Every single proper noun is a brand; if it begins with a capital letter then it is a brand. That includes you, the city you live in, the school you went to, the company you work for, the sports team you follow, and of course, the multiple products that you use or consume each and every day. ‘London’, ‘Chicago Cubs, and ‘MasterCard’ are brands, ‘city’, ‘baseball team’, and ‘credit card’ are not. The most simplistic definition of a brand is ‘the image or perception created in the mind of a person when considering or encountering any proper noun’. Your brand is a consequence of the expectations and experience individuals associate with you. Your brand is your responsibility and, more often than not, your brand reputation is generally deserved. It is, after all, just reality with a lag effect.
The word ‘brand’ has been around for hundreds of years. Its original meaning, the permanent marking of livestock in order to identify ownership, has been surpassed in the past fifty years or so by the more common business usage associated with it today. Obviously, reputations and expectations have existed from the moment somebody first uttered the words ‘trust me’ but defining this entire field of business psychology as branding is a relatively new discipline. Keep in mind, though; the original use of the word ‘brand’, differentiation, is just as important in today’s context as it was then. What branding does for your business is to make it stand out in a field of very similar looking animals.
Despite being a relatively simple concept, branding as we think of it today, is confusing, perplexing and baffling to many experienced and able business managers. With the bewildering array of variations, such as ‘mega brand’, ‘sub brand’, ‘flanker brand’, and ‘extended brand’, coupled with the range of specialised sub-categories such as ‘brand promise’, ‘brand personality’, ‘brand identity’, and ‘brand equity’, it is no wonder that the confusion has led to a lack of understanding that has, in turn, led to a lack of engagement by many senior managers, particularly in business to business and other non- consumer product companies.
Here’s the problem though; your brand is vitally important to you and critical for your business success. Everybody needs to care about their brand, individuals and organizations alike. It is the single most valuable asset that you own. It is your one point of differentiation in an increasingly commoditised world. You may not have a formal process for managing your brand. You may not even think of yourself as a brand business. But like it or not, you already have a brand, in fact you may have more than one brand, and you need to invest sufficient time and effort to understand how you are perceived in the market place and what position you own in your customers minds. More importantly, you need to take control of your brand and harness its considerable power to drive your business forward and to be an instrumental part in achieving your business goals and objectives.
Your business is structured around a distinct idea of some kind, a core competency or capability; the thing that you do well and can realistically hope to do better than anybody else. You will have assets and resources that enable you to deliver your specific product or service. You will have people with skills and abilities that, in most cases, deliver the product or service. Unfortunately, you also have competitors. They too have the assets and resources and people and skills.
The term ‘commodity’ is over used in business. True commodity markets are essentially supply and demand driven; the actual situation that many businesses find themselves in is one of ‘perceived parity’, where customers discern little difference between potential suppliers. This is an important distinction because when you are dealing with a perception you can attempt to change it.
Having said that, changing perceptions can be difficult. Perceptions evolve over time shaped by experience, word of mouth and prejudice. The first step in taking control of your brand, therefore, is to truly understand how you are perceived by your existing and potential customers. What do they think of you? How would they describe you? What one word sums you up best? What makes you different? What value do you deliver? Are you easy to work with? Fun? How are your people perceived? Helpful? Friendly?
The degree and scope of this effort will vary by type of business but two things are Crucial; use a third party to conduct the research, you are looking for candour not kindness, and don’t overdo it; honest feedback from a representative sample of your key customers will give you a great starting point. Customer insight, in common with many activities, suffers from a diminishing return on effort.
Next, perform a similar exercise with your own people, especially those with direct customer contact. See how accurately they mirror the comments supplied by the customer group. Pay particular attention to the questions ‘what makes us different?’ and ‘What value do we deliver?’ This ‘reality gap’ can give important insight, if your customer’s opinion of your company is different to the one you would like them have it’s your problem not theirs.
This first step is simply a calibration exercise. It will frame the challenge ahead. You will then need to invest some time in developing a thorough understanding of the customer’s practical and emotional needs (don’t underestimate emotion, even in a B2B market) together with a detailed picture of the marketplace and the environmental factors that shape it. These will include external factors, over which you have little or no control, and the competitive dynamics created by the number of alternative choices that are available to satisfy your target customer needs.
Providing you have a good framework for collecting and analysing this data you do not need to spend a fortune. A common mistake that many businesses make is to hire outside consultants or research firms and end up getting more data than they know what to do with (and consequently do nothing with it). Your best resource is usually internal, at least in the first instance. By following an iterative process, with a cross functional team, you will build knowledge effectively and can then prioritise what, if any, external research is required.
Your insight will also allow you to segment your customers on a needs basis. Entire books have been written on segmentation so we can’t do the topic justice here. At this stage it is enough to understand that different segments will have different needs and seek different benefits or, at least, will value existing benefits in a different order of priority. There is no need to look for a multitude of segments at this point; the focus should remain on simplicity and manageability.
Prioritise one segment, based on its attractiveness to you and your ability to compete effectively. This is another topic that could fill a book but in essence try to understand what makes a segment attractive to you. Is it their growth rate? Your ability to serve them effectively? Their desire for collaboration? Their requirement for added value services? To understand your ability to compete you need to appreciate the capabilities that are needed to meet your customer’s needs and how you rate against your competition in the opinion of your customers. This will give you a baseline for creating differential advantage and the insight to craft a concise position statement and to develop your value proposition. It is what you promise to deliver to your customers and how well you fulfill on that promise that is at the heart of your brand.
True brand management requires true customer insight. Quick fixes and ‘rebranding’ exercises are cosmetic at best and counterproductive at worst. Brand strategy is business strategy and vice versa. Your business can begin to take control of its brand and the position it holds in the mind of your customers today, however it will be a long term commitment requiring engagement of all employees and the collective courage to do things differently. This is why many businesses use price to differentiate and then complain about the fact that they are in a commodity market. Being different takes effort but pays dividends. If it was easy then everybody would be doing it.
Sean Welham is a British based business owner, Senior Associate in Europe and APAC for Impact Planning Group, USA and neuromarket segmentation specialist who works with large and medium sized businesses all over the world. His focus is the developing, planning and execution of go to market plans based on the principles that most decisions are emotional rather than rational (even in the B2B world) and that customers are not always the best source of information – especially about themselves. Sean has direct experience in a number of markets including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, specialty chemicals, crop protection, engineering, autos, finance, insurance and telecomms and has worked in countries all over the world from Argentina to Vietnam (he still needs a job in Zambia or Zimbabwe to go from A to Z, and Yemen would be a step in right direction)
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