I have found that a common error advertising agencies commit is equating brand strategy with brand messaging and marketing communication. While brand messaging is an important part of brand strategy, it misses many other potential components of brand strategy.
As a branding consultant, I am the beneficiary of branding being a high profile area of focus for organizations. We have been invited into hundreds of organizations to help them improve their brand awareness, positioning and perceptions. However, perhaps one out of every five times we are contacted, the primary problem is not a branding problem. Organizations often try to solve other problems with a new name, logo, tagline, “elevator speech,” or brand marketing campaign when the problem really lies elsewhere.
Yesterday, I was drawn in again by a street person’s story. It is not the first time. If the story is good enough, it tugs on your heartstrings.
While, as a marketer, I am always leery of being taken in by total fiction, at the same time, if the story is good enough, it doesn’t even matter if it is true. It has entertained me. I give the person some money.
Brand perceptions are much more often created by the product or service experience itself than from marketing communication. Marketing communication is much more effective in building brand awareness than it is in creating or changing brand perceptions. That is not to say that marketing communication cannot be used to help change perceptions, but it can’t do it alone and it can’t do it in the absence of real changes in the product or service experience. So, when a brand perception is negative and requires a change, that change is likely to include one or more of the following:
Many organizations looking to reposition their brands are reluctant to conduct the necessary customer research at the beginning of the brand repositioning process.
They will say, “We conduct ongoing customer satisfaction research,” or “We do product research quite frequently” or “We measured our brand’s equity five years ago” or “We talk with our customers all of the time.”
But, do they know which brands have the highest top-of-mind unaided awareness within the relevant product categories?
A business associate recently asked me what I mean when I say that brands can connect with people on a values level. Here are the examples that I shared with him to illustrate the concept.
“The strongest companies/brands often connect with their customers on a values level.”
Brands that stand for something connect with customers on an emotional level.
At least two universities are on to something big in their brand positioning: my alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and American University. Both focus on their students’ and prospective students’ aspirations.
Rensselaer chose the tagline, “why not change the world?SM” as its service mark in the late 1990s. The tagline reflects the university’s intention to market itself as a place where people can change the world through technological innovation. It uses as its proof points alumni who have invented life changing things – microprocessor, television, pocket calculator, email, etc.
Over the years, we have conducted brand equity measurement studies for hundreds of brands and over the years, we have also helped leadership teams position hundreds of brands. What is the number one quality that people look for in brands? – Trustworthiness. What is the number one quality that management teams want to build into their brands? – Trustworthiness.
A brand is nothing if not trustworthy. If your brand is not capable of consistently earning its customers’ trust over time, it is doomed to failure. A brand must be predictable. It must be dependable and reliable. It must deliver on its promises. It must be responsive to its customers’ requests. It must be transparent in its business practices. And it must not lie to its customers.
It is that simple. If your brand is not there, you have work to do. There is nothing more to say.
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