As we have seen before, a brand is stored in the mind for the prospect and customer by way of impressions. Not as chunks of information or facts. A brand is an emotional experience that is predicated on, and driven by a promise made to a customer.
That makes branding the process of building a positive collection of perceptions in your customer's mind.
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But to have a prominent and preferred position in the customer's mind, a brand needs to stand out. For the most part, this is done by establishing a unique selling proposition (USP). In advertising, this is the characteristic of a product or service that differentiates it from its competitors.
For Marketing Monday this week, we share with you a very insightful presentation from Neutron LLC titled 'The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance between Business Strategy and Design.'
The immediate take-aways from this lengthy presentation is that:
1. A brand is not a logo
2. A brand is not an identity
3. A brand is not a product.
It is a person's gut feeling about a product, service or organization.
So how do you build your brand from bland to remarkable? This is achieved by making your brand charismatic. This means a product, service or organization for which people believe there's no substitute.
To achieve this, there are five disciplines of brand building that one needs to master:
1. Differentiate
2. Collaborate
3. Innovate
4. Validate
5. Cultivate
There is much more insights not highlighted here. And there is also a Kindle edition of 'The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance between Business Strategy and Creativity.'
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From The Brand Gap, we learn that the main purpose of branding is to get more people to buy more stuff for more years and at a higher price.
Once you get the branding essentials right, we bet you'll be all smiles on your brand new computer and a bright future in sales...
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