The Myth That Is Apparently Doing Damage To Branding

Jeff Bezos is widely quoted as saying, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in the room.”

This quote sums up everything to understand BRANDING and the impact of it. Branding is all about bringing the right perception of your brand in the minds of your customer base. Branding is a necessity, it’s a need more than a want for a brand, to foster the image and impact of what your brand is all about.

It is often seen that branding isn’t taken seriously. If we see around, branding is an underrated term and underestimated factor. Branding is underserved. Most of the times we end up counting the branding with the web design, brand’s logo, or say tagline. It doesn’t end here, it is where the trouble begins.

And the trouble is the myth that damages the whole perception about branding and misleads a business. For the short term impact or long term (both matter), it actually ruins every connection related to the brand, and the scenario of re-branding is what taken up at the front then.

The myth is the mix of Marketing and Advertising with Branding. With the conjectures that have been made spontaneously lead to that brutal mix, they spoil the art of Branding! To put in a nutshell in a layman language, marketing is knowing what people want while advertising is telling people that you have it. This nowhere brings the connection with the branding and this myth is actually doing the damage.

Don’t you get engrossed with those Stardom feels of a star? Yes, this is what branding brings into a business, and makes it your brand which you love to carry and show to everyone. Every teammate is actually a brand ambassador of your brand, so is every customer. Every brand craves for a positive (and right) brand image and is always open to feedbacks to improvise and acquire a loyal user-base.

But the myth is the spoiler alert here! So the question is why does it happen? It is understandable why brand managers have been assembled with marketing executives. Before you put the fingers at me, let me clear this, they need to work together at times to gather the need and the want, and plan the strategies but the theorems are completely different, so before they write “hence proved”, they have to make sure that the output doesn’t turn out zero (read disappointment).

Brand managers have to deliver the brand promise, Marketing executives have to deliver the need and Advertising leads have to bring the conversion of the users. And when every single mate of your team interacts with the consumer, they have to perpetuate the brand value, bringing the positive (and right) image to the brand and leveraging the business to the new heights. Before all this, unlearn the myth.

There is a need to check and walk the talk with the strategies for brand awareness and let the customer talk about it (what we call it, word-of-mouth). It works, and it works a lot.

Hold on, before heading towards the customers (yes, startups, please listen), make sure, your team size is 2 or 200, everybody should know about the brand very clearly so that no message goes wrong out of the workplace. If they don’t know, make them learn about it, don’t leave them with just an idea, because it can kill you, I mean brand, chill! And, if you think you can manage it by changing your logo, my friend, you have already lost it.

If you did something wrong with the branding, trust me, the scaling and effectiveness of marketing and advertising strategies turn out low as if you don’t like something, you just don’t like it, regardless of how much they brag about it, you don’t like it. And it is easy to understand a NO than to say listen and the voice echoes back, it’s still a NO. So if you don’t want to hear the NO, make sure, the image of your brand in the minds of your targeted segments is quite right (yes, right). Otherwise, they won’t like it.

Branding, in every way, impacts everything you do for your business (get more inputs here). Branding is the push which drives the force that your customers are going to pull. No matter it’s about a coffee at Starbucks or a product on Ebay. Wait, what did I just say, Ebay? Cut that, and replace it with Amazon. This is what branding does to a business. Sorry, Ebay, I don’t trust you.

Know your customers and let customers know “right” about you.

Let the marketing be marketing, and advertising be advertising. What you want them to know about you is your dear brand. Evolve with branding, don’t complicate it, don’t trouble it, and don’t mislead your business, because it takes years to develop a good relation and a second to ruin it.

Your choice, your brand, and if you still have your doubts, please hire me.

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Hey, there? This article has been picked to be republished under the ‘Best of TNT’ series. It is a step further for the content to be contagious to make it counted yet again and for the ones who missed it!