Building a brand is not the sole preserve of large companies – the Coca Colas, Microsofts and BMWs of this world.
Small businesses can also build recognised and trusted brands.
But what is a brand?
A brand is, on one level, the symbol, words or mark that distinguishes a company from its competitors.
But branding is about more than simply the effectiveness of the logo design and font used for the company name. It’s also about the reputation of a company, which is determined by public perception of the product or service, customer service and increasingly, it’s social and environmental credentials.
Your brand gets a little bit stronger every time a customer has a positive experience
So a brand needn’t be too expensive to build. It’s not just something that exists once you’ve spent thousands on a marketing campaign; your brand gets a little bit stronger every time a customer has a positive experience.
And other businesses with which you have dealings will develop a perception of your brand depending on your relationship – how the phone is answered, how promptly you pay your invoices, the value you bring to their operation and so forth.
Where the value lies
To build a strong brand you need to understand where the value of your brand lies. Do this and you can make decisions that strengthen or sustain the brand and avoid those that undermine it.
For a company like Body Shop, much of the brand value stems from its ethical image.
When cosmetics giant L’Oreal bought the company it did so because it was such a strong brand, yet the very act of doing so seemingly harmed that brand. Shortly after L’Oreal, which is a quarter-owned by the heavily-boycotted Nestle, acquired The Body Shop, YouGov’s BrandIndex ratings showed that customers’ ‘general impression’ of the company had dropped three points.
Another company whose image suffered because of discord between its projected brand and what American politicians might call ‘facts on the ground’ is Nike.
Because of its record on outsourcing American jobs and a number of high-profile exposés about its use of sweatshop labour in the 1990s, the sportswear manufacturer became the target of numerous boycotts.
Although not unique in its involvement in these scandals, Nike had, more than any other company, sought to transcend the very corporeal, mundane things that they actually sold – sportswear. Through lavish advertising and celebrity endorsement, Nike had cultivated an image of being more than a trainer manufacturer, of being symbolic of the highest human virtues and most progressive social movements, so it ended up looking a tad hypocritical.
Then again, it is possible to create a successful brand that is irreconcilable with reality.
Take for example the food company Aunt Bessie’s. Its animated representative is an apron-wearing, cheery middle aged woman who probably exists in the same sepia-hued past envisioned by John Major (“invincible green suburbs, dog-lovers and old maids bicycling through the morning mist”). Stirring the mix of the Yorkshire pudding for which the company is best known, she seems to be a one-woman cottage industry.
People aren’t stupid – they know the food is mass-produced in large factories. Yet the brand value is more to do with value for money than a reputation for locally produced, fresh food, so it doesn’t matter. Even so, Yorkshire puddings are a traditional food associated with family meals – and what more relevant and comforting association can you have than with a gregarious old aunt like Bessie?
Product and service paramount
People will tolerate or embrace a fanciful brand image as long as the product and service is up to scratch.
If you produce near identical goods at similar prices to your competitors then clever branding can give you the edge.
However, product should always be the central pillar to your brand. Astute marketing can attract customers, but not retain them.
And with a strong product you will benefit from the best kind of advertising, word-of-mouth – which is free and spreads fast. If your product is flawed then the converse effect is probably amplified; a bad experience is always memorable.
Stella Artois emphasised the quality of its product in a particularly novel way. The slogan of their beer, ‘Reassuringly Expensive’, is so audacious in inverting the assumption that advertisers should only ever talk about low prices, that it is striking and memorable – a significant achievement for an ad.
Conversely, Iceland’s brand value lies in the value offered to the customer, so all its advertising focuses on this. If it ever raised prices significantly then it would suffer without a comprehensive and expensive rebranding.
