What is branding, what is a brand?

• Branding is the process of creating a personality for a product or service using a consistency of design and description, giving the product a distinctive feel, look and competitive position.
• A brand is something the consumer feels emotionally involved with (as though it were a person, not just a product or a service).
• A brand is something that is remembered by name.

• The first brand logo was the Bass ‘Red Triangle’ in 1875. Wherever a significantly illiterate population saw this they knew they could rely on getting a good beer. Branding really is about putting your money where your mouth is. Once you have a brand, you let the customer down at your peril.
• Tony O’Reilly defined a great brand when he was CEO at Heinz as a product so desired that a customer would leave a supermarket if it wasn’t in stock and go elsewhere for it.
• Even people who know nothing about marketing talk about brands, with the consequence that a lot of people could get very confused.

Brand ingredients

You need to be able to say ‘Yes, it has these’:

1. A unique name.
2. A personality – it’s not just a thing.
3. A logo.
4. A designed identity.
5. A potential reputation.
6. A provenance.
7. Emotional meaning to the owner and (hopefully in time) to the customer.
8. Consistency.
9. Producer pride.
10. Availability.
11. Value greater than an unbranded product.

Brand power – what is it?

Really big brands such as Apple, Google, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Heinz, Dell, Andrex, Persil, Sony, Virgin and Canon have certain things in common: ubiquity; very high awareness and strong qualities capable of inspiring confidence, approbation and even affection. Great brands don’t let you down; they are part of your life and are more than just functional products. Look at what happened when Coca-Cola dared to change their recipe: proof that the brand had come to belong to the consumer, not the manufacturer.

Being part of your life lies at the heart of Action Man’s ambition never to be more than feet and minutes away from a six-year-old boy. When I asked their brand manager if this meant they were thinking of Action Man toothpaste or lavatory paper, he gravely said ‘Of course we are.’

People go to all this bother about branding so that they can get paid more money for their product or service than they otherwise would. The power of brands is that they make more money than commodity products or services.

Small brands can be sexy too

And smaller brands can have that crazy potential to grab the public imagination.

Brands such as Ben & Jerry’s, the launch of which gave such a shock to the smart marketers at Diageo that they sold off Häagen-Dazs before the erosion of sales that they expected set in. Sometimes a strategic retreat is the best answer to a compelling attack.

Brands such as Innocent. A great little brand run by great people with a great attitude – their HQ in a slightly grimy part of west London is called Fruit Towers. Their web site is a joy. They come from the same stable of marketers as Ben & Jerry’s, Snapple and Nike.

Brands such as Pimm’s. It’s the only drink that stands for something as positive as ‘sunshine’. (Given which, why did they launch Winter Pimm’s? That’s a bit like Speedo marketing Arctic clothing or Ben & Jerry’s marketing pies.)

Brands such as Peperami with its immortal advertising line ‘it’s a bit of an animal’. Suddenly there was a new snack hero on the block idolised by the kids – a Simpsons-type creation hit the airwaves and word of mouth took over to do the rest.

You know you have something really exciting and sexy when word of mouth does take over, because that’s when the magic multiplier of branding comes into play, when £1 of expenditure looks like £10.

Great brands tell stories

Richard French, who was chairman of the advertising agency FCO, was a proponent of whispering loudly and of being natural. Great advertising spoke consumer-speak, not Soho-speak. He felt Swedish Fish was exactly what he’d been doing 20 years ago. He was a zig/zagger to be sure. And, let’s face it, if all brands were ‘blands’ we’d be crying out for colourfully sloganised, jingle-ridden brands to create competitive contrast.

‘Staying neutral in marketing is tough … great brands let the market fill a blank sheet with meaning and folklore.’

(Alex Wibberfurth, Brand Hijack)

Folklore is critical. Great brands are always full of stories. That’s why the creation of brands always starts (or should start) with the top guys sitting round over a beer and talking about why they started the business and what it really means to them.

How to create a brand – seven steps to brilliance

1. Think about what your brand means
   It is not exactly your baby but it is very important that you define it with the essence of your own belief and attitudes. There need to be clear rules: ‘we only use organic ingredients; we never discount; we grow our own talent; we have a party every six months; we give bonuses to top performers; we respect diversity’.
   It may sound esoteric but a brand without a set of principles will never be great. Read the story of Will Keith Kellogg or Henry Heinz and be amazed. Before you do anything else, work out what this brand of yours stands for.
2. Find a name
   Create a name. And yes, it can be a bit silly but remember you have to live with it. Great names have the following components:
   • Authenticity – Fisher-Price, Brabantia, Gunn & Moore, Ben & Jerry’s, J Walter Thompson
   • A story – Kettle Chips, Rachel’s Organic Dairy, Speckled Hen
   • Provenance – Thursday Cottage, Sheepdrove, Loseley, Pilsner Urquell, Melton Mowbray Pies
   • Character – LeapFrog, Mother, Jaguar, Sweaty Betty, Mandarina Duck, Shine.
   How to do it? Brainstorm. Look at your product or service. Think about it. Yes, in the end you’ll create your name by thinking and thinking and one morning you’ll wake up and know it. Do not spend money on getting an ‘expert’ to create the name unless you are a rich company.
3. Create a logo
   Nike got that ‘swoosh’ for very little money from a friend. What you need is a thing to aid memory – an illustration of the idea your company stands for:
   • An artefact – Sir Bibendum the Michelin man, the HMV dog, Johnny Walker
   • Brilliant colours – Caran d’Ache, Google, Orange, Shell
   • A symbol – the Hadfield’s fox, the Bass Red Triangle, the [yellow tail] wallaby, the Alfa logo.
   Don’t get obsessed with this. It’s a signature. It’s a marque. If you’ve got it, use it. If you can’t find it, don’t despair. How to do it? Work with someone who can draw or is a whiz on the PC (but better to draw). Tell them what you are thinking about and see what happens.
4. Design the brand properly
   Only now is it time for that expert to come in. You are already on the road to creating an identity. You need someone to extend, develop and refine that identity. But make sure you brief them well. And be their worst-ever client. Demand they do lots of options to open up your (and their) mind. Mark Riley who worked with me years ago did a logo design for Harriet Benton, who also worked with me and who runs a very good catering business. Two small businesses, one really impressive design: authentic, strong, right. Looking at it persuaded me that professionals are worth employing to create those clothes you’ll be wearing for a very long time.
   How do you know if it’s right? Trust your gut. Do not ever settle for something that doesn’t feel right. In a small business, no one else’s gut ever knows better than that of the owner.
5. Have an attitude that helps you find your ‘voice’
   No one but you can create this. Decide exactly what it is that makes you better, inspiring and different. Keep trying to express it in fewer and fewer words. What is the essence you are trying to own? Language is so tricky. Unless you nail your tone of voice, how can you train people, as you grow, to talk in the way you want to talk to the customers who might buy your product.
   • What does an email look like?
   • What does pack copy read like?
   • What’s your web site like?
   • What does a press release read like?
   This is about style, not content, and you get it wrong at your peril.
6. Various faces of your brand
   Express your brand on business cards, letterheads, envelopes, signs, posters, mugs, pencils and so on. In as many places as, with wit (please don’t overdo it), you can make it live. Developing your web site so it reflects your brand character is especially critical. There are a few good designers around. But never choose anyone you don’t like, and spend time talking to them so they know what you want.
   There is one unbreakable rule: the logo, the brand name and the typeface must be constant. All of them must be always the same – always. Because that says you are consistent. That says you are remorselessly reliable. And because that’s what brands are.
7. Develop the brand personality
   Every six months, review where you are and see if you can develop your brand. Let’s talk about small brands: your office decorations; staff T-shirts; Christmas cards; golf balls; pads; pencils; etc. etc. Development never stops. Have a regular ‘our brand and what we can do to make it more compelling’ meeting. Big brand: same thing, just bigger poster sites. Most of all see if you can get interaction with your customers. See if you can get them to respond and even to use your branded artefacts. If they like your branded mugs they may use them. Brands are ‘cool’ when they are well executed. Try and start up conversations. Try to become something a lot of people talk about, not just buy.
   One brand that has been brilliantly developed over time is Nike. When it had a bad year Phil Knight, founder and CEO, was not reticent in blaming, apart from other things, boring advertising and marketing.

In praise of small brands and those who love them

Throughout this book I focus on small businesses for three reasons:

1. Most businesses are small, and my thinking here may be more useful to, or at any rate more used by, small businesses than huge ones.
2. Focusing on small businesses forces us to look at the detail that goes into marketing, rather than the big macro-thinking that goes into marketing companies such as BT.
3. Most of the best and most creative branding and marketing work is going on in small businesses right now.

This focus is not of course exclusive, because understanding how a Nike or Persil or Heinz does it matters too if we’re going to understand brilliant marketing.

They have invested in coaching their 30-odd bright staff, who on average produce 12 pages of slides or reports each per day, how to ‘team-plate’ not just ‘template’ their presentations so they look as though they come from one brand, and have embarked on a ‘live the brand’ strategy in their offices so, without going too crazy, the Cognosis brand is omnipresent. When you enter the building you are confronted with a board of photographs of all their people. When you move around the offices words such as ‘ignite’, ‘excite’, ‘inspire’, ‘quest’, ‘adventure’ and ‘journey’ are all over – signposts to intellectual action.

One of their key achievements has been a definitive piece of research into modern businesses focusing on strategy, leadership, corporate culture and growth, called ‘Edge’. A key part of their branding and marketing programme has been to make this more famous to a wider group and to promote it heavily. They are doing well: www.cognosis.co.uk

Cognosisis is 13 years old. Now, it’s time (they are saying) to work on the business and build the brand values. Branding is today’s big topic.

The rules of brilliant branding

1. Brands are hugely valuable and all the goodwill that marketing, PR, advertising and digital work creates doesn’t just disappear once they’ve occurred, but actually accrues to and builds the brand.
2. Beware the vandal with sandpaper or that piece of grit; brands are delicate and damage easily.
3. Some brands are special. They have been created. They are consistently reliable. They mean something to the consumer beyond being a product or service. For instance, BMW is more than a car, while Vauxhall is pretty much just a car.
4. Smaller niche or challenger brands are increasingly beating bigger rivals through guerrilla tactics. They are often brave, cheeky and likeable. We like underdogs.
5. Brilliant brands create buzz and get talked about. Getting talked about and occupying brain space are not easy, but when you achieve them sales will follow, provided your product is good enough and priced right.
6. Brilliant brands remain topical. They live in the present, not in the past.
7. You must have an intimate knowledge of your product and all your competitors. Knowledge allows you to understand what your product category is really all about. If you don’t really understand exactly what makes your consumers tick, you can’t be brilliant.
8. You need to build a close coterie of brilliant people to feed your brain and imagination and inspire you. People who have years of experience working on brands. People who love brands. And people who understand that brands have DNAs and personalities, and that owning them is valuable.
9. Understand (and respect) the very essence and personality of what you’ve created. Be true to its values. Do not change it carelessly (but always ask if it’s good enough and if it can be enhanced). Reinforce its strengths and regularly refresh it.
10. Brand owners can’t afford to get too cocky, however proud of their brand they may be. Here’s what Rich Teerlink, who led an historic turnaround at Harley Davidson, said:
    
    ‘The day we think we’ve got it made, that’s the day we’d better start to worry about going out of business.’
     
11. Enjoy the adventure and be brave. We do not live in easy times, but if people don’t notice your brand or talk about it, you are not going to do very well. Distil your specialness and articulate it engagingly and you may be en route to creating a real, living brand. And brands really do live because they change and develop and grow. And, what’s more, people enjoy them.