Nowadays, all products are branded, but what exactly is a brand and what is the true meaning of a brand? This article quickly sorts out the definition of brand and past and present lives, helps you better understand the brand, and shares a few views on how to do branding, hoping to help you.
What is a brand? What is the purpose of branding? How to do branding? All kinds of genres are chaotic, who do you believe? Tarrant sorted this out, taking you to look at the brand map, quickly understand the true meaning of the brand, understand the past and present life of the brand, establish brand thinking, and know how to start the brand.
First, what is a brand
The brand is derived from the Old Scandinavian word brandr, which means "burning" imprint.
The brand doctrine in the modern sense was officially proposed by David ▪ Ogilvy, the father of advertising, in 1950. The brand has developed to this day, which is only a hundred years old, but it has experienced rapid development.
Over the decades, the definition of a brand has been enriched:
Philip Kotler, the father of marketing, said that a brand is a symbol and a promise;
To Godfather David Ogilvy, the brand represents an image;
David Ike, the originator of brand equity, said that a brand is an asset;
The father of public relations, Edward Bernays, believes that brands represent a "lifestyle";
Trout, the founder of positioning theory, said that brands are consumers' mental resources, and brands must seize consumers' mental resources and become representatives of a certain category...
"A Brief History of Brand Thought" Lu Taihong In summary, a brand can be defined as follows:
A brand is an asset, a corporate asset, and this asset exists in the minds of customers and potential customers.
The value of brands is often undervalued. Good brand equity can bring attention to the company, gain trust, increase sales, increase premium, and reduce risk.
This picture on the screen vividly tells us how the brand is shaped.
On the left is customer perception, and on the right is the company's product, marketing and culture.
The more touchpoints a customer has with the company, the more comprehensive the understanding of the business.
Conversely, the better each touchpoint between a company and a customer, the higher the customer's evaluation of the company, and the stronger the company's brand.
In the following section, we look at the 70-year history of the brand.
You can find that every step of brand development is the continuous expansion and optimization of brand touchpoints.
Second, the history of brand development
The emergence of brands, first of all, comes from the inevitability of competition, which is the uniqueness of product touchpoints.
Let's look at the bottom layer. Branding starts with differentiation.
At the earliest, because of the expansion of the market scale, there were more goods, and producers began to mark their goods in order to allow consumers to distinguish different goods of the same category in the market.
For example, Procter & Gamble named a soap ivory soap to distinguish it from other bulk soaps at that time. We used to have that kind of bulk rice noodle oil soy sauce vinegar, and then we had Haitian soy sauce, Arowana oil, which is a truth.
The P&G ivory soap logo is still in use today
Later, in order to prevent counterfeit and shoddy products, in order to protect their own patents, trademarks and patents began to rise. Trademarks and patents are an important legal basis for brand protection.
The most famous example is Levi's application for patent protection for jeans. At the time of the gold rush in the United States, a merchant named Levi sewed hard-wearing jeans out of denim, which was popular with gold prospectors, and his friend Davis Tailor found that studs on his trousers made them stronger.
To prevent piracy, Davis and Levi patented the invention in 1873 and co-founded the Levi Company.
The anchor line of the Levi's logo
After World War II, the global market gradually formed, and the establishment of transnational brands and global brands helped business expansion under different political and cultural systems. For example, Coca-Cola, Sony, Samsung, all began to use brand tools.
Sony's story is particularly worth mentioning. At that time, in order to enter the US market, Bulova came to the door and said that it wanted to purchase 100,000 Sony products, on the condition that it could not label Sony's brand.
You know, the order amount of 100,000 units is higher than Sony's total capital at that time. But the then Sony CEO, Akio Morita, whom Jobs called an idol, defended the board of directors, rejected the order, and chose his own brand to enter the United States.
He later told Steve Jobs, who came to consult him, that it was a good business decision in his career.
《Morita Akio Jii》
After that, channel distributors also began to pay attention to establishing their own channel brands, so that they could negotiate with manufacturers and obtain higher profits and discourse power.
For example, the rise of Wal-Mart, Freshippo, Gome Suning and other store brands, Gome electrical appliances and Gree air conditioners have had contradictions, and Gome even blocked Gree in stores.
In addition to downstream channel brands, upstream supply chain companies, that is, toB companies, have also begun to have brand awareness, so Intel and Qualcomm have emerged. These supply chain brands are also known as factor brands.
The most well-known is Intel's advertising, which has successfully shaped its own element brand image, and other lamps have become classics.
That with the spread of the Internet, creating a comprehensive impact has become the desire of all businesses. Apple and Huawei are doing all-factor brands, unifying supply chain and channel brands as a whole brand.
From the history of brand development, it can be seen that the touchpoints of the brand are constantly extending from the appearance image, to legal protection, to the channel and supply chain.
At the same time, the brand is very powerful to improve the commercial competitiveness of enterprises, otherwise it is impossible for the upstream, midstream and downstream to rush to do the brand.
Third, how to do branding
After knowing what the brand is and how it came to be, let's take a look at how to make a brand.
Nowadays, there are many ways to do branding, but which one is reliable?
First of all, we can't look at brands in isolation.
The brand is not a point, but a hub, which plays a role in connecting the upper and lower levels.
Let's look at this picture. We are ultimately able to position our brand through market insights, customer segmentation and target customer selection. Then through the 4P of products, prices, channels, and promotions, brand building is realized.
To put it simply, to be a brand is to be clearly positioned and to do what you say.
First find your own advantages, give customers a clear and stable expectation and commitment (positioning), and then, on the one hand, use products, prices, channels and other capabilities to fulfill this commitment (capacity support).
On the one hand, with brand promotion, the promise is to reach the customer's mind (brand promotion).
Through "brand promotion + capability support", we will continue to promote the brand flywheel and achieve the growth of brand equity.
Secondly, how can we do what we say? Let's use the model of the brand house to concretize it (see the figure below for details).
First of all, the roof must be brand positioning, this is the top design.
How to position the brand?
As mentioned briefly, it is market insights, customer segmentation and target customer selection.
In addition to this perspective, two perspectives of enterprise and competition can also be added.
For example, the company's mission, vision, values, and the industry's future unique value can be put into the framework of brand positioning.
With the brand positioning of this roof, there must be a foundation. The foundation is the 4P, products, prices, channels and promotions.
The relationship between them is, in plain language: at this "price", sell this "product" in this "venue", then let's start "shouting"!
Small clarification: the promotion in the 4P can be figuratively understood as "shouting": using a set of combined tools and methods to shout.
The current combined tool is professionally called IMC, Integrated Marketing Communication, that is, integrated marketing communication.
Integrated marketing communication is the integration of traditional advertising, digital marketing, public relations and sales promotion (Sales Promotion) these four types of communication tools, they play different functions at different stages of customers' purchase decisions.
"Minimalist Marketing" Hu Chao
That promotion P, in fact, is also a part of the brand communication system, is a very important part of marketing, so we are talking about this piece of special list.
Well, in addition to the support of 4P, the brand also needs to have a management system, which is also the foundation. The purpose of management is so that the 4P does not deviate from the positioning and can always focus on the positioning point.
Finally, with the foundation to do, we still have to talk and pass.
This piece can be divided into brand identity and communication.
Brand identity is to make a difference, so that customers can remember us at a glance; Brand communication is to do influence, continue to speak, let customers remember more firmly, have a deeper impression, and will not forget us.
In short, from this brand house, plus the marketing map just now, we can clearly see what the entire brand system is and what kind of tools can be used, which is convenient for us to think about how to do brand in our own work.
Finally, to sum up: brand is the most important asset of a company, it exists in the mind of customers, but it is in the hands of brand owners.
As long as you do a good job of positioning, and focus on brand positioning, continue to do what you say, and use "ability support + brand promotion" to promote the brand flywheel, continue to move forward, and let the brand continue to create higher value.
This article was originally published by @Tarrant on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited
The title image is from Unsplash and is based on the CC0 license
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