First in a series of posts on branding, marketing, and communications concepts and semantics.
A
massive challenge in brand development is that those within organizations
charged with building a brand have very different definitions of the terms “brand” and “branding” - or no definitions at all.
I
often hear senior leaders speak of branding, marketing, and communications
interchangeably. The downside risk in doing so is that they overlook an
essential fact. That is, the perception of a brand starts and finishes with the
quality of the underlying product or service being branded. No amount of marketing
and communications can ever overcome a mediocre or low-quality brand.
That’s
why it’s important when facilitating a brand-development process to
encourage all parties to agree from the start on some approximation of the
definition of key terms, beginning with the “B” words themselves.
So
what is a brand? Even experts define it in different terms. For
my money, a "brand" is the sum total of cognitive and emotional perceptions
stakeholders’ have about their relationship with a product or service and the self-perceptions they derive from buying, using, or owning it. This naturally includes the marketing and communications of the brand promise, too, but far supersedes the idea that a brand is limited to a logo, visual identity system, or advertising campaign. In that context, brands
suffer whenever marketing claims are contradicted by the reality of actually purchasing or using the product or service. “Branding” represents the strategies and tactics employed to design, deliver, market, and service a brand, including all forms of marketing and communications - intended and otherwise.
In
higher education, for example, the sticker price and actual cost of tuition and fees, the quality of faculty in the classroom or staff in career services offices, availability of experiential learning, or prompt and efficient student services convey the brand in more definitive terms than any marketing and communications can do. The latter are critically important brand identifiers, for sure, but the former are essential.
Image courtesy of Simplicity Redesigned.