By dictionary definition, “a brand is the identity of a company's products or services, the name and symbol that distinguishes them from competing goods”. But it is more than a well-known name and symbol. Above all, it differentiates a company's product or service from those of competitors. Through the brand, customers' perceptions and feelings about the product or service and its performance emerge. Far beyond a registration certificate, a “brand” essentially means a promise of consistent quality and performance given by the producer to the customer.
The brand sits at the very centre of marketing activity. The focal point of modern marketing thinking is the customer. All marketing decisions begin and end with the customer. For that reason, the customer sits at the heart of brand management. In modern marketing thinking, which has evolved from the 4Ps (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) to the 7Cs (Customer/consumer, Cost, Convenience, Communication, Caring, Co-ordinated, Confirmation), the greatest support comes from market research. Through its various methods, brands understand their customers' needs and expectations better, get to know themselves through the customer's eyes, and develop in order to offer better products and services.
Too textbook? In fact “being a brand” is a simple phenomenon, and one very much drawn from life. Because each of us is a brand manager. What kind of person? What kind of employee or employer, mother, father or child, partner or friend? In short, who we are in life carries clues about our “personal brand”. If we look at the paths each of us has travelled while building our own brand, we can easily see the parallel paths a brand travels too.
For as long as we can remember, we have been striving to express ourselves and to reveal ourselves and our personality in line with what we believe. According to the theory of Erik Erikson, the psychologist famous for his “Theory of Psychosocial Development”, our identity — the core characteristic we acquire during the “identity versus role confusion” stage, that is, adolescence — takes shape across many dimensions (cultural, national, sexual, professional and so on). But identity formation neither begins nor ends in adolescence. Through young adulthood and adulthood we continue to display consistent behaviours built on the core identity we have formed. Certain personality traits become the characteristics that distinguish us from others and make us stand out. They are also decisive in the bonds we form with other people. As a result of our ongoing consistent behaviours and reactions, the people around us predict how we will respond to different events. In other words, each of us is really a “brand”: known and recognised in our circle for our distinctive traits, interacting with other people, with some behaviours that can be predicted. The “market research” of our individual lives is the references and recommendations we get from friends and family.
To explain the analogy better, let us examine the steps a brand takes on its way to “becoming a brand” by relating them to similar events in each of our lives:
• Defining brand strategy and positioning
Marketing managers first determine the target audience the brand will address and the need it will meet. Then, through competitive analysis, the path along which the brand will be positioned and steered is drawn. In doing so, the company's capacity and its strengths and weaknesses are also taken into account. Brand strategy can be defined in workshops that bring together brand managers and representatives of other units influencing the marketing mix. While the strategy is being formed, market research results aimed at understanding the target audience and its needs in the brand's specific field help shape strategic decisions. This research is more likely to take the form of ethnographic studies, qualitative work in which the need is refined, and usage and attitude studies.
In the same way, an individual takes their competencies and desires in life into account and draws a path — a personal strategy — for self-realisation. By recognising their own strengths and weaknesses, they determine their purpose in life and their primary sphere of influence. Especially in adulthood, individuals express their identity through the areas in which they demonstrate “generativity”.
• Forming and developing brand identity
As brand strategy is drawn, the brand's identity also begins to emerge. Brand identity is the brand's characteristics, contributions, benefits, performance, quality, experience and the value of owning it. It is the essence of how companies are perceived in the eyes of customers. It expresses everything people associate with the brand, directly or indirectly, in their minds. In people's minds, the McDonald's brand may create the concepts of fun and fast service; Volvo may create durability and safety. Such concepts — mostly human characteristics — form brand identity. Brands frequently carry these identity-forming concepts into their communication and undertake consistent marketing activity that supports those identity traits.
Individuals, too, as they get to know themselves, take ownership of different personality traits and shape their behaviour accordingly, because being liked and appreciated is the intended and best possible response. The continuity of behaviour with the same characteristics helps their personality traits be perceived consistently by those around them. And so we begin to define the people around us by their standout traits: helpful, fun, cheerful, rational, loyal, and so on.
This is precisely why almost every piece of market research on brand image includes a “set of personality attributes”. Whether in pre/post tests used to test communication material, or in research such as “image perception” and/or “brand health”, the values owned both by the brand itself and by its competitors in the market can be examined through the eyes of the customer or target audience.
For your personal brand, the easiest of these tests is “gossip”. Through the word-of-mouth effect, the gossip about our personality, what we have or have not done and the processes we have been through carries serious signals for our brand management and indirectly shapes brand identities and perceptions.
• Designing the brand name, slogan and logo
From the moment they learn they are expecting a baby, parents think about and research what to name their new child. It should be easy to pronounce, have a beautiful meaning, even work easily abroad… There is also a widespread belief that people “live up to their names”, that the meaning of their name influences their personality and their life. This is why the meaning of a name matters so much.
A brand name, too, should be chosen with the same care as a baby's. An ideal brand name should sound good and be understandable. It should be easy to say and pronounce. It should not evoke unintended associations. It should be consistent with brand identity. It should be able to differ from competitors and be easily distinguished from them.
In fact the brand's name, logo and slogan are complementary elements and the tools that form brand identity. The logo is like the brand's “signature” or “fingerprint”, unique to that brand alone — just like each of our signatures or fingerprints. From another perspective, the logo is the materialisation of the abstract brand name. This is why logos are often designed starting from the brand name, in a way that supports brand image. The colours chosen in the logo should be used consistently as part of corporate identity in other areas too. In this way brand and colours become associated in people's minds, and the brand can be emphasised through colour in its communication.
The brand's slogan (and the word it takes ownership of) is really like a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Each repetition has an almost hypnotic, subconscious effect on the brand image being built. The slogan should express, “in the customer's own language”, what differentiates the brand and makes it special compared with competitors. When customers adopt that expression and trust it, the slogan becomes “true”.
When designing the brand name, slogan and logo, different name, logo and slogan alternatives are presented for evaluation by consumers representing the target audience through research such as “name tests” and “slogan tests”. Designs are updated according to the target audience's comments, and the ideal design is reached. Through this research, consumers are included in the design process and express how they perceive different alternatives through their own eyes and minds.
As we can see, two of the main elements of creating a brand are understanding the target audience and — having identified an appropriate need — communicating well that the product or service answers that need. The brand must carry its core promise and communicate the personality traits that create differentiation to its target audience consistently and regularly. Brands that do not keep their promise cannot survive in the market. If you do not believe it, take a look at the correlation between the number of failed brands and divorce rates!