’re doing with your marketing, your advertising, and your customer services.
What do I mean by ‘managing the fit between brand’s identity and brand’s image’? Let’s think about Coke. What does Coke represent? Happiness, togetherness, heritage, American tradition, etc. How can we know that? It is easy to answer this question, isn’t it? Since its inception, Coke has associated itself with moments of joy, celebration, and togetherness. The tagline “Open Happiness” captures this essence, or the iconic red and white logo, the classic glass bottle, and the “Original taste” messaging reinforce this authentic heritage. To me, Coke has done a great job in sustaining the congruence except for one time when its New Coke broke the rule and had to pay a heavy price for it. A careless change in your identity without educating and forming a new perception in your consumer’s mind can damage your brand and put it in danger of extinction (read the case more to understand the consequences of mismanaging the fit between your identity and what people perceive your brand).
I’m not going to tell you what you should do to manage the fit because I think I haven’t had enough expertise to do that. The only recommendation I can give you now is to sit back and think again about what you are doing for your brand and your customers. Do you truly understand why you’re doing what you’re doing? Have what you’re doing fully represented the type of person that you want your brand to become? Do you know exactly what your brand would be like if it was a person? Hopefully, all these questions may help you have a better understanding of what branding truly is and is not.
Sy Chu
As an analytical and creative marketing enthusiast skilled in customer analysis, content research and brand management, my passion is help businesses gain insights into their brand and marketing strategies to drive impactful outcome to their success.