Brand Profiling & Positioning
:: WHY BRAND ?
A business without customers in no longer a business. Branding is about winning and keeping customers. It is about influencing choice.
The best brands create a special relationship with customers, based on intangible qualities that evoke strong emotional responses.
A strong brand makes it clear to both you and your customer what you have to offer and why that matters to them.
Branding involves a wide range of aspects but most importantly your brand is the cornerstone or foundation of your business. You start with your brand promise and it leads and drives your business to ensure an ongoing successful financial return.
A great brand helps you build a powerful and enduring relationship with your customer and provides a solid basis for a successful business. It ensures that everything you do and say supports that relationship and encourages choice. It's about being remarkable, talked about, different, distinctive and memorable to ensure your message is successfully diffused throughout the market place and ultimately increases profitable sales.
The key reasons for branding a product or service properly are:
• To create memorable distinction, difference and convey value
• To create consumer recognition and trust
• To build brand loyalty
• To increase sales and profitability
• Creates sustainable competitive advantage
• Reduce margin erosion and commoditization
• Leverage new product introductions
• Create a valuable IP asset when seeking investment or selling a business
:: SHOULD I BRAND ?
Every business has a brand, strong or weak. In developing either a new brand or reassessing an established brand it's important to develop a thorough understanding of the business presently and the vision for the business into the future, in order to generate an appropriate brand profile for that business.
You should tackle your brand whether you have a new business getting established or if you have difficulty in winning or keeping customers (or even attracting their attention in the first place).
Some of the typical reasons why clients come to us about their brand design are:
• they have a great product or service but struggle to say what makes them different.
• being dragged into a price war (where only the one with the deepest pockets can win).
• others have a great relationship with their customers and want to keep it that way by carefully nurturing their brand through it’s ongoing communications with their customers.
• loosing business to the competition.
This is where branding really comes into its own. A great brand helps you stand out in your market and stand up to the competition.
:: WHAT IS A BRAND PROFILE ?
A brand is best understood as representing the relationship between a business and it's customers, it's an experience or emotional connection. It's the reason why a person buys one product instead of another i.e. what makes your brand 1st choice.
People relate with other people (not with systems or organisations) and great businesses typically enjoy relationships with their clients that are experienced at both personal & professional levels. It's what their customers remember and say about them. It's what leads to lasting impressions, preferences and performance.
In short brands are the most effective way of cutting through the noise to reach people's hearts and minds. The purpose of a brand profile is to describe that narrative space (or story) between a business and it's customers and to outline the role that the brand plays in that connection to make it real, tangible, measurable and unforgettable.
The objectives for a brand model or profile within a business are to develop the brand road map which provides:
- Strategic direction for the marketing activities
- Distinction within the business's market
- Inspiration for the creative delivery of the marketing messages
The challenge is to determine a position, role, personality and proposition for the business brand model that will enable proprietors/management to develop and play to their strengths and make that emotive connection with their customers. Their brand then speaks of the relationship between them and their customers and what they will do and say to build on it.
:: DELIVERABLES
A brand profile or model gives the following:
1) A clear understanding and expression of what the business offers, how the business delivers it and what it means for their customers, partners & key audiences i.e. the strengths of the brand, how to play to them and where to position the brand in the territories where the business operates.
2) Key strategic do’s & don’ts for brand behaviour and communications that will enable the planning of brand activities, launches and communications congruent with core brand signature/character as part of the business development strategy.
3) A basis on which to design and develop the brand identity and all the visual communication and creative requirements, such as brand name, brand identity, advertising, brand packaging, collateral and website etc.
:: KEY BENEFITS
Typically a client can expect the following benefits from working with us:
4) A clear sense of where they stand in their markets and what works best for their brand, particularly in terms of how to define, develop and grow their business, and describe what it does in a way that makes sense for their customers and partners.
5) A distinctive framework to enable them to establish a strategic and defendable positioning in the market(s) where they operate.
6) A robust and objective basis for planning the management and design of activities required to achieve brand/business objectives.
:: WHAT IS BRAND POSITIONING ?
Positioning focuses on the perceptions of the prospect not on the reality of the brand. To succeed in our over-communicated society, a company must create a "position" for their brand, be it product or service, in the prospect's mind. A position that takes into consideration not only its own strength and weaknesses, but those of its competitors as well.
Positioning is not what you do to the product; it’s what you do in the mind of the prospect. In a rapidly changing world of endless choice positioning is how you clearly differentiate your brand in the mind of your customer to assist choice. Positioning is used to compensate for the endless information overload experienced by consumers in their daily lives by using an oversimplified message to cut through the clutter and get into the mind. In essence, it's the nuts and bolts of the brand upon which the brand message or story is built. Some of the most powerful brands stand for simple but extraordinary ideas e.g. FedEx - parcel delivery, Google - internet search, Red Bull - energy drink, Volvo - safety, Tiffanys - expensive luxury, Wal Mart - cheap, Ballygowan - water.
We select our brands based on their position in our minds and whether they match how we feel about ourselves. Brands help define who we are. Brands that try to attract everyone end up appealing to no one and when a brand no longer stands for something clearly identifiable, it loses its power. Therefore positioning must be focussed in it's objectives, on it's target market and what meets their specific needs to be successful.
:: WHAT MAKES UP A BRAND ?
Branding is made up of tangibles and intangibles. The tangible aspects are the functional characteristics of a brand, the unique and identifiable symbol, association, name or trademark which differentiates competing products or services e.g. Persona Design brand logo.
A logo in itself is not and never will be a brand. It is simply an icon that indicates it's existence, a system used to lend a clear and consistent voice for your product or service. It doesn't change who you are; it just amplifies how you are perceived by others. Your identity in conjunction with your brand help people understand who you are and what you offer.
The intangibles aspects, arguably as important or in some cases more important, are the emotional characteristics of a brand which are the sum of an organisation’s attributes including it’s; name, history, reputation, personality, culture, full sensory customer interaction or experience, packaging and advertising, in short all forms of communication.
Branding is like a living entity which means all touch points, both physical or the more elusive sensory or cultural experience, must be congruent with core brand values and positioning. Being a familiar name takes you miles closer to closing a sale. People like to buy from companies they've heard of. They make decisions, rational and irrational, based on emotional connections. They are the critical wild card in the transaction process. Do they like somebody or not in order to do business with them or buy from them, assuming the product meets the basic prerequisites of functionality, market need, quality and service. These intangibles can never be under estimated and should be carefully managed and nurtured.
Contradictory as it may seem branding is both an art and a science, and therein lies the challenge. Branding is a complex process. It’s not just a logo, advertising, websites, brochures or packaging. It’s stories that spread, it’s editorial content, it’s high quality content blogs, it’s company seminars or trade show presence, it's clever direct mail communications and point of sale. It's creating movements, using engaging humour or emotion and surprising people, it’s the brand ambassadors of your company i.e. your management team and staff and how they dress, communicate and represent your brand, it even includes vocal intonation, interactions and facial expressions.
When someone stands up in front of a crowd at a political rally, in a seminar or in a church, they’re marketing their brand. Politicians and celebrities market their brand offering every time they speak up at a press conference or in an interview. Clever branding, delivers consistently across all communication channels, amplifies brand personality, reinforces confidence and converts clients and customers into loyal advocates while building even stronger emotional connectivity every day.
:: BRAND PROFILING & POSITIONING OBJECTIVES
Taking a business's current position as a starting point, we can survey the market-space where they plan to do business and identify a position and approach to business that will stand out from the competition now and into the future.
Our role is to guide the proprietor/management team in their choice of position; theirs is to direct the brand, manage business growth and protect this invaluable asset by taking actions that carefully match their position and offer with what their customers want and need.
A well-managed and well-protected brand quickly becomes the most valuable intellectual property asset in a business and can add dramatically to the commercial value of the business when you sell or seek further investment in it.
There are typically five key initial aspects that should be reviewed;
1) Research the business's current market, competitors, trends and NPD opportunities
2) Develop the brand profile, model and position
3) Develop the communications strategy
4) Develop the brand identity
5) Develop the appropriate brand marketing collateral (packaging, print collateral, website, online/offline promotional campaigns, advertising etc.)
At the end of the process proprietors/management should have a much clearer sense of where they stand in their markets and what works best for their brand, particularly in terms of how to define, develop and grow their market and ultimately generate a profitable return consistently while sustaining a competitive edge.
If you'd like to know more we'd be delighted to talk with you T: +353 1 8322724
