What Defines a Strong Brand?
A brand name which is not only well known and recognisable but also associated with all things good such as reliability, prestige, quality and other positive traits will give your company an unbelivable boost up in all aspects from being able to sell more, sell at a higher price and even help in business products such as borrowing funds. We work with many companies who are very strict in how their image is portrayed and they have branding guidelines which run into dozens of pages long.
So why bother with all this fuss about your brand?
Well take this example. You are at the super market and your about to purchase a can of sardines. There are 3 different brands on offer all at the same price. One of these is attractively packaged with nice colours and graphics and its also a brand that you have seen a lot on T.V too on cooking programs and in advertisments. The other 2 brands are so-so in packaging and come from a company that you have never heard of. Take a guess which brand of sardines would be more attractive to consumer?
You see we unconsiously make these decisions every single day. It’s this brand recognition which precisely makes our promotional items so neccessary to be an essential part of any marketing campaign and any conference or tradeshow.
It is critical that your company brand reflects your business otherwise no matter how good of a product or your service you will never be perceived as anything but average and business will suffer. So first thing, ensure that what your customers see are all professionally presented and consistent. Consider things such as colour, structure, layout and design on items such as:
1) Website
2) Business Cards
3) Letter Heads
4) Promotional Merchandise
5) Advertising
Commonsense, a critical eye, graphic designers and feedback from a variety of honest opinions will all help. Whats really cool about having a really popular and liked brand is that you can charge more for a product. There are many companies I can list off the top of my head that does these from service corporates to consumer brands. Brands such as UBS (stock broking), any of the top 5 accounting firms, any of the top 5 marketing companies, Apple, Coca Cola, Mercedes, Luis Vuitton, Nike. I can go on and on.
For clients who are offer premium products under the umbrella of a premium brand it is important that their promotional merchandise be mid to higher quality items. It would be beneficial for these companies to offer corporate gift products in lower numbers yet higher in quality. For mass market companies it would make sense to have promotional items in higher quantity yet be slightly lower in quality.
If you need any free advice on branding just send us an email and we would be glad to help. If all else fails a marketing consultant should be well versed in strategies to assist in implementing a strong brand and better still implement general guidelines for you and your team members which will make all decisioning streamlined and consistend!
