April 27, 2010 » Branding: What is Brand?

NIKE. Coke. Budweiser. What do these powerful brands have in common? Each is a single entity that lives in the minds of its target audience(s). Each captures qualities both rational and emotive.

At Compass, we believe that a brand is not a benefit, a formula, a name, or a logo. A brand is a contract with your targets.

Our job as marketers is to create and articulate your brand’s identity so that it is interpreted by each of your targets on terms that are relevant to them in their lives. Your brand’s name, logo, and graphics are tangible expressions of this identity while your brand’s promise, personality, and tone, are intangible expressions.

How do you develop your brand so it will grow and become a valuable asset to each of your targets?

The answer to this question is much different today than it was even five years ago. Why? Because of the Internet. The Internet has allowed us to think in and market to multiple targets and segments. Your brand may have to appeal to several very different audiences, each of which has a different set of expectations, perspectives, and reasons why they have come to interact with your brand.

These target audiences are the ones who define the relationship with your brand and what it will and will not mean to them. Another way to think about this is: What do your target audiences say about your brand when you’re not in the room? What do they believe to be true about your brand? Because it’s what they believe, not what you intend, that matters.

Consider these statistics:

• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. (Source: Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine June 8 )
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands. (Source: Universal McCann’s Social Media Research Wave 3)
• 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations. (Source: July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey)

The communication of your brand—or where your targets learn about it these days—gets a bit tricky. This is especially true online, which is generally the first place your audiences will be introduced to your brand. Many aspects of communicating your brand online are not in your control, especially with the advent, growth and strength of social media. So make sure your intended brand identity is consistent among all your targets wherever you mention it. Know that others may take it and redeploy it—possibly into areas that you may not have even considered.

The Internet also allows you to target and reach each of your segments with the exact message you know your audiences will find valuable about your brand. It is the one medium through which you can deliver a direct, unfiltered definition of your brand and the experience your brand represents—the whole story with less interpretation—keeping it as true as possible to each segment that views it.

Here’s how to do it:

Think in multiples: Multiple segments. Multiple audiences. Multiple interpretations (because now you can). The question is no longer: What is the one message I want to convey? It’s: Who are the multiple segments interacting with my brand? Once you determine this, you need to understand how each segment wants to interact with your brand—on the phone, online, in person—and when they need the information.

Because you can now position your brand to multiple customer segments, you should do your segmentation research when you begin your branding research—even as early as Phase III and label design—and not afterward. Use the segmentation research to identify criteria on which your audience clusters (eg, practice areas, specialties, etc). Explore not only what your key message drivers are, but why, which is the most valued, and how will your messaging be delivered to each segment. Different segments respond to specific articulations of your brand’s identity. Emphasize nuances within your brand’s promise, personality, or values while making sure to maintain consistency on the external expressions. They are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that when put together, need to consistently display your brand’s identity. If your pieces are different or disparate, that puzzle will be a mess.

As your message and brand architecture are developed, make sure they are on a flexible platform that can be translated into multiple mediums to different segments—all while ensuring consistency in your brand essence. Next, develop strategies for each segment to receive messages in the form most suitable to them.

None of this is easy and it can’t be learned overnight or performed by older, more traditional agencies. It takes years of living in the segmented marketing world to be able to successfully build and promote a brand in it.