Corporate branding is where the corporate name is the brand, and here the products tend to be described more in alpha numeric or letter terms, and not have distinctive brand names. Such is the case with BMW. Corporate branding gives each product the strength of the corporate brand values and positioning, and saves a great deal on advertising and promotional spend. It builds up the strength of the corporate brand and its financial value.

Corporate branding is very appropriate to those companies engaged in service industries, as their products are more intangible in nature. When consumers cannot see the product, the company brand name helps give them an assurance of quality, heritage, and authenticity.

Branding, a term used more and more often in the 90s, is more than just the image of a particular product. Branding is defined by Susan Friedmann, the Tradeshow Coach, as a basic marketing concept that is designed to set your products and services apart from the competition. Ward Randall, managing partner of The Brand Consultancy, a company specializing in brand strategy, management, and positioning, takes the definition a step further, saying, “Brands are all about making promises and keeping them.”

In a competitive marketplace, companies brand their products to help differentiate them from the competition. It would be naive to suggest that product branding in general is wrong or should be avoided, but it is fair to say that software branding is too often executed poorly. The goal of software branding is to associate the brand with the style and quality of the product and its experience. Too often, developers attempt to achieve this by drawing attention to the program itself. The result is to distract users instead of delight them.

It can also go further to product range branding, where a number of products or services in a broad category are grouped together under one brand name and promoted with one basic identity. An example here would be Intel’s Pentium and Celeron ranges of microprocessors. Whilst generating some economies of scale in advertising and promotion, care must be taken to ensure that the extensions do not step away from the central proposition of the main product brand, and that they do not cannibalise its sales.

The task of product branding is to build intangible values and associations around the tangible product in order to differentiate it from physically identical products that are available. Thus, a Nokia-branded cell phone suggests something different to a buyer and owner than a Samsung-branded cell phone, even if the quality level and feature set of the two phones are identical. Or detergent powder branded Tide vs the same powder branded Wheel signal powerful perceptual differences. Emotional benefits, sensory cues and brand personality leveraged in advertising are powerful ways to add layers of emotional meaning and intangible values to the basic product and differentiate it.

House or endorsement branding uses both ideas, and the corporate name is placed alongside the product brand name, as is the case with Nestle’s Milo. This allows the product brand to assume its own identity and positioning, but draw strength from the values of the corporate brand, and give consumers the assurance, in many cases related to quality, of the corporate brand. There are a variety of ways in which this can be achieved, with the corporate brand in lesser or greater prominence. House branding also gives some economies of scale in A&P, and helps with the introduction of new products, where it can be very difficult to break into mature markets without the endorsement of a strong and credible corporate parental brand name. One possible disadvantage is where the product is not favourably received and causes damage to the parental brand name.

Bearing this in mind, it becomes clear why regularly fine-tuning your branding strategy to better suit the desires of your customers is absolutely crucial. This is especially true if your firm is in a particularly competitive market, up against several rival products or services which claim to do what yours does, and possibly even better, through their own branding. It is specifically your branding that will separate your product from the competitors.

Companies sometimes want to reduce the number of brands that they market. This process is known as “Brand rationalization.” Some companies tend to create more brands and product variations within a brand than economies of scale would indicate. Sometimes, they will create a specific service or product brand for each market that they target. In the case of product branding, this may be to gain retail shelf space (and reduce the amount of shelf space allocated to competing brands). A company may decide to rationalize their portfolio of brands from time to time to gain production and marketing efficiency, or to rationalize a brand portfolio as part of corporate restructuring.

In other companies the product manager creates both the MRDs and the PRDs, while the product marketing manager does outbound tasks like giving product demonstrations in trade shows, creating marketing collateral like hot-sheets, beat-sheets, cheat sheets, data sheets, and white papers. This requires the product marketing manager to be skilled not only in competitor analysis, market research, and technical writing, but also in more business oriented activities like conducting ROI and NPV analyses on technology investments, strategizing how the decision criteria of the prospects or customers can be changed so that they buy the company’s product vis-a-vis the competitor’s product, etc.

In smaller high-tech firms or start-ups, product marketing and product management functions can be blurred, and both tasks may be borne by one individual. However, as the company grows someone needs to focus on creating good requirements documents for the engineering team, whereas someone else needs to focus on how to analyze the market, influence the “analysts”, press, etc.

When such clear demarcation becomes visible, the former falls under the domain of product management, and the latter, under product marketing. In Silicon Valley, in particular, product marketing professionals have considerable domain experience in a particular market or technology or both. Some Silicon Valley firms have titles such as Product Marketing Engineer, who tend to be promoted to managers in due course.

Slogans can be just as difficult as names to create. Saying something powerful and original in a small number of words is a tough part of the branding process. In order to generate ideas for slogans to lead your branding, you should always stay focused on the potential customer. What are they looking for in a product such as yours? What values and aspirations do they expect from a firm producing it? Why should they buy your product in particular? What do the products and slogans of your rivals represent? The slogan you choose should attempt to take into account strong answers to each of these questions.

Marketing is the process by which companies satisfy customer wants and needs. This forms the basis of repeat business. A popular definition of marketing is the Four P’s: product, price, promotion and place (distribution). Decisions in these areas cannot be made without a clear idea of the benefits sought by customers and those offered by the product. Branding is a device that telegraphically communicates those benefits to the customer.

Great product names drive strong brands. A great software product name is memorable and concisely conveys the benefit of the product, providing distinction in a crowded market. Hire a branding professional to help you choose the right product name. In the long term, a well-chosen name is far more important to your branding effort than details like logos, color schemes, and control theming.

Introduction – introduce a quality product with the strategy of using the brand as a platform from which to launch future products. A positive evaluation by the consumer is important.



By: Todd Ash

About the Author:

Kansieo.com

Branding is a hot topic in marketing these days, but it’s defined in different ways and looked at from different angles. There are many components that make up a brand, and we call each component a Brand Layer.

Here are our definitions of some of the most important Brand Layers:

Brand Foundation

The base from which all brand elements will be created and measured against for accuracy. This layer consists of the following elements:

- Brand Vision is your company’s plan for itself-how your company wants to appear to the world, and how your company wants to grow and change in coming years.

- Brand Mission is what your company wants to create in the world, through its products or services.

- Brand Values are those ideas that your company brand stands for and that you believe in-and also what you don’t want to and won’t do. These values help your potential clients to decide whether you can help them, and they also help you decide who you will help and what you can’t offer or deliver. Brand Values are largely an internal measure against which you can process incoming jobs, but they will also be communicated through all of your marketing materials.

Brand Basics

These components of your brand form your business’s “face” to the public. Brand Basics shape and direct your customers’ views of your business. Telling your customers how you want to be perceived is an essential piece of a Brand Strategy for any small business, and the easiest way for you to do this as a small business owner is through your:

- Brand Identity, the suite of visual elements that are used consistently in your marketing, including:

- Brand Names of your company and product or service lines

- Logo

- Visual Vocabulary

- Collateral system/stationery set (business card, letterhead, envelope, and so on)

- Marketing materials (brochure, postcard, flyer, and so on)

- Website

- Brand Content, the way you write and talk about your brand, including your:

- Marketing Copy

- Tagline

- 30-second Pitch or Elevator Speech

- Brand Marketing that integrates both visuals and text about your brand, and that gets your message out to your audience. This is made up of your:

- Advertising

- Trade shows

- Public Relations

- All other outreach/marketing programs

- Brand Offerings, the products or services that you present, along with the quality, warranties, and value that you include with your products and services.

- Brand Experience, the process of working with you as seen from the clients’ perspective. But in order to create a positive experience, you have to have a strong foundation of systems, procedures, and processes built in to your business-this is a basic level of professionalism that’s expected of every business. Things that factor in here include:

- Returning calls

- Availability

- Turnaround time

- Professional interaction and communication

- Process

These Brand Basics can also help to shape your Brand Personality, which is the persona that your business projects to the world. This is defined through the way that your brand expresses itself-the characteristics that give your business a life of its own, outside of your own personality.

Competitor Comparison

These components of your brand speak about your business’s relation to the competition:

- Brand Positioning is basically how your brand compares with that of the competition. There are probably many businesses that provide the services or products that you provide: Brand Positioning determines where your business falls in the continuum of businesses in your field.

- Brand Differentiation is another, more specific piece of your Brand Positioning. Your Differentiators are those things that make your business stand out from your competition-the things that you do or offer that are unlike anything your competition offers.

You can control these Competitor Comparison factors through careful market research, market monitoring, and your definition of both your Brand Positioning and Brand Differentiation.

Internal Measures

These components of your brand are defined largely through your business’s actions:

- Brand Environment is the atmosphere at and within your company.

- Brand Promise is the underlying guarantee or benefits that you offer as part of all of your services. These promises can be of quality, service, greatness, affordability, or speed of delivery; regardless, every business presents a Brand Promise to the public, promising what the experience of doing business with them will be like or what benefits the consumer/client will get from doing business with that company. While your Brand Promise is often initially shaped by promises made in your external communications, it must be fully realized through the internal execution of your services.

- Brand Values, which are an important part of your Brand Foundation, are also helpful in deciding

External Measures

These components of your brand are defined by the public’s perception:

- Brand Awareness is the level of public awareness of your brand-who knows who you are and what you do. This is influenced by the strength and effective distribution of your Brand Basics, as well as by word-of-mouth.

- Brand Gap is the difference between your Brand Positioning and Differentiation and how your consumers and clients actually view these things.

So, what is a Brand?

Your brand is really the combination of all of the above Brand Layers. A brand is both your presentation and public’s perception of your business. It’s the way that people think about your business, and it is shaped through all of the layers described above.

Once you’ve established your brand and started putting your Brand Basics before the public eye, there are some other branding issues you should consider:

- Brand Alignment is the biggest challenge in building a brand comes from creating alignment across all of the Brand Layers described above, and in creating that same alignment between your audience and your message: making sure that the message that you’re presenting is the same message that your customers and contacts are walking away with.

- Brand Management is the process of managing all of the Brand Layers and achieving or maintaining Brand Alignment. It is a constant process; you should check up on your Brand Layers and Brand Alignment from time to time.

When all of your Brand Layers are working together, you’ll have a strong Brand that will help your business to grow and prosper.



By: Erin Ferree

About the Author:

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