Brand development principles

Brand means the image of products and quality commitments; it means an effective way to spread the benefits of products or services; it also means an essence, concept and emotion; brand means the overall perception of consumers, various existing experiences, associations and future expectations of products or services, and brand also means the concentration of unique attributes, benefits and values. How to build a brand? The author of the following article explains it to us, let's take a look.

1. Brand development

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Commercial enterprises all hope that their products and services can become "brands" . They hope that when people mention products and services in a certain field, they will immediately think of their own brand. For example, when we mention cola, Coca-Cola has become a synonym for the category, when we mention herbal tea, Wanglaoji has become a synonym, when we mention amusement parks, Disney has become a synonym, when we mention mobile phones, Apple and Huawei have become synonyms. When we mention electric cars, Tesla has become a synonym. Brand means widespread recognition and sales, brand means scale, and brand means long-term success.

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Marketing godfather Kotler defines brand as: a brand is a name, term, symbol, mark, design, or a combination of them, the purpose of which is to identify a product or service and distinguish it from competitors. But in reality, the value of a brand is not just a distinction. The brand carries richer connotations. The brand means six aspects of value, namely: attributes, value, culture, personality, and users.

To sum up, brand means the image of product and quality commitment; it means an effective way to spread the benefits of products or services; it also means an essence, concept and emotion; brand means the overall perception of consumers, various existing experiences, associations and future expectations of products or services, and brand also means the concentration of unique attributes, benefits and values.

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The series of work done by branding is to simplify the complexities of purchases for consumers and simplify decision-making. In short, in one sentence: "Just buy me", leaving the complex work to ourselves and leaving the simplified decision to consumers. If there is no brand and branded industry, decision-making is a very complicated process, requiring consumers to search for information and look at reviews of usage and experience, but in branded industries, it becomes simple. If you have money and like to drink Maotai liquor, Moutai is the right choice, and if you drink cola, Coca-Cola is the right choice. When buying a mobile phone, Apple and Huawei are the right choices. The decision is very simple. In the early days of the mobile phone industry, there were many mobile phone evaluation agencies like Wang Ziru, but after the brands of the smart phone industry matured, it became very simple for consumers to choose mobile phones, and basically no such evaluation was needed.

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Many experts are talking about branding your company. What is branding? Branding is far more than just giving a product a name, a symbol, or a brand motto. Branding is a process of transformation for customers and a promise to achieve a certain effect.

In other words, branding is everything that must be done to fulfill the promise of the customer. When we make a promise and take correct and continuous actions around the promise, branding is successful. From this dimension, the value of the brand can be explained in one sentence: the brand is not just a name or symbol, but a key element in the relationship between the company and the consumer, reflecting the consumer's cognition, feelings and meaning of the product or service in their minds.

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We already understand that branding is to simplify the purchasing process for consumers and simplify decision-making. The concept is very clear. So how to brand? Combining the practices of the Fortune 500 and hundreds of branding cases of Nianzhi in the past 10 years, we have summarized the four key development nodes of branding development: centered on brand identification; centered on brand communication; centered on brand relationships and value innovation; and centered on co-creation and sharing.

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Branding centered on brand identification: In the early stages of branding, i.e. differentiation, it is natural and logical to set the goal of branding as brand identification, which can be simply described as branding = naming + design mark + image building. In the early days, when companies created brands, they all centered on brand naming and design mark, and this continued for a very long time.

After the innovative concept of "brand image" emerged in the mid-1950s, brand creation was attributed to image design and the influence of brand image advertising. Branding was equivalent to image design and was once popular. Some design companies and advertising companies have repeatedly promoted the following view: branding is nothing but image creation. Among the combination of price, quality and image, image contributes the most to the brand. Their arguments have convinced and won a large number of corporate customers. Therefore, CI or CIS was popular for a while. The backbone of branding is design companies and advertising companies.

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Branding centered on communication: In the mid-20th century, when the era of mass media began, the focus of branding shifted from identification to communication, and advertising became the top priority of branding implementation. This major change trend and the new strategy of relying on advertising to build brands began before the 1980s and continued for several decades. Branding centered on communication includes two main links: advertising creativity and media placement. It can be simply expressed as branding = brand creativity + vigorous communication.

The contribution of creativity is to make the brand a focus or highlight of the market. However, becoming famous is obviously more important. The powerful power of mass media in the 20th century has shifted the focus of branding practice to mass media communication. With the help of strong media, it is possible to win high visibility and breakthrough sales performance. For example, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, McDonald's, etc. have created enviable market performance through this path.

Therefore, it seems natural to think that creating a brand means selling advertisements and promoting it vigorously. Even to the extreme, selling advertisements is the only means of building a brand. This is of course the result of the brand view that brand = famous brand, and that branding means pursuing fame.

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In the 1980s, China had just begun to recognize brands. The media and society showed great enthusiasm. The term "famous brand" was everywhere, and people were looking for fame and high popularity. At that time, the general perception was that brand = famous brand. The top bidders at that time were born in this context, including Kongfuyan Wine, Qinchi Wine, Aido VCD, BBK, and Wahaha. Most of these famous brands are no longer well known to today's consumers, and only a few companies that adjusted their branding strategies in time have survived.

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Branding centered on customer relationships: Can we build a brand without advertising? In the era dominated by communication, this question is extremely challenging, but the conclusion came earlier than expected. Starbucks, an American brand that rose in the 1990s, gave a positive and attractive answer to this question with facts that speak louder than words. Starbucks successfully built a strong brand without any advertising, thus becoming a benchmark classic brand case. Starbucks' success has also pushed the branding strategy to a new level: branding centered on customer experience and relationships. Simply put, branding = strengthening customer relationships + customer experience.

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In the eyes of Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, brand is the bond of customer relationship, and brand experience is the new killer of branding. Starbucks established customer relationship by starting from customer experience, created significant brand value and became a model. Later, Chinese companies like Haidilao, Xibei, Heytea and Nayuki also succeeded by focusing on consumers' brand experience and brand relationship. From the branding of high-end cosmetics and luxury brands such as Estee Lauder, they also abandoned the path of mass advertising and focused on developing the relationship between the brand and target customers.

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However, we need to recognize that the products and services provided by many companies and industries are not as simple as coffee. The core of customer relationships is customer value. Brand experience is very important, but it is only one way to innovate customer value. Complex and highly technological companies actually have another branding killer: give their products better ability to solve customer problems, or to put it another way: innovate the customer value of products or services, and then amplify the innovative customer value through customer experience to stand out.

This model can be simply expressed as branding = innovative customer value. The branding path of innovative customer value represented by Microsoft and Apple has enabled Apple and Microsoft to surpass IBM and become the two companies with the highest market value in the world. Apple is far ahead of similar brands with value innovation + super user experience. Apple can even become the first company in human history to have a market value of more than 3 trillion US dollars.

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Branding centered on co-creation and sharing: After 2010, digitalization has greatly changed the way of creating brands. Connection-interaction-participation-immersion has shown super power. This powerful new force has changed or innovated the rules of branding. For example, Google, Apple and Amazon have become super giants in the business world by taking advantage of the trend. Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and Airless Forest have also seized this new trend of branding and taken off.

The fundamental change during this period is that the subject of brand creation is no longer "I", but "we". This "we" includes customers and stakeholders who jointly create and share brand value, and the premise is that everyone agrees on a certain "brand vision". Branding means building a "brand ecosystem" and establishing a shared vision or ideal. Simply put, branding = co-creation and sharing.

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Six key points in the process of enterprise branding:

Pull branding towards sensibility, because emotions are a common behavior pattern of human beings;
Strengthen the corporate perspective on top of the branded customer perspective;
Identify the three dimensions of branding: brand credibility, brand love, and brand supremacy;
Attach importance to the importance of organizational innovation and cultural variables in brand management, and have a global vision for brand creation;
In the process of branding, we will continue to deepen and improve brand identity;
Create brand equity through brand marketing.

2. Expand brand management

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As business and market economy mature, enterprises have come to realize that brand is the most important asset of an enterprise and need to continuously cultivate the company's brand through tangible innovation and intangible added value. But how to manage the brand? The key principles of brand management are not widely known. Today, I will share these important principles with you.

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The first principle: Brand management is like raising a child. It needs to be carefully and plannedly cultivated. When cultivating brands, there should not be too many brands. It is best to cultivate only one or a few brands. Once the company chooses the brands to cultivate, these brands must convey a lofty ideal, a beautiful vision, and be driven by the vision of "making the world a better place and giving customers a better lifestyle." Once a brand lacks a strong intangible asset component, it cannot be called a brand. For example, Apple's "changing the world and giving customers an extraordinary product experience", BMW's "giving customers the pleasure of driving", and Disney's "creating happiness for mankind" are all lofty ideals conveyed by the brand.

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The second principle: cultivate all variant brands and sub-brands under the corporate parent brand. Follow this principle and you will benefit in the end, unless you are prepared to abandon your company's parent brand one day in the future. Sprite is an honorary product of Coca-Cola, and Head & Shoulders is an honorary product of Procter & Gamble. If the country is also regarded as a larger brand, then Volkswagen will say that it is a German company, and Apple will say that it is an American company. Lenovo, which is unwilling to admit that it is a company from any country, is not trusted by customers. This cannot be blamed on customers, but only on themselves.

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The third principle: Let your company's brand behave like a leader and be keen on raising the standards of the category. Successful brands are all about creating standards. The rise of Nongfu Spring in the past was due to the continuous improvement of the standards of the category, from pure water to natural water, from natural water to nature's movers, all of which were raising the standards of the category. On the other hand, Evergrande Ice Spring, which supplies water to the world from one source, is a behavior that completely fails to understand brand management. Yuanqi Forest's sugar-free beverage experts are also doing what leaders should do, raising the standards of the category.

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The fourth principle: Companies need to maintain their brands through continuous innovations that fit their brand positioning. The most effective way to keep a brand fresh is through brand innovation, which can be product innovation, service innovation, innovation in interaction with users, technology innovation, or communication innovation. When you really have no other options, you can make small upgrades to the brand image system to keep users fresh. Xiaomi asked Kenya Hara to upgrade its LOGO for this purpose, so the 5 million yuan design fee was really worth it.

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The fifth principle: Create or maintain a direct link between customers and terminals and form a strong relationship. This is especially important for brands that are controlled by channels, whether in the offline era or the online live broadcast era. The ultimate competitors of strong brands often come from channels. In the war between Gree Air Conditioner and Gome, if Gree did not have a national dealer control system, the brand might have been finished. Today, it is the various live broadcasts of big Vs. Don't let these big Vs control your sales channels. Remember, in the online era, it is very important for companies to establish private domains. Try every possible way to allow your brand to reach customers directly.

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The sixth principle: It is worthwhile to allocate sufficient budget to reward customers for participating in brand building. Let your old customers become active promoters of the brand, not just loyal ones. Word of mouth is indeed the standard for measuring brand success. Customers actively become brand ambassadors because they are passionate about the brand, which stems from the brand's contribution to customers and the series of values it brings. Remember, the proportion of recommenders in the customer base is directly related to the growth rate of the company or brand. So it is far from enough for you to "spread", but you have to do "spreading". If customers can participate in brand building, the brand will be successful. This can be made into a KPI to evaluate your marketing department.

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The seventh principle: Building a community for sharing brand values is something you must pay attention to. You can choose to run a club offline, or you can start it online or on WeChat. A condiment brand that Nianzhi Company once served mainly served the catering channel. It built a very good community communication system for the chef group, making the brand's chicken sauce and green wasabi the absolute leader in the market.

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The eighth principle: Regardless of whether the United States is out of the ditch or not, you must consider how to quickly globalize your brand and products. Only global brands can truly have global credibility. But you must have the courage to admit where you come from. A brand that dares not admit "where I come from" has no roots and will not go far. Huawei is very clear in this regard.

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Principle 9: Remember, don’t always tell your customers how big you are. Consumers are no longer interested in size, but are more concerned about quality and quality. When building a brand, consider social responsibility, such as recyclable and organic raw materials, etc., instead of just emphasizing individual interests.

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The tenth principle: Try to make your brand feel that although your brand is a "mass brand", it has personalized services. Because everyone thinks that they are "different", everyone needs to show their "personality". Even if he is an emperor. Therefore, the lyrics bottle of Coca-Cola and the expression bottle of Jiang Xiaobai are really effective.