Know-How Exchange : Branding

Dear Justin,

What you're talking about here isn't branding.

Branding, in the real sense of the word takes place in people's
heads often AFTER they buy something, or BEFORE they are fulfilled in some way by the goods, services, or products you
are offering.

How do others do it?

Find an unmet need. Find a solution to that need. Figure out who is buying. Create a better service or product. Offer your new product with superior marketing, astonishing benefits, and outstanding value.

Make customers fall in love with you. Pamper them. Turn them into evangelists on your behalf. Their word of mouth marketing on your behalf creates social proof.

Social proof equates to people power: when you are voted in by the people, you can do no wrong. BUT ... if you're dumb enough to break this rule, you open yourself up to a world of economic pain.

Possibly even ruin.

To prevent this ever happening, give your customers reason upon reason to carry on doing business with you. This means offering more, and even better reasons to REMAIN in love with you.

If all this sounds like work, that's because it IS work. But that's the kicker. How badly do you want it?

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Gary's right. Branding is the implementation of marketing strategy. And strategy comes from carefully examining a competitive marketing segment to understand what the marketplace is willing to give up, where the best opportunity resides.

The process is research, refine, reset objectives, research some more, always with a creative eye to what is truly innovative, discovering what will ultimately differentiate your concept from what already exists.

hope this helps,

Steve

Here is the process I use, if I understand your question correctly:

1. Discover (through whatever research you can afford. Qualitative, quantitative, whatever. Get our of your own company's skin and into the targt market's head.)

2. Define. This is where you set strategy. I like to lay out 2-3 alternatives for consideration, and treat them like a "fork in the road" decision (which is usually the case).

3. Design. This is not just the graphic design of your identity system, but the design of everything you'll do organizationally to deliver on your unique promise of value.

4. Deliver. This is where you organize and orchestrate everything so it's aligned with your unique brand position. Your people, products, processes, everything.

Remember, brand is as brand does. It's not cosmetics. People buy 3 things from a supplier: their product (or service), confidence, and trust. Your brand unites all 3.

Kevin Renner
B2B Market Strategies

Kevin's process is flawed in one aspect: Where do you research your solution to make sure it resonates with the target audience?

Gary and Steve have the right idea. The branding process is based more on your ability to deliver a meaningful solution to customers' perceived needs/problems than on any words or pictures you might choose to throw at them. Branding is in THEIR minds, not in your office.

And as for the process of creating a positioning, it's part art and part science. Since most brands are only positioned once (when they're born), most marketers don't get many opportunities to really work on a positioning project. (Like branding, positioning is in the consumers' minds ... but you get one shot at creating the intended positioning, when a brand is new.)

And the "art" part of positioning is something you learn after doing it several times. It's not a process per se. (What was Picasso's process for making a great painting?) That's why smart marketers hire outside experts when they have a positioning project. You need someone who has been through it multiple times to get it right, and most marketers -- no matter how talented -- just haven't tackled positioning projects many times.

And don't confuse positioning with "re-positioning." They are quite different ... because a re-positioned brand had another positioning before, and you need to deal with that before you can do a decent job of "re-positioning."