The concept of brand is present in our vocabulary when we want to identify a particular product or service. It is the name we assign to organizations or companies that bring together multiple products and services under the same umbrella. Building a brand, therefore, represents that process where companies develop their entire conceptual scheme, in which they direct all their advertising strategies.
which is not a brand
Although the concepts of branding and advertising can be confused with each other, the process they refer to is not the same. Advertising products are only a major aspect of the brand, that is, it represents a direct action that develops in that identity core. A brand should be considered (in this corporate context) as the conceptual reflection of an institution within the market.
On the other hand, Nor should brand be confused with company or company. While it is true that one depends on the other, they do not necessarily have the same meaning. Companies represent those legally constituted institutions that provide a good or service to a specific public. Brands, on the other hand – according to Philip Kotler’s concept – represent a name, symbol or design that a particular business idea acquires with the purpose of differentiating itself from other projects.
A company can have multiple brands and, in fact, assign a specific business model to each of them. Consumers buy brands, not companies, so what we must focus on and dedicate all our attention to is building brands that manage attractive value propositions for audiences.
Next, we invite you to learn about some elements that will allow you to know what it means to build a brand today and what are the elements that characterize a brand as such.
Background and Influence Today
After the economic crisis, also known as the Great Depression, occurred in the United States in 1930, mass production and brand positioning (basic principles of marketing) became the solution and an essential element for development and growth. from the country. That is why after the Second World War, the great world power began to be the United States (replacing the imposing England) thanks to its ideals of consumption and technological and industrial advances.
On the other hand, Naomi Klein in her work “No Logo: The Power of Brands” establishes that the growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multinational companies that has occurred in recent years has its origin in a single idea and The seemingly harmless idea that successful business management theorists created in the mid-1980s: that successful businesses must primarily produce brands and not products. From this moment on, companies began to take ownership of the intangible values that the brand gives to consumers, turning them into a competitive advantage that paves the way for communication and relationships with their target audiences.
In this sense, brands, in some way, decided to take advantage of the neural and emotional stimuli that are present when a person decides to relate to or want to be part of a particular brand. That is to say,There are brands that powerfully influence the decision-making power of their audiences (in their favor), either because of the experiences they transmit or because of the level of quality of their products and/or services. As successful cases, we have Starbucks, Adidas, and Apple, among others.
Now, what does it mean to build a brand today?
Building a brand, as we have already observed, requires a strong emotional and experiential aspect that occurs in that bridge between consumers and companies. In order to position themselves in the market, as Naomi Klein very well stated, brands must offer much more than goods and services. However, building a brand requires implementing a series of technical aspects that allow the standardization and projection of a specific idea that represents the brand during its lifetime. Therefore, building a brand currently means:
Develop a clear mission, vision and objectives
The first thing you should do in your effort to build a brand is to establish the mission and vision that it has (or should have). Start first by asking yourself: What do I want to achieve with my brand? How do I want to project myself in 5 years? and What are my short and long-term goals? Of course, financial ambitions come into play here, however, you need to think well beyond that. Think about the values you want your brand to convey to your consumers, how they should identify with you and why they will do so. All of these questions draw a fixed line in relation to your goals and how you want to value your efforts over the years. Below is an example of how you can create these basic principles:
The Futuro Presente Foundation is an organization that develops training programs for young people in leadership, social entrepreneurship, marketing, public policies and business.
Mission
Promote training, civic exercise and social action, through the recruitment, training and organization of young people willing to contribute to the comprehensive progress of the country
Vision
To be an organization of national and international recognition in the training of leaders in any space of political, social and citizen participation of youth.
Goals
- Promote the political and civic participation of the country’s youth.
- Train young people who exercise leadership with democratic values.
- Promote local, regional and national leadership of young people.
- Establish youth networks to carry out local projects.
- Spread democratic values to encourage citizen reflection and action.
Using this example makes us understand the broad panorama that brands represent. Although a foundation is not the same as a company, it can perfectly accentuate a brand that defines its capabilities and abilities to the public. In this sense, Brands are not exclusive to corporations; we can also find this term to refer to other organizations that, in the same way, manage a graphic identity and a consolidated value proposition.
Know the ideal consumer or buyer persona
Building a brand requires previously stipulated content and context. Although within your mission, vision and objectives a target audience is established to address, knowing in depth how the mentality works within your ideal consumers is a vital component to correctly guide the messages and values of your brand. Beforehand, these must connect with the interests of your buyer personas and serve as an identifying reference. This audience analysis is key for large corporations when launching their marketing or content campaigns and wanting to generate correct and monetizable receptivity.
Brands must be built, which are the best communities that relate to them. In this way, all the effort carried out (from the construction of the corporate identity manual to a market launch campaign) is made the most of and pays off greatly. When you create a brand manual, establishing who the consumers will be should be a task to be carried out in parallel, since this way you can work on a much more appropriate graphic identity and in line with them.
Create a corporate identity manual
The corporate identity manuals bring together the basic and previously thought-out tools for the correct use and graphic application of the brand. In these manuals we can find the conceptualization of the logo and its symbologies, the color palette used for it and, in turn, the brand’s products, the typography to be used within the logo and the visual pieces that accompany it. HereIt is important to come up with a logo that represents at first glance the value proposition or central idea of your brand and choose the correct colors for it (color psychology at this point can help you with this purpose).
Within these work guides, the projection of graphic elements displayed on POP materials such as flannels, notebooks, letterheads, business cards, uniforms, among others, is also present, with the aim of standardizing the creative process of the brand. That is to say, no matter how many marketing campaigns and strategies are launched around it, there will always be a recurring pattern in each one, regarding the regulations established by the manual and its functions for the brand.
The advantage of creating a corporate manual for your brand is that it allows you to maintain visual coherence in all your communication channels. The corporate image of a company is its letter of introduction, its face to the public and is part of its identity. In this sense, it is of utmost importance to create a manual that allows you to build a brand that is visible and recognized globally.
Analyze the competition
Finally, analyzing your competition is vital if you want to build a successful brand. Doing this is not about copying exactly what others are doing, but rather understanding why other brands do what they do and visualizing how you could do it much better. Benchmarking is a management tool that can help you in this process because it provides you with comparison indicators to relate the conceptualization of your brand with the others that exist in the market and that, in one way or another, have the same target audience.
Analyzing the competition and the market behind it will always be among the most important actions that an organization must carry out to identify what the receptivity of a public has been to a certain proposal, in order to infer how the development of the company will be. new brand under this environment.
In summary, building a brand today means combining all these actions and making them customizable to its objectives. Each brand has a whole background of professionally developed efforts and ideas for its broad development in the market. To be successful, a brand must transmit trust, authenticity and positive values in society. Since 1980 – as Naomi Klein states – this has been established and failing that, it will continue to be so until new paradigms are established.
