Establishing a Brand


You cannot build a brand with advertising alone. Advertising is only one connection with the customer. We don’t believe branding is a set of activities: branding is an outcome. You do not have a brand by hoping to have a brand. You have a brand by doing a lot of things that meet your aspiration. One recent fallacy was the notion you could build a brand by doing “branding things.” Instead, if you advertise, communicate, behave differently, do things, and say things, the net result will be that you will have a brand. In fact, if you don’t do anything you have a brand. The question is how much of your brand do you want to control?

Building a brand (not to minimize what we do, because it is very important) involves everything from a company’s fundamental proposition to a customer’s experience going into a store. Building an established brand is not just a communication activity: It is all the activities that converge on a customer. For example, you may see a great piece of advertising for XYZ stores and love the way the brand looks, and you may like the price and the promotion, but you walk into that store and the person behind the counter says three things that annoy you. That one person has completely changed your impression of that brand. The airlines are a great example of this. You can promote the image of the “friendly skies” or service, but it only takes one surly flight attendant to ruin the brand for customers. Building an established brand involves not only making a promise, but also making good on that promise through a consistent experience.

A brand cannot survive by staying in one place. Brands must evolve: react to markets and environments as they change; understand evolving customers; stay involved in what is going on within the company. A brand can survive a long time. Look at Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and General Electric. Brands like those and IBM (a completely different company than it was 20 years ago but still a robust, contemporary brand) don’t survive by accident. They survive by paying close attention to all the changes. Brands can survive a long time, but not by standing still.




The Art of Advertising. CEOs from BBDO, Mullin Advertising & More on Generating Creative Campaigns & Building Successful Brands
The Art of Advertising: CEOs from Mullen Advertising, Marc USA, Euro RSCG & More on Generating Creative Campaigns & Building Successful Brands (Inside the Minds Series)
ISBN: 1587622319
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 68

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