Creating a successful brand and branding strategy
Branding has become a vital part of every organisation’s marketing strategy.
Small start-up companies, multi-national corporations, public sector departments and non-profit making organisations all use branding to provide a clearly recognisable, distinct and unique identity.
It’s easy to think of branding as the clever use of a well-designed company logo or namestyle but it should be much more than this.
Branding encompasses all aspects of an organisation’s relationships or associations. It governs how your organisation is viewed by those individuals and bodies with which it interacts.
The term ‘branding’, not unsurprisingly, comes from the custom of branding cattle in North America but when applied to organisations it means the management of these associations to make business and operations more successful.
It is virtually impossible to control every aspect of a brand as there are many external influences. However, properly conceived, devised and applied, branding can have a major impact on the way in which an organisation is perceived and, ultimately, how successful it is in achieving its objectives.
A brand can be the result of careful planning and the management of activities or it can grow from the experiences of those who interact with your organisation.
Even without a clear branding strategy or management of a brand, good, bad or indifferent associations will develop and people will form opinions of what the brand stands for purely from their dealings with the organisation.
The objective of developing a branding strategy is to exercise as much influence on these opinions as possible and manage the brand properly in order to achieve positive outcomes.
