Brand research

Brands

Brands can be defined in two ways. Firstly, a brand can be identification or a mark that differentiates one business from another (through a name or a logo, for example). Secondly, a brand symbolises how people think about a business. Building a brand helps customers in their decision-making, creating a perceived knowledge of what they are going to buy - before they buy it. Brands are big business. They can be worth many millions of pounds. The value of the Coca Cola brand has been said to be worth sixty per cent of the market capitalisation of the Coca Cola Corporation. Defining a brand is not easy. Successful brands create a relationship of trust between the customer and the brand.
Important to all this is the overall idea of the "brand image". The brand image can be created in a variety of ways: personal experience; word of mouth; how the brand is presented in stories in the media; packaging; point of sale display; retail staff; and, of course, advertising. A brand that customers can call to mind easily is called a "salient" brand. Many brands have readily recognisable images which are almost indelibly associated with the brand. Sometimes this is packaging (for example, a Perrier bottle). Sometimes it is an image associated with advertising (such as the deluxe dog). Sometimes it is a combination of elements (for example, the Coca Cola
bottle, the distinctive font for the logo and the colour red). (It has been said that the reason that Father Christmas is represented in red, rather than in his original green, is because of the influence of Coca Cola's branding).
Why do you need to define your brand?
1. to ensure that you have a fresh, compelling and competitive proposition
2. to ensure that your brand works strongly at an emotional as well as at a rational level
3. to ensure that your brand can be delivered consistently and in full by all its stakeholders



Your brand should be defined according to the following dimensions:
1. Its central organising thought – defining it for internal & stakeholder use in one sentence
2. Its slogan - defining it for use with customers in one sentence
3. Its personality – what would it be like if it were a human being?
4. Its values – what does it stand for/against?
5. Its tastes/appearance - what does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it like and dislike?
6. Its stories - what are the stories you tell about how it all came about/what sort of brand it is?
7. Its emotional benefits – how it avoids/reduces pain or increases pleasure
8. Its hard benefits – the “pencil sell”