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You're here: Home » Brand: A Marketing Strategy Tool Your Company Needs?

Brand: A Marketing Strategy Tool Your Company Needs?

June 7, 2010 by Angela Hausman

balancing control and flexibilityMarketing strategy goes through phases, much like a child goes through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. At each phase, the focus changes.

So, too in marketing strategy.  When I first started learning and teaching marketing strategy, customer satisfaction was the rage.  Then it was customer value, which looks at both customer satisfaction and cost.

Marketing strategy: Branding

The current rage is branding. Brand includes both perceptions of value and customer satisfaction, but goes beyond these to encompass all customer thoughts and feelings related to a particular brand. I use the metaphor of a hologram to describe what a brand is to its customers — it doesn’t have substance, but customers see it and some customers might see a slightly different image than others.

So, we see that as marketing strategy has moved through each phase, it has come to a realization that customers are multi-faceted and marketing strategy has adjusted to include additional facets.  So, marketing strategy hasn’t as much moved past its earlier concerns for customer satisfaction or value, as recognized that a product is more than either of those.  Marketing strategy also recognizes that success comes through addressing both the cognitive (thoughts) and affective (feeling) elements of customer need.

The first strategic question is how valuable is a brand?

Brand value

A brand is so valuable that accountants have begun a discussion of including it as an asset on a company’s balance sheet.  Currently, brand value shows up under the obscure title of goodwill (or related category) to reflect the amount paid for a firm above the value of its tangible assets, like property and equipment.

As an example, consider the brand value of the Coke brand.  It doesn’t show up on Coke’s books, but we get a clear view of its value when you think about the situation arising when Coke sought to change the formula for its signature product.  Remember the hording and protests this change engendered?  Efforts to force the company to reconsider resulted in a switch back to the original Coke formula within a few short weeks. The Coke brand has meaning to its customers and they don’t like someone messing with their brand, even Coke. Coke later successfully used these findings in developing their marketing strategy using this nostalgia with to the Coke brand.

Another good example is iPad, from Apple. Apple sold $2 million iPads in less than 2 months, despite early reviews suggesting the iPad was a product without a market — not quite phone, not quite computer.  Meanwhile, sales of iPad have caused Apple stock to climb, allowing it to surpass rivals for the first time. In part, this is a reaction from customers who hold positive views of the Apple brand as innovative, trendy, and having lots of cool applications, apps.  Consumers also see themselves in a positive light when they own Apple products, like the iPhone, Mac, and iPod.

The next strategic question is how do you build a brand?

Building a brand

While the first question is easy, this question is hard.  This is where a consistent, sound, comprehensive marketing strategy is needed.  You don’t build a brand overnight, although you can destroy one overnight.  Look at what happened to Tiger Woods, John Edwards, and Gov. Sanford (R-SC) when their extra-marital affairs were uncovered.  It cost them endorsements, an election, and support for legislative initiatives. The same happens to brands associated with scandal — like BP and its gigantic, uncontrollable oil spill.

In building a strong brand, its important to remember that the brand must resonate with your target audience — what are they like, what do they desire, what characteristics do they value , who do they identify with … This is why branding must take place as part of an overall marketing strategy; it involves not just where you say things, how you say them, or how often you say things (which is where traditional advertising lives), but what you say about the brand.  For instance, consider the example of Coke mentioned earlier.  Coke executives recognized the place Coke products held in the minds of its consumers — its brand image — which was one wrapped up with nostalgia for a simpler time of sharing friends and family.  They used this in creating their effective  advertising campaign.

Marketing strategy related to branding uses market research to uncover brand meanings or meanings that can successfully be used in building a positive brand image, media to convey this brand image, product placement (in videos and other entertainment options like video games) to help strengthen  and deepen the brand image, and social networks to help this brand image go viral.

What is your company doing to help build a strong brand?  What tools are you using to gauge the success of these strategies? Are you building a brand as part of an overall marketing strategy or is it a stand-alone piece of your marketing?

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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of Hausman Marketing Letter, is a full service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media.

 

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Filed Under: Marketing Research, Marketing Strategy

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About Angela Hausman

I manage Hausman and Associates, a full-service marketing firm operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. We provide a host of digital marketing solutions including content marketing, email marketing, SEO/ SEM, social media marketing, lead generation as well as marketing strategy, branding,, market research, and a variety of other marketing programs to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits.

I hold a PhD in Marketing from USF. I live in Alexandria with my 3 kids, 2 dogs, and 3 cats.

I'm a featured contributor to Business2Community and was named to Content Marketing Institutes 40 digital luminaries for 2014.

Comments

  1. physician assistant says

    June 8, 2010 at 12:06 am

    Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!

Trackbacks

  1. Help! My Brand is Killing Me | Hausman Marketing Research Letter says:
    August 10, 2010 at 8:28 am

    […] for creating strong brands including the notion of building iconic brands, as well as using branding as a tool in your marketing strategy. Today, I’d like to expand on the use of branding as part of your marketing strategy with 2 […]

  2. Marketing Strategy: Is Impersonal Influence Ethical | Hausman Marketing Research Letter says:
    August 3, 2010 at 10:04 am

    […] does this provide a statement of quality, but provides a brand personality.  For more on using branding as an element of your marketing strategy, see a series of posts in my […]

  3. ASTD Press says:
    June 14, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    Branding taking the place of customer satisfaction? What's your training brand? http://bit.ly/akOnvp #astd Branding… http://bit.ly/9aNfNq

  4. Guillermo Mazier says:
    June 9, 2010 at 6:52 pm

    #Branding is the hottest word in #marketing
    http://tinyurl.com/38dzn9q

  5. Angela Hausman says:
    June 8, 2010 at 12:39 am

    New Blog Post Brand: A Marketing Strategy Tool Your Company Needs? http://ow.ly/17Ezzs

  6. Angela Hausman says:
    June 7, 2010 at 3:08 pm

    Brand:A Marketing Strategy Tool Your Company Needs? http://bit.ly/b0s9BT

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I manage Hausman and Associates, a full-service marketing firm operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. We provide a host of digital marketing solutions including content marketing, email marketing, SEO/ SEM, social media marketing, lead generation as well as marketing strategy, branding,, market research, and a variety of other marketing programs to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits.

I hold a PhD in Marketing from USF. I live in Alexandria with my 3 kids, 2 dogs, and 3 cats.

I'm a featured contributor to Business2Community and was named to Content Marketing Institutes 40 digital luminaries for 2014. Get in touch

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