Today we'll talk about the basic ideas behind one of the most important concepts in

marketing:
and that’s the brand.
We'll cover the benefits brands bring to consumers, what brands do for firms, a
useful framework
for thinking about branding, and how brands are created.
Before we begin, I think it’s useful to highlight the difference between branding
and positioning, as sometimes people use these terms interchangeably.
However, they are actually quite different.
Positioning, on one hand, is part of our marketing strategy.
It’s a promise that we want to make to customers about our product -- we offer the
most this
or the least that.
In this sense, it’s an objective that we’re hoping to implement through our
tactical choices.
A brand, on the other hand, exists in the mind of each individual customer.
As we’ll discuss in a few minutes, it’s an aggregated set of beliefs and
experiences
and connections that the customer has.
And so in that sense, while our positioning lives inside the organization in a set
of
powerpoint decks, the brand is an outcome of the actions taken by the firm.
I hope this will become more clear as move along here but for now think about
positioning
as a concept that lives inside the firm while the brand lives in the customer’s
mind.
OK, let’s begin.
Let’s first look at what brands do for consumers.
What are the benefits of strong brands?
Well, brands can be very helpful for consumers, assisting in the storage of
personal knowledge
about the company or product.
It helps them keep track of associations, the experiences that they have with the
product,
and their perceptions of the products' quality and value.
In this way, a brand makes it easier for consumers to make decisions.
Another important benefit that brands bring to consumers is associations.
Brands maintain connections with ideas, concepts, values, other organizations.
As a result, many brands “stand for” something well beyond their underlying
product.
This may be intentional or not.
Either way, consumers by affiliating with that brand -- by wearing an UnderArmour
shirt
or driving a Toyota Prius or shopping at Whole Foods, can connect themselves
(connect their
own brand, if you will) to those higher-level ideas.
Put differently, brands and their associations allow consumers to communicate
something about
themselves.
This can be of tremendous value in some cases.
Now, what do brands do for the firm?
On one hand, a brand can be seen as a signal of quality and credibility.
If a company has a strong brand into which they have invested heavily, then they
have
a lot to lose if their products don’t fulfill expectations.
As a result, for example, new products launched by well-established companies are
often accepted
more readily by consumers than by start-up brands.
Similarly, generic products like store brands often aren't valued as highly as
national
brands.
So, you can see that brands are complex things.
Next I’m going to introduce to you a very useful framework developed by marketing
professor
Kevin Keller.
The basic idea of Keller’s framework is that effective branding can facilitate the
development of customer relationships characterized by far more than simple
awareness but true
resonance or loyalty.
So how does this happen?
The argument Keller makes is that there are 2 necessary conditions.
We can think of this as the left hand side and the right hand side of the middle
levels
of this pyramid.
The left side focuses on the consumers relationship with what the brand does, while
the right
side looks at their relationship with what the brand is.
Let’s first look at the left hand side that focuses on performance, consumers'
beliefs
and perceptions about what the product does.
For example, when a you see the brand name Pepsi, you know what they sell -
carbonated
soft drinks.
Just seeing the brand activates your beliefs about the quality of that soft drink.
You can almost taste it.
You know exactly what to expect from the product.
Whether you like the product or not, the brand immediately triggers those
expectations based
on your own experiences or information you’ve received from others.
The right side of the pyramid is about the set of associations that the customer
has
with the brand and what those associations mean to her.
What does she think about when she hears or sees Pepsi?
She might think about a celebrity associated with the product.
The blue color present in so many of their communications.
A piece of music from an ad.
At a higher level, what are the feelings or emotions connected to these images or
associations?
Are they exciting?
Are they comforting?
All of these things happen within nanoseconds and, often, subconsciously but they
can drive
decisions from purchase to word of mouth to loyalty.
So, to recap, there are 2 necessary conditions to move customers from a state of
awareness
to a state of true loyalty with respect to a brand.
The first focuses on the performance, what the brand does.
The second examines what the brand is and stands for.
It is important to separate and study the left and right hand side distinctly.
If a company recognizes and addresses these two conditions successfully, they can
attain
a state of true loyalty with the brand.
All of this discussion raises an increasingly interesting question, "Who is in
control of
each of these brand elements?
Who drives beliefs about performance?
Who creates the associations?”
Traditionally, we have thought about the firm itself as being in control.
We have “brand managers,” for example, whose job it is to build these pieces of the
brand.
However, we are learning that this is less and less accurate.
On one hand, of course, the firm takes actions.
The firm invests heavily to build the brand.
On the left hand side, we build products that meet customer needs and generate real
tangible
functional or experiential value.
On the right hand side, we connect our brand to celebrities, to causes, to colors,
to themes
in the hope of standing for something beyond soft drinks or soap or packaging
products.
However, we need to acknowledge as marketers that we do not have nearly total
control over
the brands.
Again, it lives with the consumer and she is exposed to many experiences, images
and
ideas that we neither own nor, possibly, know about.
Social media, expert reviews, youtube parodies, word of mouth.
Each of these can and will drive how the consumer views our product, whether she
buys it and
how she experiences it.
Therefore, in addition to our significant investments in brand building, it is
essential
that we also constantly monitor the brand to understand whether the consumer’s
expectations
and associations are aligned with our objectives.