What do Strong Brands have in common

If you are running a company and mostly you cater to a B2C Market, Branding your company is something you cannot avoid. You need to sell and getting your product visible is one of the quickest ways to make your customer get hands on your product. The next step obviously comes with the quality and the differentiating technique you have used to keep up your Brand loyalty.  However the first step always needs to be right.

Major Companies having Deep Pockets, do not hesitate putting in extra efforts to make their Brand visible hence building up their Brand Equity.  However, at the end of the day a rank from agencies label the Brands of how influential they really are. What determines who goes ahead in the ranks and who gets the second place. Is it the Money Spent in getting your Brand Visible or is it the Global Reach of your Brand or how many people actually relate to your Product.

Apart from your Brand, being the Market Leader in your Domain, if you come to consider the above three in most of the cases of the world a right mix of three is needed.  It is very much possible that you haven’t spent as much as your neighbor Brand did and still manage to edge ahead of it in the competition.

In Forbes list of top four Brands, three are occupied by the giants in Technology Sector. The competition winner is Apple however.

As per Forbes, Apple spent around $933 M to advertise itself which is comparatively lot lesser than some of the other brands which made it to the list. Apple did not go out for heavy advertising to build its Brand Value. In fact a lot of time, Apple Products sell in the market as the customers are influenced by the Brand Value it offers.

Firstly, a Brand if recognized by the customer, it definitely has a value. Now the more number of people in its target audience, recognizing the Brand, Higher the Brand Value goes. Now, this can be done by advertising and positioning. However just Advertising the Brand, might definitely get you awareness but Customer Experience is the other thing that makes a difference to your Value.

In Many cases, it is possible that a Brand does not spend much on Advertising, however the Experience or Image it creates in the minds of its audience is very positive. For Instance, TATA Group in India. The major Brand Value of TATA is derived by the experience of Products it has given to its customers over the years that people in India believe in it without giving a second thought.

What does your Brand Communicate?? What does the customer think of your Brand, when they see it. McDonald!!! Does it give an image of Burger?? Yes it does, but that is when you are really hungry, else you mostly either think of Ronald the Joker or the line ‘ I M Loving It!!!’. It produces an image of a good time with Family or Friends. The positive feel it induces among the Individuals. McDonald majorly caters to Middle Class Demographics though there is no hard bound rule to that. McDonald over the years is known by every individual in the country it caters. However, what the line ‘I M Loving It’ does or Ronald gives you to take home is that when you come to McD, you will just love it. It does not talk of the quality of food its offering you, the affordable price which obviously will add to the experience but the major pulling point is ‘You will Love It’.

It is built in such a way that the audience relates to it. Experts somewhere believe that Audience relating to your brand is the most important factor. McDonald sometime ago categorized its major target audience as Middle Class Youth. Every part of its Campaign was built basing on the relationship it can build with its target audience.

However, it is not always Advertising and relating the brand to your audience is what will do the trick. If McDonald would have done all these but its products or services would not have complimented the audience they are trying to gather. McDonald would have just been a recognized Brand over the world. The Brand Value would not have been leveraged.

So, it is not just your Ad Campaigns but understanding entire about the target audience you want to gather and of course a mix of all other attributes of Global Reach, how much did you advertise gives your Brand the upper hand. None of these can be missed while you plan how your Brand should reach the audiences.