By Alan J. Porter
I’m a brand junkie. Outside of the office, the shoes I wear are nearly always Converse of various hues (I own 16 pairs and counting), I ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle (and have a dozen t-shirts that announce the fact), I drive MINIs (currently own my eighth and ninth examples of the marque), and I prefer my fancy five-dollar coffees from Starbucks.
Apart from my predilection for mildly obsessive behavior, what is it about a brand that promotes loyalty and repeated buying cycles? What exactly do we mean when we talk about a brand?
Brand
When most people think about brand, it tends to be in terms of a memorable logo, like the Nike swoosh, the McDonald’s golden arches, Starbucks’ mermaid, Harley’s bar and shield, and so on. Consequently, in many large organizations brand management and brand marketing are viewed as little more than “logo police.” The truth is that brand is far more than just a logo and that brand management is far more than making sure your logo looks good on t-shirts.
A brand is the total summation of a company’s culture, its business aims, and its promise to its customers. A good brand is an experience, and the best brands provide an experience and promise that links the enterprise to its customers at a personal and even emotional level. People go back to the same brand because they know what to expect, they know what the products do, and they know how they will be treated. Customers are even prepared to pay premium prices for that experience. I know I can buy cheaper shoes than Converse, drink cheaper coffee than Starbucks, and buy a good motorcycle for less than a Harley, but I’m happy to pay the extra to continue the relationship and experience of using those particular products, dealing with those particular companies, and even in some cases interacting with other brand fans.
A good brand can be a tangible asset to a company, just as important as other items on its balance sheet. For many of the top global companies, the value of their brand is measured in billions of dollars. That’s a responsibility for brand managers that goes well beyond making sure that the logo is the right shade.
Brand Marketing
Good brand marketing goes beyond the logo to build on the promise of the brand to deliver a premium consistent customer experience that reinforces the value the brand provides. It’s about answering four critical questions: why, who, what, and how.
Why? Why do you as a company do what you do? What need—be it a business, emotional, or social one—are you fulfilling for your customers?
Who? Who are your audiences? Not in terms of broad demographics or make-believe personas, but as real people, individuals who interact with your brand and use your products and services. How does your brand promise relate to their personal values, culture, and needs?
What? What stories can you tell about your brand that will resonate with your customers? How can you add value to what they do or the way they do it? That value can be something as objective as saving them money through lower fuel mileage or something as intangible as them getting a compliment and a smile because of the red shoes they are wearing.
How? How do you tell those stories in a way that your customers are engaged with your brand? Can you tell them in such a way that your customers will want to share and repeat their own stories of their experiences with your brand? Where will you tell those stories, and can you do it in a way that irrespective of which channel they consume those stories it’s a consistent brand experience?
Brand and Content
While brand marketing may be about developing and delivering engaging stories that prove the value that you deliver to your customers, the overall brand experience is far more.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the brand experience is an essential part of every stage of your customer lifecycle no matter what point of engagement they are at. Brand goes way beyond interactions with the products themselves and the showrooms or stores. From first becoming aware of your products, through consideration, purchase, installation, and support, customers are constantly interacting with your brand—and content is central to that.
Marketing messages, social media, forums, websites, point-of-sale information, contracts, user guides, online help, technical documentation, customer support, parts sales, online purchasing, and user communities—all are brand interactions and all are content-driven.
Every time you publish something it’s a brand experience, whether it’s customer facing or not. Often it’s just as important to build brand awareness and consistency of the value messaging inside the organization as it is outside.
Every piece of content you produce—text, graphics, photographs, animations, video, blog posts, social media messages, symbols, icons, colors, even emails—they are all brand. And every interaction with your content is a brand experience. Your content should reflect your brand promise and reinforce that brand experience.
Content is not just a part of brand marketing. It’s not just about the right logo on the tech manual or the right product names in the online help. Content is not just something to be considered while creating brand campaigns; content is central to every brand moment.
Simply put, content is brand.
Alan J. Porter has 20+ years’ experience in corporate communications, marketing, and content development in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Alan is a catalyst for change with a strong track record in developing new ideas, embracing emerging technologies, and introducing operational improvements. He has been involved in the development and adoption of various industry standards, and is a regular speaker at industry conferences. He is also a published author with several books, comics, and numerous magazine articles to his name.
