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Brand marketing
Definition
Brand Marketing, often referred to brand strategy or brand marketing strategy is a way of strengthening customer engagement and brand loyalty. A brand marketing strategy has multiple components such as customer service, unique customer value propositions and strong marketing communications with propositions consistent and representative of the values of the brand.
Information
Brand marketing strategy and business strategy are like the left and right hand.
They are the yin and yang of well-planned businesses.
Your brand promise must be evident through:
• Internal service quality
• External service quality
Some people say that a brand is an ‘idea’ and that, while the product/service can be easily categorised, it is actually the promise of this idea that people buy into. This is what we call the brand promise and to define it will help your business address three key challenges.
1. Be different – motivate with a distinctive and clear proposition.
2. Be valued – attract the right relationships with the right audiences.
3. Be smart – encourage your audiences to support you in your marketing efforts.
Challenges Faced
1. Being different in a world that is constantly evolving is the first. Just think of some of the changes you have seen in your lifetime. It is the same in the business world – nothing stands still anymore. Anything that does stand still gets left behind. Understanding how your business stands out is essential. Presenting a unique and memorable offering is a basic requirement for a successful brand marketing strategy.
2. Your brand is a design, strategic marketing, communication and human resource tool, which will enable your business to build trusted relationships with audiences. Being valued by each at any one time is the key to strong performance.
3. Everything you do, everything you own and everything you produce, helps to communicate the brand promise.It is therefore important that your audience understands your vision as a brand promise and can see how it belongs in their own world. Your audience must be allowed to see the promise as something they can own.
10 Brand Marketing Trends
1. Brand Accountability
Reputation management has never been more important, and brand transparency is critical. In 2013, even the smallest mistake can become a huge public relations problem. You need to be ready with response plans in place to protect your brand reputation.
2. Brand Trust
Social media also makes it easy for consumers to confirm if a brand really walks the walk and talks the talk. It’s a lot harder to earn consumers’ trust in your brand .
3. Brand Flexibility
The world is changing faster than ever, and so is the social web. To top it off, hyper-connectivity will reach record levels with the growth of mobile device usage in 2013. Your brand needs to drive the change, not just try to keep up with it. If your brand isn’t able to adapt, another brand will.
4. Brand Experience
Every brand should be creating brand experiences both in-person and online in 2013. If you’re not creating them already, you’re late.
5. Brand Visualization
In 2012, the world witnessed the rapid growth of sites like Pinterest and Instagram that brought the demand for visual content to the forefront of digital publishing. Images didn’t just enhance content anymore..
6. Brand Crowdsourcing
All brands to leverage the collective voice of brand advocates and turn their content and conversations into marketing opportunities. Leaving the crowd untapped is one of the biggest mistakes brand marketers could make.
7. Brands as Social Influencers
Consumers expect brands to use their money and their reach for social, environmental, and economic good. Corporate social responsibility is important to every company, but brand marketing executives should make positioning their brands as social influencers a strategic priority.
8. Brand Data
Big data, research data, competitive analysis data, consumer data, and every other type of data you can think of will be included in marketers’ goals. Turning that data into actionable metrics and initiatives will be the more challenging step.
9. Brand Behaviour
Using the data collected throughout the year, brand marketers will need to leverage behavioural targeting, particularly to increase ROI for digital and mobile marketing campaigns.
10. Branded Content
We saw a proliferation of branded content that had little focus and lacked clear strategy. Brand marketers who develop focused content plans with clear objectives will reap the rewards that content marketing can deliver for many years to come.
THE 8 P’S – PILLARS OF BRANDMARKETING:
1. PERFORMANCE:
Performance refers to the delivery of superior experience of a luxury brand at two levels – first, at a product level and second, at an experiential level. At a product level, fundamentally it must satisfy the functional and utilitarian characteristic as well as deliver on its practical physical attributes – a recipe of quality or design excellence ingredients like craftsmanship, precision, materials, high quality, unique design, extraordinary product capabilities, technology & innovation.
A brand must perform at an experiential level as well, i.e. the emotional value of the brand the consumers buy into – beyond what the product is to what it represents.
2. PEDIGREE:
Many brands have a rich pedigree and extraordinary history that turn in to an inseparable part of the brand’s mystique. This mystique is generally built around the exceptional legendary founder character of the past, making up an integral part of the brand story and brand personality.
3. PAUCITY:
Over-revelation-and-distribution of brand can cause dilution of luxury character, hence many brands try to maintain the perception that the goods are scarce.
4. PERSONA:
The persona of a brand is largely a result of – first, its distinctive projection plus coherence of its applications across consumer touch-points and second, the brand communication through its advertising.
The visual brand identity captures the brand’s personality, mystique & emotional values in a nutshell. The distinct and consistent orchestration of the identity is central to establishing the visibility, familiarity & common identifiable brand imagery.
5. PUBLIC FIGURES:
Public-figure or celebrities have been traditionally employed as one of the marketing mix in brand advertising and they still continue to garner attention, credibility and impact. Public figures can span from film-stars to music personalities, from sports personalities to royal families and even the designer themselves.
6. PLACEMENT:
The retail branded environment in branding is all about heightening the consumer’s brand experience and amplifying the brand aura. Hence, the branded environment, the movement of truth, is where it must “live” the brand by orchestrating immaculate detailing that engages all senses of the discerning audience. Starting from the choice of store location, the chain of touch-points consumer interacts, the salesperson’s presentation and the impact of each touch-point is critical in creating a unique indulging experience.
7. PR (PUBLIC RELATIONS):
PR in branding plays an enormous role in image proliferation of the brand, thereby subtly influencing public opinion. It is also employed to convey other supporting messages and attributes of the brand which cannot be explicitly captured in advertising, but by no means are less important to create brand’s personality, mystique and emotional values – whether it’s via the pedigree factor or via public-figure any of the previous 7 P’s mentioned.
It is also a sophisticated branding machine for maintaining ongoing relevance and dialogue with the luxury consumer, especially so in fashion, technology and seasonal trends driven categories. At a tactical level, PR is utilized to generate buzz & convey the brand news, point of views of inspirers and influencers (celebrity talk or the designer speak), a crucial support for brand activation (like the fashion weeks, sport-events, themed previews, etc.).
8. PRICING:
Pricing plays a quite a big role in the way consumers perceive brands. Consciously or sub-consciously, consumers tend to generate a mental luxury stature or image with the price-range that the brand operates.
The sales promotions also tend to be handles differently by marketers. While few have resorted to sales and discounts, most others play it by adding more value to the purchase like gifts with purchase, coupons ,etc.
KEY LEARNINGS & TAKEOUTS:
In conclusion, the key to luxury brand marketing boils down to the following three points:
• Product excellence by itself in not enough, the luxury brand must perform at an experiential level as well. Not only these act as points of differentiation, but also as ‘substance’ to justify a premium value and pricing.
• While pedigree factor is important to exuberate the years of mastery or lineage, it is crucial to generate ongoing relevance and dynamism through the persona, PR & public-figure factor.
• Brands must continue to maintain a certain degree of exclusivity and stature with the paucity factor and the placement factor – from the retail experience to the touch-points it associates itself with.
The 8 P’s of brand marketing can provide a holistic framework to marketers. The 8 P’s may not be a “universal methodology”, yet it presents a strong analytical “toolbox” to audit and leverage the brand potential.
That said, a pragmatic approach must be underlined, as the situation and challenges would differ from brand-to-brand and market-to-market.
Definition
Brand Marketing, often referred to brand strategy or brand marketing strategy is a way of strengthening customer engagement and brand loyalty. A brand marketing strategy has multiple components such as customer service, unique customer value propositions and strong marketing communications with propositions consistent and representative of the values of the brand.
Information
Brand marketing strategy and business strategy are like the left and right hand.
They are the yin and yang of well-planned businesses.
Your brand promise must be evident through:
• Internal service quality
• External service quality
Some people say that a brand is an ‘idea’ and that, while the product/service can be easily categorised, it is actually the promise of this idea that people buy into. This is what we call the brand promise and to define it will help your business address three key challenges.
1. Be different – motivate with a distinctive and clear proposition.
2. Be valued – attract the right relationships with the right audiences.
3. Be smart – encourage your audiences to support you in your marketing efforts.
Challenges Faced
1. Being different in a world that is constantly evolving is the first. Just think of some of the changes you have seen in your lifetime. It is the same in the business world – nothing stands still anymore. Anything that does stand still gets left behind. Understanding how your business stands out is essential. Presenting a unique and memorable offering is a basic requirement for a successful brand marketing strategy.
2. Your brand is a design, strategic marketing, communication and human resource tool, which will enable your business to build trusted relationships with audiences. Being valued by each at any one time is the key to strong performance.
3. Everything you do, everything you own and everything you produce, helps to communicate the brand promise.It is therefore important that your audience understands your vision as a brand promise and can see how it belongs in their own world. Your audience must be allowed to see the promise as something they can own.
10 Brand Marketing Trends
1. Brand Accountability
Reputation management has never been more important, and brand transparency is critical. In 2013, even the smallest mistake can become a huge public relations problem. You need to be ready with response plans in place to protect your brand reputation.
2. Brand Trust
Social media also makes it easy for consumers to confirm if a brand really walks the walk and talks the talk. It’s a lot harder to earn consumers’ trust in your brand .
3. Brand Flexibility
The world is changing faster than ever, and so is the social web. To top it off, hyper-connectivity will reach record levels with the growth of mobile device usage in 2013. Your brand needs to drive the change, not just try to keep up with it. If your brand isn’t able to adapt, another brand will.
4. Brand Experience
Every brand should be creating brand experiences both in-person and online in 2013. If you’re not creating them already, you’re late.
5. Brand Visualization
In 2012, the world witnessed the rapid growth of sites like Pinterest and Instagram that brought the demand for visual content to the forefront of digital publishing. Images didn’t just enhance content anymore..
6. Brand Crowdsourcing
All brands to leverage the collective voice of brand advocates and turn their content and conversations into marketing opportunities. Leaving the crowd untapped is one of the biggest mistakes brand marketers could make.
7. Brands as Social Influencers
Consumers expect brands to use their money and their reach for social, environmental, and economic good. Corporate social responsibility is important to every company, but brand marketing executives should make positioning their brands as social influencers a strategic priority.
8. Brand Data
Big data, research data, competitive analysis data, consumer data, and every other type of data you can think of will be included in marketers’ goals. Turning that data into actionable metrics and initiatives will be the more challenging step.
9. Brand Behaviour
Using the data collected throughout the year, brand marketers will need to leverage behavioural targeting, particularly to increase ROI for digital and mobile marketing campaigns.
10. Branded Content
We saw a proliferation of branded content that had little focus and lacked clear strategy. Brand marketers who develop focused content plans with clear objectives will reap the rewards that content marketing can deliver for many years to come.
THE 8 P’S – PILLARS OF BRANDMARKETING:
1. PERFORMANCE:
Performance refers to the delivery of superior experience of a luxury brand at two levels – first, at a product level and second, at an experiential level. At a product level, fundamentally it must satisfy the functional and utilitarian characteristic as well as deliver on its practical physical attributes – a recipe of quality or design excellence ingredients like craftsmanship, precision, materials, high quality, unique design, extraordinary product capabilities, technology & innovation.
A brand must perform at an experiential level as well, i.e. the emotional value of the brand the consumers buy into – beyond what the product is to what it represents.
2. PEDIGREE:
Many brands have a rich pedigree and extraordinary history that turn in to an inseparable part of the brand’s mystique. This mystique is generally built around the exceptional legendary founder character of the past, making up an integral part of the brand story and brand personality.
3. PAUCITY:
Over-revelation-and-distribution of brand can cause dilution of luxury character, hence many brands try to maintain the perception that the goods are scarce.
4. PERSONA:
The persona of a brand is largely a result of – first, its distinctive projection plus coherence of its applications across consumer touch-points and second, the brand communication through its advertising.
The visual brand identity captures the brand’s personality, mystique & emotional values in a nutshell. The distinct and consistent orchestration of the identity is central to establishing the visibility, familiarity & common identifiable brand imagery.
5. PUBLIC FIGURES:
Public-figure or celebrities have been traditionally employed as one of the marketing mix in brand advertising and they still continue to garner attention, credibility and impact. Public figures can span from film-stars to music personalities, from sports personalities to royal families and even the designer themselves.
6. PLACEMENT:
The retail branded environment in branding is all about heightening the consumer’s brand experience and amplifying the brand aura. Hence, the branded environment, the movement of truth, is where it must “live” the brand by orchestrating immaculate detailing that engages all senses of the discerning audience. Starting from the choice of store location, the chain of touch-points consumer interacts, the salesperson’s presentation and the impact of each touch-point is critical in creating a unique indulging experience.
7. PR (PUBLIC RELATIONS):
PR in branding plays an enormous role in image proliferation of the brand, thereby subtly influencing public opinion. It is also employed to convey other supporting messages and attributes of the brand which cannot be explicitly captured in advertising, but by no means are less important to create brand’s personality, mystique and emotional values – whether it’s via the pedigree factor or via public-figure any of the previous 7 P’s mentioned.
It is also a sophisticated branding machine for maintaining ongoing relevance and dialogue with the luxury consumer, especially so in fashion, technology and seasonal trends driven categories. At a tactical level, PR is utilized to generate buzz & convey the brand news, point of views of inspirers and influencers (celebrity talk or the designer speak), a crucial support for brand activation (like the fashion weeks, sport-events, themed previews, etc.).
8. PRICING:
Pricing plays a quite a big role in the way consumers perceive brands. Consciously or sub-consciously, consumers tend to generate a mental luxury stature or image with the price-range that the brand operates.
The sales promotions also tend to be handles differently by marketers. While few have resorted to sales and discounts, most others play it by adding more value to the purchase like gifts with purchase, coupons ,etc.
KEY LEARNINGS & TAKEOUTS:
In conclusion, the key to luxury brand marketing boils down to the following three points:
• Product excellence by itself in not enough, the luxury brand must perform at an experiential level as well. Not only these act as points of differentiation, but also as ‘substance’ to justify a premium value and pricing.
• While pedigree factor is important to exuberate the years of mastery or lineage, it is crucial to generate ongoing relevance and dynamism through the persona, PR & public-figure factor.
• Brands must continue to maintain a certain degree of exclusivity and stature with the paucity factor and the placement factor – from the retail experience to the touch-points it associates itself with.
The 8 P’s of brand marketing can provide a holistic framework to marketers. The 8 P’s may not be a “universal methodology”, yet it presents a strong analytical “toolbox” to audit and leverage the brand potential.
That said, a pragmatic approach must be underlined, as the situation and challenges would differ from brand-to-brand and market-to-market.