Brand building has become a multi-million dollar industry across the globe, and general interest in branding continues to grow.
Opinion: Thembe Khumalo
According to Brand Africa, the continent’s authority on branding, the five most admired brands in Africa are Samsung, Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Apple; all global brands and none of them home-grown.
This bears testament to the widespread influence of these brands.
We talk about branding with the assumption that everyone knows what it is and what it means.
But ask any three brand managers for a definition and you will probably get six different ones.
A useful starting point is to go back in history and examine the origins of branding, which involved cattle ranchers searing their personal mark on the skin or flesh of their livestock, to indicate ownership.
This ensured that an indelible mark was left on the beast, and provided a distinction between cattle belonging to a particular farmer and others.
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In modern-day terms, that searing process is done by implementing tools and processes that help us to create emotional bonds between customers and products.
Often, when we think of branding, we think of a logo; and that’s understandable, because a logo is a very important part of a brand – it is the visual representation of what your business stands for; the products you sell, the services you offer, or the philosophy you practice.
But it isn’t your brand — your brand is the total experience of your product or service, which includes your history, your location, your after-sales service, and the ease with which customers can find you and do business with you.
The visual brand enables identification and differentiation — it helps people to identify your product and ensures that your product is different from all others with a similar value proposition.
For companies to create an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of their consumers, they need to make an emotional connection.
Once a customer is hooked emotionally, it will be very difficult to persuade him to move to a competitor.
Sometimes a brand can be described as the basket of benefits, which are associated with a particular product and communicated through consistent visual representation; and branding is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from others.
It extends to crafting the communications and activities that will establish and develop those emotional bonds — the customer experience. It is that peculiar combination of attributes that delivers a set of benefits (through a product or service) that meets the needs of a consumer.
The brand includes not just the name, logo or packaging that establishes the brand identity — it encompasses the entire brand experience, which results in a relationship with the brand.
Developing a comprehensive brand strategy is one of the best ways to set up your business for success.
Without a strategy, we have no direction for our marketing and communication efforts, and we will continue to spend money on efforts that, though sound in isolation, are fragmented and ultimately wasteful compared to the value we could derive from a cohesive coordinated approach.
When developing a brand strategy, it is important to have a sound understanding of the entire business.
Ultimately, every effort and expenditure must be justifiable, and a strategy should ensure minimal loss or duplication in your marketing expenditure.
A well-executed branding strategy ensures that your brand makes an effective contribution to profitability through increased revenue, improved distribution and growth through new products or increased sales.
That delivers value for shareholders, and makes it easier to attract investment for additional growth.
One of the most important elements of your branding strategy is the product or company’s unique selling proposition (USP). Without a viable USP, there is no brand, only products.
And without a brand, we cannot cause customers to make purchasing decisions that favour us.
Proper brand strategy allows for strong identity, and differentiation, as well as consistent execution.
It provides guidelines for everyone, who produces any communication on our behalf, ensuring protection for the investment we make in any marketing or communication activity.
Customers will continue to buy from companies they trust, so it is important to continually reinforce the brand values that are important to them.
Brands serve as a focus for customer loyalty and develop into assets, which ensure future demand, hence, future income.
This is very difficult to achieve without a solid brand strategy. When you want to introduce a new product or a product extension, a strong brand will serve you well and save you money.
It becomes easy to introduce new products that carry the same branding.
The new product could be a range extension — a different size, colour or version of an existing product.
In the minds of customers, a new product will have the same qualities, as an existing range because of its association with an existing brand.
A strong brand enables us to leverage the investment we’ve already made for the benefit of the product extensions.
Good branding also enables us to strengthen our presence in retail outlets. Retailers feel confident in stocking a product with a strong brand, because they know there is high consumer demand for that product.
In turn, consumers develop a clear perception of the performance, benefits and quality of our products. A good brand strategy will help us sell into retailers and build retail sales by stimulating demand.
Finally, a strong brand strategy will help us build long-term relationships with our customers and consumers.
Good branding provides the confidence that the brand will continue to meet their expectations, minimising customers’ risk in purchasing our product.
Thembe Khumalo is a brand-builder, storyteller and social entrepreneur. Find out more on www.thembekhumalo.com or follow her social media accounts @thembekhumalo
