What Is a Company’s Brand?

Coca Cola - a company selling sugar water with a total market value of $230 billion. One specific asset they possess makes up around $90 billion of that value - and it’s not their "secret" recipe. It’s their brand. 

Why is branding important? 

A company’s brand is both a strategic and financial asset - and it opens a lot of doors for your business. It increases customer loyalty, which in turn increases the value of your company. It allows you to set higher prices for your products and services. People associate higher quality to branded products, and they’ll pay more for it than a generic version, even if the two are identical. This is true for both B2B and B2C brands.

Why? Because customers trust the brand more than competitors - as brands make and keep their promises.

Some benefits of having a good brand:

• Loyal customers don’t need to be marketed to as much
• It’s easier to launch new products as customers associate your brand promises to new products right away
• Studies even show that companies with strong brands even have lower turnover and are able to recruit the best employees in the industry

Does your business need a brand?

Despite all these benefits, it might not make sense to create a brand for your company. For example:

• In new markets with few customers, you’d probably want to invest in growing the awareness and interest in the category first.
• If you’re already the market leader in the category, expensive branding efforts might slow you down.
• If you’re in a very fragmented industry with 1000s of small competitors, you might want to invest in specific forms of direct marketing instead of branding.

However, if you’re in a position where customer loyalty is important, branding can be your best investment - allowing you to scale your business and get ahead of competition.

What is a brand? 

Is it your logo? Packaging? Name of your company? Visual identity?

The classic definition is: “A brand is a promise”. It means that a brand is (in an abstract sense) what a company promises to provide to the customer when buying their products.

For me:
•  Apple promises me “beautiful technology that just works”
•  McDonald’s promises me “not the greatest burger but will satisfy a craving when on a budget”
•  Spotify promises me “an algorithm that knows my music taste better than myself”

However, this is an oversimplification that I’ve always had a problem with. While true, I’d like to take this definition one step further and define a brand as “The individual relationship a customer has with a company”. Just like relationships can mean different things to different people, so can brands.

For others:
•  Apple promises “overpriced devices to fool hipsters”
•  McDonald’s promises “obesity for me and my entire family”
•  Spotify promises “the end of creativity in the music industry by not paying artists their fair share”

Hence, the word "promise" might not always fit. Feel free to stick with “A brand is a promise” if you like, but remember - it cuts both ways.

Let’s have a look at how to get started with building a brand. Most Fortune 500 companies will look at branding from 4 distinct pillars - this course will break out the branding process the same way:

How to position your brand

Brand positioning is understanding where the market whitespace exists and align your products, marketing and communication to fill this gap. 

How to define your brand

Learn how to structure your positioning work, expand it, simplify it and make it "production ready" to be used as the foundation for all your marketing and communication efforts. This effort usually takes the form of a "brand book" deliverable.

How to develop a brand campaign

Ad campaigns are important to reinforce your brand’s values with your target audience - ensuring that your brand stays relevant and healthy as well as informing customers of new features and products. In this section, we’ll discuss how to develop brand and product campaigns and go to market strategies grounded in our previous positioning and definition work.

How to develop a media strategy

In this section, we’ll look at why it's important to choose the right marketing channels for your business and how to develop a media plan. We’re also looking at the cheapest and most efficient way of doing so.

Want to get started? - Let’s jump into our first and perhaps most important article:

Next module: How to Develop a $300,000 Target Audience Segmentation Like McKinsey ->

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