Revealing the Roots: The Process of Building Brand

How is branding different than marketing?

Branding is not so much different from marketing as it is an element of marketing. We think of marketing as a tree; the brand is the roots, holding the tree in place and providing constant energy. The leaves are the tactics, reaching in various directions and changing with the seasons, the trunk is the marketing strategy, connecting the brand and the tactics. In this way, brand is positioned as the basis for any marketing initiative.

Building a Brand

Creating a brand involves a process that demands attention to develop and diligence in carrying out to achieve results. While this may seem difficult, the end result of the branding process is the establishment of a system, and a structure that actually simplifies the marketing process.

Our process serves to match the work a company does best with an audience willing and able to buy, and proceeds to develop a program of visual and verbal messages that reflect the experience the company wants to deliver. Branding is about developing a pull rather than a push, identifying a core value that resonates with your audience and attracts the business that is desired.

  • Understand the current perception of your company:

    Effective brand marketing starts by gathering information. What is known and thought now both inside and outside your walls? Do you know who your competitors are and what their brand is? Why do clients choose-or not choose-your company? What do clients value most about your firm? Both quantitative and qualitative information is needed to get a clear picture of your company's, and your industry's, place in the mind of your audience.

  • Evaluate what you do best, what is special and unique:

    Having gathered information, both internal and external feedback is reviewed. It is time to compare the needs that exist in the market with the strengths your firm has or wants to develop. This process identifies the most marketable elements to a given audience, the focus features.

  • Align this strength with the appropriate audience:

    With a clear picture of the features your company can deliver well, and an understanding of who would value these features, key benefits are defined and linked to a feeling, the core value, to create further focus. The purpose of brand is to create a durable connection and build recognition, recollection and referrals.

  • Choose how you will show, tell, and organize to convey the alignment:

    The visual image, verbal message and experience that will be delivered must be developed to communicate your brand perception. While staff, headlines and images may change from year to year and campaign to campaign; this structure creates a stable base that allows for flexibility without veering off course.

  • Deliver a well-defined image, message and experience with diligence, consistency and repetition:

    Educate everyone on your brand so that each staff member becomes a "Keeper of the Brand." The biggest problem with maintaining brand is lack of consistency. A new marketing director, eager designer or outside consultant bored with what has been done and wanting to put their own stamp upon the company can quickly derail a brand. While you can't change your logo every year, regular evaluation of the tools employed to convey your message is vital in keeping both your audience and your staff engaged.

    Strong roots are needed to keep a tree healthy, and essential in surviving a storm. When growing your brand, be thorough in discovery, objective in the definition of position and consistent in delivery, and the process of building brand will be time well spent in attracting and maintaining the kind of clients that will grow and sustain your business.

    About The Author

    Beth Brodovsky is the president and principal of Iris Creative Group, LLC. Brodovsky earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design from Pratt Institute, New York. Before launching her own firm in 1996, she spent eight years as a corporate Art Director and Graphic Designer, providing a sound foundation in management and organizational standards and structure. Iris Creative specializes in providing marketing and strategic communication services to clients in service industries and small businesses. For more information contact Beth at bsb@iriscreative.com or 610-567-2799.

    • More Resources

    Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

    More Branding Information:

    Related Articles

    Id Buy That: Getting A Brand Mindset
    Feel that? The crisp tingle in the air? It's fall. Fall ushers in the promise of eating, seeing, and getting.
    How a Great Tagline can Help your Business
    "Just do it." "We try harder.
    Why Branding?
    Having a concise, clear image that you project to your clients and customers is important in today's market. More and more people are leaving the job market and creating their own business, whether by choice or necessity, so the competition continues to expand.
    When Search Engine Marketing and Trademarks Collide
    In the world of marketing, branding issues are always an important part of any campaign. Companies work hard for their name to be recognized as a quality organization and a leader in their field.
    Good Logos Make Great Sales Tools
    Every day, the average person is exposed to millions of visual stimuli including hundreds of company logos.A logo is a unique visual image that represents a company or its products.
    Value Proposition Writing - Brand Identity Guru
    Your Value Proposition, or as I usually call it, your Core Marketing Message, is still misunderstood by most professionals. It's not just a tagline, sound bite or even an "Audio Logo.
    The Trust Issue In Marketing
    One of the prime motivating factors in the purchase decision making process is "trust". A consumer will at some point for however long or short of a time, ask the question, "Can I trust this company/person/product?"In today's ever-changing world of marketing, electronic media, email, and advertising innovations and intrusions, companies, and businesses are marketing to an ever increasingly suspicious consumer, who is conflicted between their desire not to be "sold" to and their desire to consume.
    Brand Value - Brand Identity Guru
    Successful Guru marketers have a secret weapon that they use every single time they communicate about their businesses. It's one of those intangibles that are easily misunderstood.
    Does Your Message Pass the Test?
    Develop an effective benefit message and you're well on your way to building your company's entire marketing program. After all, you need focus to create success.
    Brand Value Plan - Brand Identity Guru
    Developing brand value is critical to every organization and when professionally executed, delivers a clear and measurable competitive advantage to your firm. It does so by helping you establish a positive connection and value-relationship with your customer, which, over time, will build brand equity and increase brand value.
    Brand Boring or Brand Buzz?
    I heard an advertisement on the radio the other day that surprised me, not because they were saying anything noteworthy, but because it was so banal. It was a national company's ad.
    Brand Identity - Corporate Identity and Brand Value
    Companies work hard building the strength of their brands - it is critical to the ongoing brand management process to have meaningful and actionable data-driven measures of these efforts.Building a brand, cultivating its strengths, pruning its weaknesses, and making it more valuable to its owners is the bottom line job of marketing.
    Brand to Sell Well
    Branding is an application of appropriate marketing techniques in the right proportion to a product. Brand management is to manage the forces in a market suitably to win favors for the product.
    Franchisor Policies for Unlicensed or Sold Territories
    Franchisors often have issues when they own a brand which has service vehicles; where franchisees wish to operate in non-franchise assigned territories. We had this as a re-occurring issue in our franchise system.
    Im Just Starting, Why Do I Need a Logo Design?
    Businesses eager to open often give little thought to their identity.With so much to get done, designing an appropriate logo hardly seemslike a top priority.
    Branding Your Radio or TV Campaign With A Musical Identity (aka Audo Logo, aka Jingle)
    You don't think twice about a business card and letterhead logo for the visual aspect of your campaign, why not an audio logo to brand your broadcast campaign?With the magic of music you can capture the personality of your business, create an emotional connection to your target audience and get recall & branding recognition (in some instances with people tapping their feet and singing your company name) even when you are not on the air.The majority of advertisers use the free production services that radio and TV stations offer to save money.
    What the Heck is Branding and Why Should I Care?
    There's been a lot of buzz lately about branding. But what exactly is it, and who needs to do it? Simply put, a brand is what makes your business uniquely YOU! It's the way you present your business and how the world perceives it.
    Self-Marketing: The I Focus
    Ever had one of those conversations where you wondered what the topic was and the only word you could identify was "I"?As a marketer, I often recommend marketing yourself. However, there comes a point, rather quickly in any conversation when the other person tires of hearing "I".
    The Role of a Visual Vocabulary in Brand Identity Design
    Visual elements are a major part of your business's brand identity design. The keystone of that design is the logo, but in many cases, the logo isn't enough to convey all of your brand attributes.
    Branding: Bring Back the Jingle!
    Did you grow up in the '70s and '80s? If so, you probably have a slew of campy jingles from various TV commercials filed away in your brain. Today, advertisers still use jingles to help identify their brand, but not nearly as much as they did "back in the day.