BRANDS AND BRANDING (WHO AND HOW)
Try this: Coca cola, Vaseline, Nestle, Nelson Mandela, Cadbury, Pepsi, Kanu Nwankwo, Nike, Varsace, David Beckham, Microsoft, Dell, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther-King Jnr, Austin Okocha, Samuel Eto, Ronaldinho, Philip Kotler, David Ogilvy, Al Ries, Bill Gates, TuFace Idibia, Globacom, Dangote, Guinness, Emeagwali.............
If you were to continue this list, i will get almost the same feeling from your contribution like you got from mine that notion of familiarity, householdness and some daily encounters. Actually,these are popular brands that have come to stay in most of our minds, lives & world...Obviously not every brand on that list is for everyone but, 80%?!
What if?
What if you are to think of a religious leader; mention a friend; choose an eatery; relocate to another city, state or country; pick a new phone; buy a car.........
Who comes to mind?
Which did you choose??
Why was it those 'whos' and 'whats' that readily occurred to you???
You will agree with me that your choices in that short exercise are not necessarily always the best but based on your perceptions at the time you made those choices, you could even argue they are unbeatable! But this is not necessarily always true. Hence the saying ”Perception is stronger than reality!”.
On brandturf and in the world of brands (which is our everyday world going the introductory list of common brands); we thrive on, live by, make choices, make mistakes fall and excel via perception. So you can relate it with the Jewish proverb ”as a man thinks so he is!”
In essence, an individual relates, respects, reacts to any object based on his view/mindset/perception of that object be it practically true or false: perceptions rules us in our rulings!
In as much as brands are built on values and deliverables, they are how ever propagated by positioning; a battle for the mind of those that matter to your failure or success as asserted by Al Rise and Jack Trout in their best seller – POSITIONING {www.ries.com}.
Therefore, it is about what you project a brand to be, how well and strong you project it and how your brand's projection are interpreted and understood by those around you in relation to your intent. In A B C, branding thrives on making publics (stakeholders) see it and feel it the way you want them to through strategic communications. see more on www.brandrepublic.com
Branding is therefore the aura of beliefs and expectations about a product, service, organization or person which makes it, him/her relevant and distinctive. It stretches strongly beyond the physical into the psychological – the emotions.
Brands and branding is therefore about paying conscious and sub-conscious attention to details of how the brand in question is being broadcast (projected) and understood (perceived) particularly by relevant person(s) and group(s) – publics/stakeholders!
So once again I welcome you, dear fellow in the world of human brands, product brands, service brands, organization brands, corporate brands, destination brands to brandturf where we discuss the rudiments of branding and partake in the sport-like activity of branding.
Expecting your comments
1 comment:
Just as we have in service delivery, there are three ways in which ones consumer could conceive one’s service, and these are: exciter, energiser, and basic.
Ordinarily, every customer feels a natural disposition towards a product that excites them than those that are seem as a basic requirement. The energiser is a level such that one may consider as necessary to make one change his mind of patronising another service provider. In simple terms, the absence of any of these in one
S service yet present in that of a competitor’s, determines what the perception of the customers would be.
One’s brand could be an enrager if one attempts to imitate some features that stands a competitor out and such imitation then has a negative effect on the customer. A good example is the case of Microsoft and a hypothetical company Misse. Microsoft is known for bundling quality features in one. If a competitor tries to imitate this but does it wrongly, the brand of such a firm runs a risk of being tarnished. However, if it maintains its basic features and it has some faults, this could be seen as not being devastating.
In sum, a firm should always monitor its brand from time to time. A feature that is an exciter today may gradually become a basic if other competitors measure up appropriately.
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