Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced. Yes indeed, David Freemantle. At the heart of a strong brand is the promise they commit to delivering to their clients.
No matter how clever or memorable their brand marketing, if they fail to deliver on that promise, they fail. And those promises represent what the strong brand stands for. Feelings and emotion, as Freemantle states, are critical in the way customers are influenced.
Failure to deliver on your promise or to be what you stand for is like a politician promising no new taxes. Mark my words. Those kinds of promises are a prescription for a marketing disaster.
Importance of branding
We like to quote from the book Funky Business Forever when we discuss brands or branding with our clients:
The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.
It is not easy being different, is it? But all the more important.
Here is a short video that will refresh a brand for you:
The key to a good brand is being different. There are 4 critical things to remember about brands and branding:
Every business has a brand, whether explicitly defined or not. The important question to be answered is how good is the brand?
Brands deliver an emotional connection to a business’ products and services. Most purchase decisions have critical emotional components.
Your brand represents a collection of your customers’ perceptions of how they see you, how they feel about you, and what they say about you.
Your brand communicates every time it touches a customer. This makes you, as a marketer, responsible for this communication ‘moment of truth’.
Related: Here’s How to Make Your Brand Awesome
Most brands sell products or services. GM sells cars. Borders sells books. Real estate brokerages sell homes. Killer brands, however, satisfy a desire to get at the emotional heart of the matter. Let’s review 10 killer brands and what they stand for. This is the best way to appreciate the importance of branding and emotion.
JetBlue’s brand success centers on the achievable – the simple things – they knew would make a difference for their guests. This set the stage for direct TV and XM radio, the provision of first-class seats to everyone, more legroom, great snacks and high-end service at lower end pricing.
No other airline others these value propositions. They are different and their brand stands out because of those differences.
Simple. Attainable. Targeted. They delivered.
Nike
Ask anyone who works in marketing what Nike stands for and you’re likely to hear the same three words: “authentic athletic performance.” Their goal to be associated with customers that desire to be high performance, high notch athletes, achievers, and winners.
Nike is the name of the winged Greek goddess of victory and the logo represents the spirit of this goddess. Wrapped in emotional appeal.
Ragu
Super convenience in an inconvenient world. Simple as that. But it must achieve a taste appeal, so Ragu has increased its product offering to give the customer more sauce taste options. Super convenience with grandmother’s good taste.
W Hotels
People don’t go there to sleep. They go there to feel glamorous. Style and sizzle remain in the forefront of what this brand stands for. A hotel brand leader in contemporary lifestyle personality.
Strong brand benefits … Zappos
They don’t sell shoes. They deliver that extra dose of love we all need from time to time. There is no secret here. Zappos became Zappos because of the fanatical customer support it offered. That is the company’s brand. As Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO puts it,
Back in 2003, we thought of ourselves as a shoe company that offered great service. Today, we really think of the Zappos brand as about great service, and we just happen to sell shoes.
Intel
Look inside to find the best processor technology. The trust mark symbolizing customer trust and faith they are receiving the best in technology. Technology that is life-changing.
Ritz Carlton
Ritz Carlton’s desire is to create guests for life. Stories of extraordinary service. Acts of kindness. Ritz Carlton focuses their attention on impeccable service standards to separate themselves from other Hotels. What Ritz Carlton has done so well is operationalize it so that culture and brand are one.
FedEx
Simply put, the FedEx brand is synonymous with “reliability.” Define your benefit to customers in the most straightforward terms possible. If your promise is reliability, then you need to offer reliability in everything you do — from your products and services to your website and communications.
Peace of mind. FedEx famously built its brand around a singular idea: by coming through when something “absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”
Starbucks
Starbucks brings us a space to enjoy the products they sell, rather than just a product. Some would say that it fills a psychological need that other companies have not had to do in quite the same way. The emotion is all about uplifting moments and daily ritual. Stimulating all our senses.
Magical, fantasy entertainment. Be bringers of joy, to be affirmers of the good in each of us, to be — in subtle ways — teachers. To speak, as Walt once put it:
not to children but to the child in each of us.
Disney’s brand does this through great storytelling, by giving guests a few hours in another world where their cares can be momentarily put aside and by creating memories that will remain with them forever.
The bottom line
So is this what killer branding is all about for companies?
We think so. Not just business … make it personal for customers.
Making promises and keep them.
Some organizations work very hard to weasel in the promises they make. They imply great customer service or amazing results or spectacular quality but don’t deliver. No, they didn’t actually lie, but they came awfully close. The result: angry customers and negative word of mouth.
It’s very easy to overpromise. Tempting to shade the truth a little bit, deliver a little bit less to save a few bucks. Who will notice?
The customers notice. If you need to overpromise to make the sale, don’t bother. It’s not worth it.
The best way to generate killer branding is simple: over-deliver with what your brand stands for.
If digital media is ever going to become a profitable industry, it will have to learn how to build brands, not just produce direct responses. Ironically, to build the consumer brands of the future, today’s digital marketers will probably have to learn a lot from the ad giants of the past.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on brands and branding from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Remarkable Branding Design: Spanish Bank Example
Secrets to the Remarkable Innovative Lady Gaga Brand
Here’s How to Make Your Brand Awesome
Branding Lessons Learned from the Beatles Brand
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
