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Branding 101
by Brad VanAuken
BRANDING 101
Think of this as your tuition-free Branding University. This content has been compiled over a career in
Defining branding by our chief brand strategist, Brad VanAuken. If you like what you read here, we recommend
"Brand" And you try his two books, Brand Aid and The Brand Management Checklist.
Why It Matters
Branding 101 — serious information that will get you thinking, and winning.
Creating Brand
Insistence: The • Defining “Brand“ And Why It Matters
5 Drivers
• Creating Brand Insistence: The 5 Drivers
Building Blocks • Building Blocks of Brand Insistence
of Brand • 16 Most Important Things to Know About Building Winning Brands
Insistence
• 39 Common Brand Problems
16 Most • Brand Management Checklist
Important Also check out our Brand Briefs for concise knowledge on a wide range of brand- and marketing-related
Things to Know
topics, our Recommended Reading and our Links.
About Building
Winning Brands
Brands are also the sources of promises to customers. They promise relevant differentiated benefits.
Most people associate only one or two attributes with any organization, product or service. Well thought-
out branding increases the likelihood that the attributes chosen are relevant, believable, compelling, and
are customer benefits that motivate purchase or usage.
Proper brand positioning can ensure that people perceive the brand in ways that achieve organizational
objectives. Diligent brand management efforts can move people from considering the brand (when they
have specific needs), to preferring the brand, to purchasing the brand, to being completely loyal to the
brand, to enthusiastically recommending the brand to others.
Studies have demonstrated that brands can produce the following benefits for organizations
Studies have shown that an organization's two most important assets are its people and its brands.
Typically, most of a company's financial value results from its brand asset value, which often far
exceeds the value of all of the company's tangible assets. This brand asset value was historically called
‘goodwill' by accountants.
the brand's intended marketplace position (including its unique value proposition) and its
strategy,
its identity (including its logo and its tagline),
its marketing communication and
its customer touch point design (the way it interacts with customers and potential customers at
each point of customer contact).
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Through proper brand management, brands can be built, strengthened, extended into new
product/service categories and leveraged in a myriad of other ways.
Branding is all about bringing an organization and its story to life in ways that capture the attention and
support of the brand's intended customers and other stakeholders.
How do you create brand insistence—that wonderful state where clients and customers don't just prefer
you but will go to the ends of the earth to acquire or use your brand?
What's necessary to create the result you're looking for? Just making people aware of your brand and
its relevance will only get you into the purchase consideration set—a long way from brand insistence.
The final step—the emotional connection—is how the world comes to love you.
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This popular article by Brad VanAuken, chief brand strategist for Brand | Cool, netted out the contents of
an entire career—and two books—on branding. We've made it even shorter and sweeter here. You can
also download the entire article in PDF form.
Contact us to talk about how we can help you make your brand promise real—to your customers, your
company, the world.
This is the short, sweet version. You can download the entire article in PDF form, which includes the
solutions to these problems.
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8. Completely blurring the brand’s meaning and points of distinction by over-extending your brand
into different categories and markets
9. Not applying the latest product and service innovations to your flagship brand because it is
getting too old and stodgy (a self-fulfilling prophecy)
10. Creating brands or sub-brands for internal or trade reasons, rather than to address distinct
consumer needs
11. Launching sub-brands that inadvertently reposition the parent brand in a negative light
12. Unsuccessfully extending the brand up to a premium segment or down to a value segment
13. For market leader: Following challengers because it’s easier and produces more immediate
results, rather than creating new ways to meet consumer needs
14. Not keeping up with the industry on product or service innovation
15. Decisions that adversely affect the brand are made outside of the brand management context
16. Senior managers do not understand what the brand stands for
17. Viewing brand equity management as a communications exercise, but ignoring it in other
business processes and points of contact with the consumer
18. Licensing the brand name out to whomever will pay for it
19. Applying branding decisions at the end of the product development process (“Now, what will we
name this?”) versus treating brand management as the key driver of all of your enterprise’s
activities
20. Confusing brand management with product management
21. No person or department has responsibility for the brand. It lacks internal mindshare,
supervision, and management.
22. Treating brand management primarily as “logo cops”
23. Well thought-out marketing decisions are second guessed by non-marketers who think
marketing is a matter of opinion rather than an art and a science in which experience matters
24. Defining your target consumer too broadly (for instance, women ages 18-65)
25. Not really understanding the consumer, his needs, and motivations
26. Defining your brand too narrowly, especially as a product category (for instance, “greeting cards”
versus “caring shared”)
27. Marketing is divided into functional “silos” (advertising, promotion, brand management, product
development, publicity, etc.) with no integrating mechanism
28. No central control of the brand portfolio (so that each brand team is free to apply the best
differentiating features of one brand to each of the others in the portfolio)
29. Choosing generic (non-proprietary) brand names
30. No brand identity standards and systems means inconsistent presentation and customer
confusion
31. Trying to be the best at something, especially core category benefits, rather than owning a
differentiating quality
32. Trying to own cost-of-entry benefits—and not owning any differentiating benefits
33. Focusing too much on product attributes and not enough on brand benefits in consumer
communication
34. Trying to make too many points in your brand communication rather than focusing on the one or
two most compelling points of difference
35. Frequently changing your brand’s positioning and message
36. Loss of brand equity because of reduced or eliminated brand advertising
37. Overexposing the brand to the point that it becomes “uncool”
38. Spending too much money on trade deals and sales promotion at the expense of brand building
39. Being attacked by special interest groups who want to make a public statement
Here is a simple way to assess the efficacy of your brand management practices. All answers “YES?”
You are a brand guru. If you answer them all “NO,” you need help.
If you are like most of us, you'll fall somewhere in the middle and have a better idea of where you have
work yet to do.
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Do you have absolute clarity around what your brand stands for
and how it is unique and compelling to consumers?
Do you have criteria to help you decide when you can use an
existing brand, when a completely new brand is needed when a
sub-brand is the right choice?
YES NO
Managing Your Brand's Identity
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Do you know who your best customers are? Do you know why
they are your best customers? Have designed programs to
retain those customers? Are you actively trying to increase
share in your high profit, heavy user market segment?
Have you identified all areas in which the consumer gives your
brand permission to operate?
Have you identified all the ways your brand and others in its
category have made compromises with the consumer? Have
you found ways to redefine your business to break those
compromises?
How did you score? Contact us and we'll show you some ways to ace the next round.
http://www.brandcoolmarketing.com/branding-101.html 5/14/2009