A BRAND: ITS DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE
Steve Forbes, Forbes Magazine Editor-in-Chief, once said “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.”
If you think having a brand is not that important, then keep on reading.
By now, we know that a brand is much more than a logo. It is the way we answer the phone; it is how we communicate. It can be seen in everything: our social media posts, advertising campaigns, packaging, vehicles, signage, exhibits, emails, business cards- everything.
A branding agency further defined it as “the sum of expressions by which an entity (person, organization, company, business unit, city, nation, etc.) intends to be recognized.” In other words, a brand is an expression of how we want to be perceived.
As a “brand is the sum total of how someone perceives a particular organization”, Ashley Friedlein, Digital Marketing Thought Leader, defined Branding as “shaping that perception”.
Ultimately, our consumers get to decide our brand. However, through a solid brand foundation or strategy, here at REDKOR, we get to shape our consumers’ perception.
BRAND MARKETING AT REDKOR: SHAPING OUR CONSUMER’S PERCEPTION OF THE BRAND
Brand marketing is about our audience memorizing our message. If we change our message (or visuals) all the time, we never build equity. The purpose of this brand and marketing is to make that consistency easy.
Each of our marketing campaigns should be a brand campaign. We build equity in our brand when we are consistent in our voice, our visuals, and all we say and do.
We do this by first knowing what the consumers think and how they are being benefited by the company. More importantly, how the brand is making them feel and what emotions we are creating for them.
CONNECTING THROUGH EMOTIONS
We want to become irreplaceable to our audience, creating lifelong relationships with them. To do this and stand out in the marketplace, we need to emotionally connect with them. We want them to fall in love with our brand, trust it, and believe we are the best solutions for them.
To inspire this loyalty, we need to know what our customers think and then use in their own words to speak back to them the attributes, benefits, and emotions that drive them to believe in our brand.
In REDKOR, our mission is one of the places we articulate to focus on our customers. The mission in this chapter became clear through audits of both internal stakeholders and our various audiences as well as the subsequent research review. This overarching focus is then expanded into the emotional map in the next section, defining the most important attributes, benefits, and emotions that drive our audience.
Below is a quick quiz that you can use to measure your brand competitiveness.
THE HEALTHY BRAND SCORECARD
1. Does your brand help you tell your marketing story?
2. Is your brand easy to read from a distance?
3. Is your visual and messaging brand consistent in all its aspects?
4. Does everyone in your company know the brand, messaging and strategy?
5. Are you able to keep your brand mark, colors, fonts, messaging consistent among all of your vendors, employees, managers and customers?
6. Do you have your brand in a single updatable location that everyone can get to?
7. Is your brand mark discoverable and causes people to think when they see it? Does it engage their brain?
8. Do you know the top benefits, in order, that your customers are looking for in your brand, products, services and messaging?
9. If you put your advertising, emails, signage, wraps, brochures, email signature, etc. on the table in one spot, do they look like they come from the same company?
10. Does your brand mark, communications, messaging speak to your customer or is it just an award winning design?
LET REDKOR HELP YOU
Creating a brand means having a reliable system to showcase your vision, mission, and purpose in a way that resonates and connects with customers. We design images, colors, photography, and elements that reinforce your message and inspire consumer confidence. REDKOR’s strategy organizes emotional responses and memories consumers have with your brand and quantifies the why behind the design choices.
Do you have a branding challenge that you need help with? We’ve been creating and recreating brands, like Western Heating Air, for over 25 years. We have the expertise and tools to help.
Give us a call: 801.372.0213 | REDKORBRANDS.COM
