I am sure you?d have heard or read similar. But I just might have something extra to contribute to this.
I have a couple of things to share on brands, and brand building. Please read them as random points with a collective focus.
Of course, these aren?t the prescribed filters that Harvard would endorse. Neither are these in line with what McKinsey would present for a million bucks.
This is straight from what I believe: I could be slightly wrong, or I could be very right. But it?s taken me almost 25 years to write this.
You are already a brand.
Or close to being a brand. Unless you are the first of its kind in the category, industry, country, or the world.
The moment you are born, whether you assume your position as a company, as a business, as a CFO, or as a cola, you will have unwittingly assumed certain contextual truths about and around you.
You will automatically and without any effort from your side, absorb the generic brand values of the industry, the category and the species you belong to.
If your product is a shoe, you will take on the genes of what a shoe and a shoe brand are supposed to be.
Sure, you can?t be a Nike any time soon. But you can be certain that you will not be seen as chocolate.
You are a shoe; and therefore you are something to be worn on the feet, and you are possibly sporty.
The learning here is simple.
Consumers know what shoes are meant to do, and you don?t have to stand on rooftops and hammer home that your shoes are made for feet.
Your brand is what your barber thinks
It is No matter what your closely guarded motto is, or what you keep telling your employees, or what you share with them at conferences, nothing matters.
Your brand isn?t what you and your company think it is. It?s what the outside world thinks of you.
You are what your neighbours, your suppliers, your customers, and the rest of the world thinks you are.
While the process of building of your brand may begin internally, unless you share and radiate that belief and credo and philosophy with people outside your organization, your brand will stay un-hatched.
Egg, and not chicken.
Build your brand with the concrete of credibility
Your brand has to be built on irrefutable truth. Otherwise you will come crashing down.
Build it on aspirations and intentions that are not genuine, and the ruling fairy of the market will topple your castle.
You will quickly be seen as dishonest. Plus you will attract a lot of adjectives that generally keep company with a stained name.
Not only will your clients and suppliers get to hear of this, so will your competition.
In the war of business, all is fair. There are no graceful competitors. And when you are down, they will run you over, and they won?t apologize.
Your reputation is your brand, and vice versa
Make no mistake. Your brand is your personality.
Your brand is very much like you, and your character, and your strengths, and your looks, and your reputation.
It is all that you represent, and all that you stand for.
It is the one shining reason why people like to meet to you, be friends with you, invite you home, take you to restaurants, be seen with you, even lend you money.
In business terms, this actually means that people will want to pay extra to buy you as a brand, and that they will search the whole market or even travel to another city to buy you.
Remember people paying premium to book a Maruti car in the old times? Or people willing to wait months to get a particular car model ? even today?
These are the advantages of being a brand on the right side of the consumer. And these values don?t change.
The moment they get a wrong signal, or the moment your reputation is tarnished by one thing or the other, you are no longer welcome home.
Build your brand on a solid difference
In other words, why does your customer need you?
I am sure you have a reason to exist. There is a gap you saw in the market that you thought you could fill. You saw weaknesses in others and you thought you could offer something better.
Ask yourself and your people what you stand for, or what you need to stand for. There has to be a difference.
Invite them to peel the onion layers of your company and ask them to define your company?s most distinguishing difference. Your strongest raison d??tre.
Chances are that you might get more than one pillar to build your brand on. And if you are a robustly planned company, you might get a whole list of differences.
But I am sure, that you will quickly notice the strongest. Spot a common thread. And observe a reflection of how the people see your company.
Because if you and your people cannot capture the difference and therefore build a difference, no one will be able to define or distinguish your brand.
Now if you are unable to do so, being so close to the business, imagine the plight of your customers. They will have no clue. They will have no hook.
Just how will they see the brand in you? Why would they want to ask for you? And why would your sales graph rise?
Slowly, either they will form their own multiple opinions of you. Or worse, your competition will help out and be terribly unkind to you.
I mean if you keep your door open, you can?t blame your neighbours if they walk in and take a nap in your bedroom. Stranger things are known to happen.
Sacrifice the average attempt
This is very close to my earlier point. But there?s a slight detour in the point that I am trying to drive at.
Here?s one of the big mistakes that many marketers make, and continue to make. An utter dependence in the safety of saying everything.
Many believe that an apple should be seen as a red fruit, sometimes green, with seeds inside, full of vitamins, to be had once a day, full of juice, good for strudels, best for munching, and that it is hundred percent natural.
Not only do they believe it, they say it loud, they say it all the time, and they also end up building an average brand.
An apple is an apple is an apple. People know all about it. And your competition is also ensuring that they are selling the generic values of an apple.
So where does that leave you? Part of the mediocrity that swarms our corporate landscape.
Instead understand that the world isn?t full of morons. It?s made up of people like you and me. And the average Joe certainly doesn?t sway me.
(This is part of a two-part series on brand building. Read the concluding part next week)
The author is chief explorer at brand consultancy at The Advisory and chief creative officer at iYogi.