I think my first exposure to branding was as a little boy growing up with horses and cattle in Kentucky, our farm and the family farms around us used brands to distinguish one herd's ownership from another.
They say this technique of using hot irons to place a unique mark on livestock goes back to ancient Egypt.
As media developed during the 19th and 20th centuries, marketers started taking this technique and adapting it to establish products for sale to the public. At first, there were only one or two brands in each product category. Being first in a category was a major victory. There used to be a saying, "no one remembers who the second person to do something was". It may still be true, but not so in today's world of branding.
The grocery store aisles are full of similar products in the same category, many of them full generations removed from the original. In today's branding landscape, the truth is, hardly anyone remembers who the original was? Who was the first shampoo? The first toothpaste? The first gasoline?
In today's crowded brand landscape, it's not as much about being first as it is about doing the best job branding. So what is branding today? Let's start with what it isn't.
Today, many folks use words they think are interchangeable.
Branding is not marketing. Marketing is not branding. Advertising is not branding. Marketing is not advertising. Advertising is not marketing.
Branding can be a part of marketing.
Branding is not advertising. Advertising can be a part of branding. Branding is not running a lot of commercials. Branding is not your logo.
Branding is strategic or a strategy. Marketing is a process. Advertising is tactical.
Branding is a long term strategic plan of action aligned with all aspects of your business goals designed to reach a particular vision and it can be part of your overall marketing process and certainly, advertising can be a component of it. It's also important in any strategy to identify the win. The reason many business owners have a hard time measuring their efforts is they haven't spent time deciding on where they want to end up. How will you know when you get there?
Putting an ad in a medium and running it until people want to kill you is not branding. It's what many have done for advertising and called it branding, but frequency is not branding.
Branding is a strategy. Most people I encounter have not been trained or have the skills to concept or plan strategically, most of their thinking is aligned in the tactical realm, because tactics are what folks are exposed to every day. Tactics are the messages they are bombarded with, therefore that is what has molded their thinking.
Brand Management is not all about advertising and sales promotion. It's about the consumer's experience.
A brand is a distinctive identity providing value and a relevant, differentiated experience and indicating the source of that promise.
Are you doing that?
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