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What Makes A Brand Successful?
Posted By: celiaring* on 11/4/2004 10:51 AM (CST) 250 Points
What is a brand and what makes a brand successful?

Posted by: thinkmor Accepted Answer
11/4/2004 12:06 PM (CST)
Hi Celia

There are many definitions of a brand but I use:

A Brand is a collection of emotional and functional attributes that stongly influence purchase.

A brand's value lives inside consumers minds and help them identify products/services that promise specific benefits. These can be peformance, quality, price, status, purpose etc.

Marketers can build extra value into their brands to help differentiate their products/service from competitors.

How do brands become successful?

To become a successful 'Brand' you need high awareness and access to your target audience to get trial and purchase and hopefully repeat purchases by delivering superior value. This is assuming your brand product/service has a sustainable market and fulfills consumer needs.

Key factors for Brands to succeed include:

Superior consumer value
Differentiation
Marketing & Sales support
Low-cost operation
Superior buyer value
Economically viable

This is very easy to state by very difficult to achieve normally but is extremely difficult in todays competitive environment.

Hope this helps.

Zahid Adil
 
Posted by: SteveByrneBranding Accepted Answer
11/4/2004 2:23 PM (CST)
Hi Celia,

I like Zahid's response. Here are my thoughts --

What is a brand?

A brand is like a person, an individual with an identity and personality. It can actually be a person Kobe, Madonna, but most often it’s a thing – product, service or anything that’s in the media.

See article:
http://www.schraff.com/adv/helpdesk/brand_is.php

What makes a brand successful?

By measurement it’s most often financial. For example, Coca Cola is ranked as the number one brand based on brand equity (dollars).

Hope this helps,

- Steve
 
Posted by: mac504 Accepted Answer
11/4/2004 3:07 PM (CST)
A brand seperates you from the crowd.

A brand is successful when a people prefer to buy your brand over the competition.When they are willing to go out of their way to buy your brand for higher prices compared to the competition.
 
Posted by: mgoodman Accepted Answer
11/4/2004 10:32 PM (CST)
A brand is a promise -- a promise that you'll deliver the same important benefits the same way, consistently, time after time; and that you'll deliver high perceived value to your target audience every time they buy or use the brand.

What makes a brand successful is keeping the promise so that customers will remain loyal. It involves much more than a name, a logo, and slick marketing. It really encompasses every customer contact point. The total brand experience has to work.

I don't think this is really much different from Zahil's response, but it may give you another way to think about it.
 
Posted by: mgoodman Member Response
11/4/2004 10:35 PM (CST)
P.S. Sorry about the typo in Zahid's name (above). I hit the "Update and Finish" button too quickly. It doesn't mean his response is any less correct!
 
Posted by: SRyan ;] Accepted Answer
11/4/2004 10:37 PM (CST)
You really need to read some of the top-notch articles that have been published on MarketingProfs.

If you're a basic member, try these:
A brand is the sum of all touchpoints
Bootstrap branding
The brand IS the strategy
The three Cs of branding


If you're a premium member, look at this:
Just what is a brand, anyway?

There's a lot more available. You can click on the Articles link at the top of this page, then drill down to the Branding category and the Archives section.
 
Posted by: wilreynolds* Accepted Answer
11/5/2004 3:09 AM (CST)
Yuck! I am not a brand guy, never have been never will be, but I do know this...for most businesses your brand is not reflected in billboards and economic feasibility, and studies..to me branding is about 2 things:
1) delivering on a promise
and
2) delivering on a promise

So many branding folks put $$ into advertising and brand building/awareness, but not a dime is spent on the foot soldiers. Many brands do a good job on getting the message to the customer, where they often fail is in getting the customer service reps, field reps, and receptionists to prove that the branding campaign is...TRUE.

To me brand building is as much about traditional branding as it is about making sure that your company delivers on its promises at all customer touch points.
 
Posted by: Deremiah *CPE Accepted Answer
11/5/2004 7:29 AM (CST)
celiaring,

WHAT IS A BRAND???

I don't know much about branding
it's true I can't deny,
but the branding question has an answer
and hears the reason why...

A BRAND is a simple, identifiable, distinctly unforgettable mark that cowboys used to burn into the flesh of their cattle so you would never forget and you would always remember "listen parnter: that there heard of them cows belongs to me and don't you ever for-get-it".

In the past branding like what the cowboys used was first a visible visual sign...now a days great marketing geniuses brand using every imaginable sense they can think of from music to art and aromas to colorful frangrances...I like branding...I mean I LOVE BRANDING!!!!!!!

It makes me feel better Quicker, look gooder than everyone else in my pf flyers as I run faster and jump higher than Michael Jordan into my robust hummer with my woofers and speakers bumpin my junk in the trunk cause I'm a hunk attracting all the good looking girls as I make all wanna be jealous guys wanna be a pretty lip chapstick wearing, sexy gillette strokin' my face till it's smoother than a babies bottom, you know I got'em hankering for a hunk of my Mrs. Smith's mouth watering Apple pie and that's why I love marketing because it makes us all want to pull out our Guci wallets and throw down on the table the card that every slave calls "MASTER card" or our VISA to the future card.

"Oh...I'm sorry I got a little carried away...Well anyway that's what I love about Branding. Now as I was saying...

WHAT MAKES A BRAND SUCCESSFUL???
Externally when everyone remembers your product or service and heralds it as the product or service to use, purchase, or exalt more angelically in all the earth over all other products and services. When you dominate the market place like Kings marshalled their troops to expand their territories all over the world. Or like the Roman empire was known so that it is said of you like them that all roads lead to Rome that is when you know your brand is successful. Is there anything else I can do for you?

Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE (Customer Passion Evangelist)
 
Posted by: lekh* Accepted Answer
11/9/2004 10:36 PM (CST)
hi ..
my simple definition of brands is
" A BRAND IS SOMETHING WHICH SPEAKS FOR ITSELF,
AND THAT CAN INTURN SELL ITSELF",

brand is created over the period of time,

e.g IF we plant an seed of an apple now , It will begin to bear fruit after a certain period of time ,

A brand too is having a similar charactersitics

take an e.g ...while shopping in a super store , we pick up lot many branded items ,without wasting a minute, thats one of the best aspect of brand.

any suggestion or coomments are welcome

hope this helps ..

regards ..san
 
Posted by: Brainiac* Accepted Answer
11/20/2004 6:02 AM (CST)
Hi celiarig,
what makes a brand successful? geez, if there was one straight structured answer for this question, most marketing consultants would be out of a job. But here is one great link that will definitely help you out and hopefully answer all your questions about brands and branding:
http://www.raynet.mcmail.com/product/brandfaq.shtml

I hope this helps, Do let me know if you need anything.
Au revoir.
 
Posted by: Colleen Sharen* Accepted Answer
11/26/2004 7:53 PM (CST)
Just read an interesting article from CMO magazine, by Douglas Holt, called What is an iconic brand? http://www.cmomagazine.com/read/110104/iconic-brand.html

Holt believes that brands are built from the stories and experiences that people have with their interactions with a brand. He also believes that there is a mythic element to truly iconic brands. (Kind of Joseph Campbell meets David Aaker).

So, if you believe Holt, a brand is the sum of all of the experiences and interactions everyone has with the brand, from its design, packaging right through to the people who sell it and provide the service for it, through to the people who tell others about their great brand experience (or their lousy experience).

Kind of interesting that branding may amount to telling stories.... my favourite thing to do as a kid.
 
Posted by: bob* Accepted Answer
11/27/2004 10:48 AM (CST)
Good morning,
Great question! There are many answers as shown by the responses you have gotten thus far.

Here's my answer:
A brand is a product or service that has significant identity. The ideal brand becomes a household name, like Coke, Mastercard, etc. Before a brand can be successful in todays marketplace, it must have established a life of it's own.

As for making a brand sucessful, the best way I know to accomplish this is to SAMPLE IT. Nothing beats sampling where consumers can actually "try" and if the brand lives up to the expectations of the consumer, then it's purchased. Once that happens, the consumer is aware of the brand, and once again, if the brand continues to deliver what consumers want, it lives, if not, it's could be buried within a short time. There is to much competition in todays world for something to stay out there if it hasn't been accepted. Without branding, your product or service will fall quickly, no matter how much money you spend to promote it. Branding is best established by "trial" not advertising.

Thanks for the opportunity to answer this interesting question.
b_perlstein
 
Posted by: Val (Moderator)* Moderator Response
11/27/2004 10:42 PM (CST)
Hello all. I am closing this question, since its more than 10 days old. We do this to make sure members' contributions are rewarded in a timely manner and to improve the visibility of newer questions.

Thanks, so much, for participating!

Val (Moderator)
 


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