Why is Branding important?

5 min readFeb 12, 2019

“A renowned and a loved brand is the biggest asset a company can own for itself ”

A brand is a name, a term, a symbol, a design or any other feature that helps to distinguish one product from the other.

I’d like to share a very common example of cold drinks. The ingredients contained in a Coke bottle and a bottle of Pepsi is almost the same. Even the compositions are quite similar. Few customers even believe they taste alike and yet when we visit a grocery store, we tend to feel connected to one of the brands more than the other. For a few customers, it can be Coca-Cola & for others, it can be Pepsi. It depends on how the branding of each cold drink is perceived by the consumer.

People can be attracted to brands due to various reasons. Some might be loyal to the brand due to the sheer reason that they like one product over the other but there are other reasons too that creates this special fondness towards a brand. It could be an ad campaign that really connected with the customers, it could be the brand font or the brand colour.

One such brand which has gained success with the loyalty of its consumers is Apple. It has a branding strategy that focuses on emotions. The Apple brand personality is about lifestyle; imagination; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams and aspirations; and power-to-the-people through technology. It focuses on how an Apple product experience makes you feel.

Customers are more likely to remember — and purchase — products and services that make them feel good

Here are the few guidelines that one might need to follow in order to establish a brand:-

1. Building the Essence of the Brand

Before building the product, one needs to understand & firmly believe the motive behind creating the product. The product should be able to solve an issue the customers are facing, only then it stands a chance to succeed in the market.

Every company should have a positioning statement that defines the need for the product. The consumer should be able to relate to your product. Every person working for the brand should be aware of the purpose of the company.

2. Establish your Target Audience

The foundation of building a brand is to determine its target audience. The demographics could be anything amongst the points mentioned below:-

For e.g.

Whether the customer is a male or a female
The age group of the target audience
The place where your audience resides
Characteristics or behaviour of people

Market research is mandatory in order to establish the correct target audience. The branding is generally finalised on the basis of the determined essence & the target audience of the company.

Branding plays an important role in connecting consumers with products. Therefore, at times, even a non- targeted consumer might get converted into a potential customer.

3. Finalise on Your Tonality

Once you are sure about your target audience, you need to finalise on your tonality. Research studies have shown that different colours depict different emotions. One needs to be extra cautious while choosing the colour for their brand.

If a company is trying to target the young & energetic youth, they would be associated with bright, colourful or quirky branding designs whereas if the company represents a product which is expensive and elegant, the branding would be more subtle.

The image below shows how people perceive each colour and the psychology behind them. Similarly, a brand font is selected based on the message it should portray and the target audience it should reach.

All these information are included in the brand guidelines & then marketing collaterals are designed as per the guidelines mentioned. Following the guidelines is very important for the company such that the logos, fonts & the colour combinations used for the collaterals are uniform across platforms. The brand voice can be fun, professional, educational or quirky depending on the sector or field it represents.

4. Value Customer Experience

There are a number of ways to promote the brand via emails, social media, TV commercials etc. Reinforce your brand’s beliefs by sharing content that is easily relatable and digestible by the consumers.

While you are trying to connect with your customers, do not forget that customer satisfaction is the utmost thing. The consumer should be satisfied & content with the brand at each level. The overall experience of a customer from the time he/she purchased the product until the delivery & the after-sales experience should all be smooth. Once a customer is retained, it helps the brand to achieve loyalty of the customer.

Conclusion

Once a brand is established and people start relating to it, it becomes difficult to change strategies and branding.

Recently, Twitter went crazy when the workplace chat app, Slack announced that it has redesigned its logo. The users were not very welcoming and trolled Slack for taking such a step.

However, since Slack has established itself as a great platform for colleagues to share their work messages, even after such trolling, the chat platform was successful in explaining its consumers the reason behind the transition and it was well accepted. But this could even have been a disaster for some other company.

The redesign was carried out by the design studio, Pentagram. Team Slack & Pentagram acknowledged the reactions from the users and hence decided to explain the reason why they decided to change the logo design.

To know more, click & read articles published by Slack & Pentagram:-