What is 'brand' and why is it important?
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- Brand is the sum of all the ways a business shows up in the world, the experiences people have with it, and the perceptions people have of it.
- It’s not just advertising and promotion (the flashy stuff) that contribute to what people think of your brand; you’ve also got to consider price, place, product, packaging and proposition.
- Companies with strong brands just do better, making it easier to gain customer trust, loyalty, and protect against competition.
Brand is a broad term. Marketers use it in all sorts of ways, and it’s even been co-opted by your everyday person (like when you talk about your “personal brand”).
To put it simply, ‘brand’ is everything a person thinks about a brand – whether that’s factual elements, like its colours or logo or name, or more emotional feelings, like a sense of coolness, or a memory you have attached to it.
Take Nike: you may think about the iconic tick logo or the tagline “just do it”, but you might also recall getting your first pair of Nike shoes for Christmas after much begging from your parents because you saw your favourite athlete wearing them.
Essentially, if we were to give you a dictionary definition, Tracksuit style: brand is the sum of all the ways a business shows up in the world, the experiences people have with it, and the perceptions people have of it.
Tracksuit makes it easier for you to understand what people think of your brand and how it’s tracking over time.
Nike’s dashboard in Canada shows that pretty much everyone (96% of people in their category) is aware of their brand.
Building a picture of your brand 🖼️
Now let’s dig deeper. Understanding all the factors that make up ‘brand’ will give you valuable insight into how you can build a picture in someone’s mind over time. It’s not just advertising and promotion that contribute to what people think of your brand; you’ve also got to look at things like distribution, price point and quality.
Making sure these elements are consistent and memorable will help!
Here’s how Nike uses the 6Ps to build brand
Price: Nike has a relatively high price point in the sportswear market, which positions it as a high-quality premium brand with an air of exclusivity.
Place: You can find Nike’s products pretty much everywhere, thanks to a global network of shops, online stores and third-party retail outlets – this lends Nike’s reputation reliability. Nike will also collaborate with boutiques on limited-edition releases, which just adds to the layer of exclusivity.
Product and packaging: Consistent product quality and innovative materials (like Flyknit and Forward) builds trust with customers.
Proposition: Nike shapes its brand experience around its mission to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” and make it accessible to everyone.
Promotion: Nike reinforces its brand values of excellence, performance and inspiration every time they communicate through its infamous ‘Just Do It” campaigns and endorsements from athletes like Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and Christiano Ronaldo.
Though Nike is a great example of how to build brand, even a company as beloved as Nike isn't infallible from the consequences of not investing consistently in brand. Recently, Nike have made headlines for all the wrong reasons, going down a performance marketing-heavy route under the leadership of ex-CEO John Donahoe and eventually seeing a downturn in revenue.
So why is brand so important? 🤔
The easy answer: companies with strong brands just do better.
According to Kantar’s BrandZ initiative, “companies with strong brands consistently outperform on the S&P 500 index. The companies with the strongest brands of all are more than twice as successful.”
Basically, investing in brand makes it easier to:
- Gain people’s trust and acquire customers
- Capture more value from customers over time (e.g. loyalty!)
- And protect against competition (because you can’t easily replicate emotional connections).
