How can I tackle branding issues and what benefits would there be?

Answer: There are lots of reasons for effective branding but the most compelling is to support a premium price. People rely on experience and their often long held attitudes about a brand.

Often these values are focused on one specific market segment. So the product becomes differentiated, easy to identify and is usually high quality. This brings an emotional affinity to the product by members of the target segment.

Brands used to be the preserve of consumer goods manufacturers, but today even the smallest organisation must be aware of the value of their brand image - for this is how customers see you. It sets the operating style for the organisation. You only have to look at an untidy disorganised building site, a mucky building materials lorry or be played 'Greensleeves', while being kept on hold by the switchboard, to know how it can affect a company's brand image. Market research can establish what the customers' brand values are - and the extent to which your company and your competitors are satisfying them. A brand development project, will include a plan to help the organisation to develop its brand to position itself, differentiate itself from its competitors and to fulfil its customers' needs more closely. When we carry out an Audit of Customer Service levels (ŠACE) we can customise the questionnaire to include questions covering brand value and performance.

The difficulty is that a great deal of effort has to go into creating a brand but once that is done then it can be destroyed very quickly. For that reason every brand should have a brand strategy that is communicated and lived throughout the organisation. That means defining what your organisation is doing to support these brand values and what it is doing to destroy them. The diagram shows how a well managed brand brings very loyal customers and how a poor attempt at switching users to the brand can build more loyalty for rival brands. The trick is to find out what features and benefits members of the target segment want, make sure the product has them and then communicate that.

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