Aspects Of Branding & Objectivity
The competition has intensified and even though Chinese companies off late have been aggressive in their expansion. For branding to play a very important role in the company, it has to have a strong support from the CEO and corporate management. The corporate strategy is aligned with the branding strategies so that the company attains a unified direction both internally and externally. A strong brand with a unique identity and personality would help define the culture of a company. But for a brand to perform this role, the presence and back up of a strong leadership is quintessential. By being a strong brand evangelist, a CEO can define and defend the actions of a brand. Most importantly such training would allow all employees to realize the huge impact branding makes on every aspect of the business. As more employees are trained beyond their functional duties, they tend to develop qualities and skill sets that can prove useful in building strong leadership traits. Branding viewed in its totality transcends the functional barriers within an organization and thus requires brand guardians to have a much complete view of the business. The corporate board would have the necessary information to decide on such strategic issues.
Achieving brand relevance is about keeping the brand current in the marketplace, and linked, at the macro level, to its times. It is quite difficult to establish and maintain such a balance in the rush of commerce. The brand proliferation that began at the end of the 1990s changed the rules for effective marketing strategies, requiring more that the usual gain in short-term brand awareness accomplished through the repetition of marketing messages. While still of tactical importance, merely keeping the brand in front of its target audience does little to ensure that the brand has a freshness about it or a positive significance. Achieving brand relevance is less about the consumer recall of nominally differentiated marketing messages, and more about the brand’s significant impacts on society, impacts that both consumers and non-consumers alike recognize as real and germane. Brand relevance doesn’t come easily in a world cluttered with brands and their traditional marketing activities. It isn’t the result of product placements, large television advertising budgets, nor impressions per thousands of percipients. Brand relevance is the reward of ongoing meaningful activity both within and outside of the marketplace. As consumption in the developed world reaches the point of saturation and markets begin to top-out, people award their regard to brands that are relevant to the times and issues of their society. A “living wage” for coffee growers sells more coffee for Starbucks than do solitary brand impressions or the mere iteration of new flavors. Free access to the world’s libraries will establishing greater brand relevance for Google and than does dominance in the search industry rankings. Progress in the development of molecular medicine is worth more in brand relevance to the many biotech companies, than is direct-to-consumer advertising for traditional medicines. Brand relevance is about authenticity and meaningfulness.
As Brands emerged as a bundle of profoundly important intellectual assets, the Brand and Brand Strategy grew rapidly throughout the 1990s, increasing in importance, and often becoming the corporate strategy itself.
Soon, the marketplace became flooded with new brands, trademarks, slogans, and the understanding of the value of brands and branding began to spread beyond consumer goods into industries that didn’t even sell to consumers. Intel Corporation, with its “Intel Inside” brand strategy began to teach technology players how to increase gross margins with a product line brand. Pharmaceutical giants adopted product branding architectures from food and beverage companies to turn drugs like fluoxetine hydrochloride into Prozac, and then to go on to drive sales to record-breaking levels with demand created by direct-to-consumer advertising and imaginative line extensions. Executive leadership within every organization should recognize that Brands are more than just the name of the company, a trademark for a product, or a service mark for a service. The Brand is a complex concept that creates organizational value and performs a number of important functions for every enterprise. Brands and their combined Brand Equity constitute the major economic force within the entire global economy, delivering marketplace value, shareholder wealth, livelihood, prosperity, and culture.
The competition has intensified and even though Chinese companies off late have been aggressive in their expansion. For branding to play a very important role in the company, it has to have a strong support from the CEO and corporate management. The corporate strategy is aligned with the branding strategies so that the company attains a unified direction both internally and externally. A strong brand with a unique identity and personality would help define the culture of a company. But for a brand to perform this role, the presence and back up of a strong leadership is quintessential. By being a strong brand evangelist, a CEO can define and defend the actions of a brand. Most importantly such training would allow all employees to realize the huge impact branding makes on every aspect of the business. As more employees are trained beyond their functional duties, they tend to develop qualities and skill sets that can prove useful in building strong leadership traits. Branding viewed in its totality transcends the functional barriers within an organization and thus requires brand guardians to have a much complete view of the business. The corporate board would have the necessary information to decide on such strategic issues.
Achieving brand relevance is about keeping the brand current in the marketplace, and linked, at the macro level, to its times. It is quite difficult to establish and maintain such a balance in the rush of commerce. The brand proliferation that began at the end of the 1990s changed the rules for effective marketing strategies, requiring more that the usual gain in short-term brand awareness accomplished through the repetition of marketing messages. While still of tactical importance, merely keeping the brand in front of its target audience does little to ensure that the brand has a freshness about it or a positive significance. Achieving brand relevance is less about the consumer recall of nominally differentiated marketing messages, and more about the brand’s significant impacts on society, impacts that both consumers and non-consumers alike recognize as real and germane. Brand relevance doesn’t come easily in a world cluttered with brands and their traditional marketing activities. It isn’t the result of product placements, large television advertising budgets, nor impressions per thousands of percipients. Brand relevance is the reward of ongoing meaningful activity both within and outside of the marketplace. As consumption in the developed world reaches the point of saturation and markets begin to top-out, people award their regard to brands that are relevant to the times and issues of their society. A “living wage” for coffee growers sells more coffee for Starbucks than do solitary brand impressions or the mere iteration of new flavors. Free access to the world’s libraries will establishing greater brand relevance for Google and than does dominance in the search industry rankings. Progress in the development of molecular medicine is worth more in brand relevance to the many biotech companies, than is direct-to-consumer advertising for traditional medicines. Brand relevance is about authenticity and meaningfulness.
As Brands emerged as a bundle of profoundly important intellectual assets, the Brand and Brand Strategy grew rapidly throughout the 1990s, increasing in importance, and often becoming the corporate strategy itself.
Soon, the marketplace became flooded with new brands, trademarks, slogans, and the understanding of the value of brands and branding began to spread beyond consumer goods into industries that didn’t even sell to consumers. Intel Corporation, with its “Intel Inside” brand strategy began to teach technology players how to increase gross margins with a product line brand. Pharmaceutical giants adopted product branding architectures from food and beverage companies to turn drugs like fluoxetine hydrochloride into Prozac, and then to go on to drive sales to record-breaking levels with demand created by direct-to-consumer advertising and imaginative line extensions. Executive leadership within every organization should recognize that Brands are more than just the name of the company, a trademark for a product, or a service mark for a service. The Brand is a complex concept that creates organizational value and performs a number of important functions for every enterprise. Brands and their combined Brand Equity constitute the major economic force within the entire global economy, delivering marketplace value, shareholder wealth, livelihood, prosperity, and culture.