Most people who chirp about branding don’t know two pips about it.
Oh sure. Everyone talks about it as if they knew what it is all about. But a brand is more than just that logo thingy on the letterhead, product, paper bag.
And if I got a ringgit for each time someone mentioned “Oh we’ve got to do some branding” – I would be very rich indeed.
And like the Dim Bulb publisher says, branding is for cows. (Get it, branding? If you lost the joke, read that line again.)
According to Jonathan, the man behind Dim Bulb and one of Technorati’s top bloggers for 2009, “…(a brand) doesn’t really matter unless it enables you to operate your business more effectively and efficiently. It should make more money for you, and make your strategy more dependable and sustainable…Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter whether you use old-fashioned ads or the newest social media tools to talk to your customers. What matters is what you do for them, and it’s why they choose to be loyal to your brand. Or not.”
Which brings me to Nic’s fave example of negative branding. He likes to give the example of this bad (local) brand because this brand first started off as a cheap product manufacturer. Later on, it decided that it needed to brand itself as a high-end product maker. But try as it might, it could not shake off its earlier ‘personality’ – that of a cheap, third rate product manufacturer. So beware of the values you are connecting to your company/your brand.
So what is branding? And why must companies pay attention in a real way (besides understanding the definition of branding?)
Brush up on what branding for this century is like through this piece.