What good can your brand do to your business?

Enhance your bottom line by enhancing your brand.

Over the course of some 15 years working at the forefront of brand development and design, I am
often struck by how some companies don’ t fully appreciate the strategic importance of expert brand
positioning. Some still have a narrow view and see their brand as simply having a logo – often created
by amateurs. But of course, seasoned marketers fully realise that the greatest asset of any company
can be an expertly developed and innovately marketed, fully integrated ‘ brand system" , so much so
that in many cases the brand has a financial value attributed to it on some corporate balance sheets.
Coincidentally, from my experience, the truly brand savvy companies are usually the most successful
leaders in their field and quite often are the largest.

Online brands have rapidly become established to the point where some are household names. Think of
Yahoo and Amazon. If I want to buy a book you’ ll most likely head straight for Amazon or Barnes and
Noble. They may or may not be the best on inventory, price and service - but they certainly have the
strongest brands. Coca Cola, Google, Ferrari, Gucci, BMW, Harley Davidson, Nike, Apple… would be
other good examples of top brands you would trust. Why risk going for a brand you don’ t know when
you know the brand you want is there waiting for you? That's the power of branding - it's not just the
name but what the name says about the people you will be dealing with, the value, the consistency.
The good news is, you don’ t even have to have a huge marketing or advertising budget to create a
successful brand, you can succeed by being highly effective at communicating and delivering your
product/service to your chosen market.

These days, in such a competitive environment, it is taken as given that a product and service quality
has to be 110%, otherwise you’ re not even at the races. Product (or service) functional attributes
are important of course, but they are not solely what purchase decisions are based on. Artefact is
fortunate that we have the privilege of working with some of the leading Irish and International brands
(particularly in the food, drinks and pharma sectors) who go to great lengths to promote and protect the
integrity of their brand image.

A lot of companies, particularly SME’ s, are good at creating a product or service, but often are
not nearly as good at promoting it through effective branding and creative marketing/selling strategies. A
realisation of the importance of Brand is vital for success. As consumers, we mostly buy on brand and
less so on price, even in today’ s challenging economy. It is very difficult to convince us to move to another brand because familiarity leads to feelings of connectedness. People who feel they know you are more likely
to deal with you than with someone they don’ t know. In short, we need to help our customers develop
a relationship with our product/service through the net effect of promises, statements, images and
impressions we deliberately put out in the market place. This is not the same as selling our product/
services on functional attributes only. If it becomes strong enough your brand can allow you to charge
a premium price.

People like brands. Sometimes the brand is used to deliver psychological values of status, image or
just plain feel-good - that's why people like the idea of owning a Mercedes Benz. A car just gets you
from A to B but a Mercedes Benz car says something about You! Developing brand loyalty takes
time, regular, clever marketing and truly expert visual execution done by seasoned professionals. It is
the ‘ perceived image’ of your product or company, in the minds of your target customer, that can often
be the ONLY differentiator between brands, and as a result, can make the vital difference between a
customer purchasing or not. Your market positioning should be mirrored in your branding, whether
you’ re a low cost, high turnover business, (think Ryanair or Aldi) or a high quality/luxury based model
(think Gucci or Rolls Royce). Unless your ambitions are very modest indeed, you have to start thinking
brand from Day 1.

Crucially, the problem with manymedia or design agencies is a bit like the X Factor… many
contestants believe they can sing, but as we all know, less than 10% genuinely can or have any real
talent. This is why it can be a costly mistake to trust your branding development to pure creative
agencies or just graphic designers, who although can be artistic, seldom have the high level of branding
and marketing expertise you require to help you raise profile. Also, product branding (and consumer
packaging) is a very different animal to corporate branding and is a highly specialist niche within the
design field, requiring years of experience working with top brands to develop expertise. Creating top
performing brands requires more than creating nice logos or pretty graphics. See my related article:
Why what's on the box can be more important than what's in the box!

As brand and design consultant at Artefact, having focused a lot of my career to date on product brand development in particular, (including what constitutes good design) constantly researching books,
studies and publications on brand behaviour, strategies etc, I am convinced the effective branding and relationship based marketing is without question, the main key to building loyal customers and building profit. Undercutting the competition on price as a general way of operating is not the answer for most businesses in the long term. It can be a shortsighted mistake that many companies and inexperienced marketers make and is
often a knee- jerk reaction based on immediate sales pressures.

Clever branding is a long term courtship, not a hard sell. It is based on trust and consistency at every
touch point. All of your communication channels need to project a cohesive and individual set of
values and you should have very strict guidelines around the reproduction and usage of your visual
brand identity and messaging. Often, this requires a fundamental change in corporate culture to achieve an alignment with the brand values you wish to project. If you do not do this, then you can damage your brand, your sales and your company reputation. In short, a brand must involve all of your employees. You are your
brand… whether you realise it or not.

If you are thinking of creating or raising the profile of your brand, then you should be talking to
Artefact.

Author - Wil Lyons

Wil Lyons
Creative Director/Brand & Marketing Consultant

Mobile: 086 2750662
Get Linked in: http://www.linkedin.com/in/WilLyons

Artefact Ltd
Sky Business Centre
57 Clontarf Road
Dublin 3
Tel: 01 853 7308/833 0081
Fax: 01 832 5683
Email: info@artefact.ie / wil@artefact.ie