Author: Chen Rong
The competition between enterprises is more manifested as the competition of brands. Forging core capabilities, creating a well-known, strong and lasting brand will become a weapon of competition, is the need to build a world-class enterprise, but also the pursuit of excellence in the process, worthy of every enterprise to pay for.
The service of tourism enterprises must eventually land on tourists, and the role of brands is self-evident.
How to increase awareness through branding and have a loyal consumer group? How to continuously improve the brand strength and form a strong and lasting brand? How to view the input-output benefits of brands? How to effectively communicate and use the power of brand to open the door to future success? How to continuously improve the ability of brand management? How to promote the construction of world-class enterprises through branding? These issues require in-depth reflection.
There are many well-known brands in tourism enterprises, such as some international hotel groups, which attach great importance to brand building, and brands have also brought them very good revenue and market value. However, more tourism enterprises have both survival worries and development difficulties, and their understanding and attention to brands are not enough, and it is difficult to achieve high added value of products and services.
For tourism companies, it is necessary to re-examine the brand, brand strategy and brand building, and truly use the brand as a weapon of competition. After the epidemic, more distinctive brand tourism enterprises are needed to stand in the market, so as to further optimize the structure of the tourism industry and promote the high-quality development of the tourism industry.
1. Brand: an asset with strategic value
With the development of the economy, consumers pay more and more attention to the quality of products and services, and more and more pursue brands; Enterprises are also constantly building brands, playing a leading role in brand building, and brand building has also risen from the tactical level to the strategic level.
The concept of brand as an asset is becoming increasingly popular, even though the asset is not on the balance sheet, just like human capital. There is no doubt that brands are increasingly becoming an important asset of the company, and their strategic value to the enterprise is more prominent.
Brand is the common pursuit of producers and consumers, the direction of supply and demand structure upgrading, and an important embodiment of the comprehensive competitiveness of enterprises and even the country. To strengthen brand building, one of the goals is to enrich and deepen the long-term relationship with consumers as much as possible, further enhance the loyalty of each consumer group, thereby improving the competitiveness and financial performance of enterprises, and promoting the construction of world-class enterprises.
The competition between enterprises ultimately falls on the competition of brands to a large extent. Developing the brand economy and comprehensively improving the many elements affecting the development of the brand is conducive to promoting the integrity of enterprises, strengthening the social responsibilities of enterprise environmental protection, resource conservation, public welfare charity, and helping rural revitalization, achieving more sustainable and higher quality development, promoting industrial structure optimization, promoting economic transformation and upgrading, better meeting people's higher level of material and cultural needs, and also helping to enhance the image of the country.
This is the background and significance of the establishment of the "China Brand Day" at the national level since 2017.
According to relevant research, a good brand can not only increase the visibility of the product, but also have an additional profit of 3-6%. If our tourism enterprises operate in good faith, provide quality services, become the clear stream of the market, and have their own brand-name products, it may bring additional benefits.
In general, brands have 3 characteristics:
- Personalization, that is, differentiation. It can be measured in four dimensions: significant, dynamic, seductive, and stable. Once the personality is established, it can bring positive or negative influences to the company over a long period of time, forming a degree of differentiation from other brands.
- Continuity. The brand should be consistent and continuously strengthened, and continuous is the key to a strong brand.
- Concise. Brands cannot be complex, but they need to be developed with a series of standards that are compatible with them.
Second, brand strategy: to serve the overall strategy and business strategy
Branding is a platform for future success and creating lasting value, so brand building is strategic, not a tactical tactic to stimulate sales.
Brand strategy belongs to the functional strategy, to serve the overall strategy and business strategy, behind the successful brand, there are corporate strategy and business strategy support, the three in the direction of consistency, consistency can be strong, in order to promote each other. The brand is the asset that drives the strategy and should become the starting point for the implementation of the strategy.
To formulate a brand strategy, we must first grasp the brand positioning, especially the brand positioning of group enterprises.
The author believes that there are three main levels and different emphases of group enterprise branding:
Group level: Because there are many subsidiaries, centralized unified coordination is needed to promote the brand building of the whole group. If the subsidiaries are allowed to develop in different directions, the brand will become increasingly blurred and shrink.
The focus of group brand positioning is two aspects: first, economic responsibility, for example, how to help the industry upgrade, how to reflect their own industrial value, user value, innovation value, etc. The second is social responsibility, such as how to help rural revitalization, promote common prosperity, how to help local economic development, and better solve the problem of mass employment.
——Business level: It is important to reflect the ability of enterprises in the industry, and should be the formulator of industry standards, the leader of industry capabilities, and become the object of peer learning and alignment.
——Product level: brand is the commitment of product value, service experience, product standards must be expressed through the brand, and then transmitted to the outside. Successful products translate into successful brands.
The brand strategy should be conducive to promoting the realization of the overall strategy of the group and providing a guarantee for the landing of the business strategy. The company's brand strategy should be integrated with the company's value, corporate culture, overall strategy, business strategy, solidarity, consistency, and perseverance, in order to achieve double the effect with half the effort.
The brand strategy should be advanced, more ambitious, and cannot stay in the stage of "basket selling". In fact, excessive attention to product attributes is a relatively common trap, because it focuses the brand's tactical and strategic management too much on product attributes and functional interests, and without a more advanced vision and mission, it cannot form psychological empathy.
For example, we see individual viral marketing advertisements, emphasizing more functions, and the results of repeated playback may be very effective for sales, but it is not easy for enterprises to go further after all.
The landing of brand strategy needs to spend money, and many companies analyze input and output from the short-term tactical level, hoping to increase immediate sales and profits, which is no longer appropriate for market leaders.
In fact, the landing of the brand strategy may reduce the company's earnings in the short term. The construction of brand equity needs to be continuously consolidated and strengthened, and the return is minimal in the short term. Therefore, we need to measure the impact and value of the brand from a longer-term perspective, which is already a strategic issue.
Whether or not we can maintain our strategic focus is a great test for the company's leadership.
Third, brand building: a systematic project
(1) We must have correct values
The so-called values are the concept of right and wrong. What is right and what is wrong must be clear in attitude, so as to resonate in people's hearts. What captures people's hearts are emotions, self-expression, and social interests. To learn to convey the right values through storytelling, open, pluralistic, inclusive, innovative, environmentally friendly values are more likely to impress people's hearts, this is the majestic power of culture.
When enterprises assume more social responsibilities, it is a good time to establish a brand, especially in response to the call of the state, and following the trend can play a multiplier effect with half the effort. For example, Wanda Group has helped Danzhai County in Guizhou Province, and through the development of cultural tourism projects represented by Danzhai Town, it has driven the comprehensive development of Danzhai, helped rural revitalization, and also promoted its own brand.
Platform-based tourism enterprises with leading technology should assume more social responsibilities and strive to form an "ecosystem" of symbiosis and common prosperity to help the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. We must not only see profits in our eyes, we must prevent monopoly, we must strictly protect privacy, and earnestly fulfill the mission and responsibility of the enterprise. We must bear in mind all mankind and put people first in order to establish a good brand image. Otherwise, the rich, influential and powerful technology companies will lose trust in people's worries, destroy the brand, and eventually destroy the enterprise.
Proper corporate behavior is the foundation of the brand.
(2) It is necessary to have characteristics
Characteristics should be based on the history and culture of each enterprise, based on the mission, vision and strategy of each enterprise, based on the characteristics of each enterprise, and based on the characteristics of each enterprise's products and services.
For example, some enterprises are characterized by the whole tourism industry chain, some enterprises are in the forefront of internationalization, some enterprises have a long history, some enterprises have done a good job in a specific market, and so on.
Find out the highlights of the enterprise, and continue to expand the highlights, become bright clusters, bright blocks, and you will receive better results. Concentrating resources, constantly focusing, pursuing the ultimate, and stopping at the highest good are the keys to forming characteristics.
(3) To be able to promote business development
Brands should be able to promote the development of the business and improve the competitiveness of the enterprise. Buying and selling an unknown product is only a transaction between the two parties, while the brand is the image of the company or product, a commitment that introduces trust into the relationship between the buyer and the seller, so as to achieve the extension and transformation from the product to the brand, from a successful product to a successful brand, which is a process of value enhancement.
Brands can also promote the integration of business, and related business work should be carried out around the brand. For example, if the customer sources of each business unit are inconsistent and there is a lack of synergy between them, the company can establish a unique position in a certain business area by launching a shared brand, thereby integrating the business, optimizing the organization and business processes, forming a unique feature that is different from competitors.
The communication of the brand is not for the sake of publicity, but ultimately on the promotion of the business. It is necessary to be results-oriented, conduct post-evaluation of inputs and outputs, and quantify the impact of brands on financial performance; It is necessary to combine brand promotion with product promotion in order to have a real name and to get continuous internal support.
(4) It is necessary to integrate inside and outside
Branding is for customers and consumers, which seems to be a process of external output, but in fact, brand is also very important internally. In order to achieve the continuous output of the brand from the inside out, it is necessary to integrate the corporate culture, employee morale, social responsibility, etc. with the company's brand.
If the cohesion of the enterprise to the employees is strong, the employees will work with the enterprise and play an active role in the communication process of the corporate brand and the product brand, on the contrary, the brand will not be actively and effectively disseminated.
Only when employees believe and are willing to develop the brand to various consumer touchpoints can the brand promise be realized and the brand equity-driven marketing model work. Employees really care, is the most important thing, to achieve the company's strategy has a very important role. The construction of a strong brand begins within the company, and it is necessary to reach understanding and support within the company, and then repair both inside and outside, in order to have good results.
(5) It is necessary to spread a good brand
To do a good job in brand communication, it is necessary to tell a good story, to be vivid and interesting, rather than preaching with a straight face, to convey the brand image of the enterprise in the silent way, and to present it in a form that everyone likes to hear, in order to cause empathy. Talking to oneself, or even imposing on others, not only can not impress others, but also makes consumers turn a blind eye, and even disgust.
To tell a good story, you also need to maintain the continuity of the theme, can not be today's theme, tomorrow's theme, lack of correlation and inheritance between each other, this phenomenon is more common, this kind of investment often does not receive good results.
There are three stages of brand communication, one is brand recognition, the second is brand penetration, and the third is brand leadership. The characteristic of the brand is that it requires consistency and continuous strengthening. Brand communication is an ongoing process, and only continuous can have power.
In order to facilitate the spread of the brand, there must also be a loud slogan. Good slogans generally do not exceed 12 words, which is easy to remember. At the same time, it is necessary to be able to empathize with consumers in order to resonate. We must have height and feelings, and we must not be empty and ignorant.
For example, China Tourism Group's "Your Journey, THE WHOLE JOURNEY" highlights the services of the whole industry chain. OCT's "Quality Life Creation home" and Ctrip's "Ctrip in hand, walk away" have their own characteristics.
(6) It is necessary to enhance capabilities
To improve the management ability of the brand, we must first have a team, which can appropriately introduce foreign aid at the beginning, learn from professional institutions, and request training support. It is necessary to combine self-centeredness with the introduction of foreign aid as soon as possible, achieve common growth, and cultivate our own professionals.
It is necessary to accelerate the construction of the brand information management system, strengthen the management and maintenance of the brand through information means, improve the quality of brand management through data analysis, and make the results of brand communication more visual.
For brand building, digitalization is a powerful ability to allow consumers to better participate, not just passively accept advertising, prompting consumers to believe in brands and change consumer behavior. Digital marketing can be more precise, more focused on the target market segment, reaching every consumer.
Brand management should also establish a rapid feedback and response mechanism, timely and properly handle various negative public opinions, and most importantly, fully authorize. The full authorization of tourism enterprises to front-line service personnel is conducive to resolving various contradictions and eliminating problems in the bud. Any bureaucracy will miss the fighter, especially in the context of self-media. Not being able to react quickly, it is easy to affect the brand.