Branding – Your Strongest Strategic Asset

Branding Positioning

In the midst of the ongoing economic crisis in South Sudan, many companies and businesses think of reducing their expenditures, layoff of employees, freezing other services that may not input directly into production of goods or services or basically adopting defensive/retrenchment strategies that may favour existence and operation of their businesses. These strategies could probably be your best response as an organization or business in such a period of recession and downturn. Nonetheless, such a situation can also be a period where management should become more strategic, observant and ready to review all its operations and assets (both tangible and intangible). Have you ever thought of your brand as one of those few strategic assets available in your company that can provide a long-lasting competitive advantage? It’s no surprise that most companies and businesses think of their brand merely as the name, term, logo/symbol, design or combination of these. Well, a brand can have much deeper meaning to the success and failure of your business. Your brand is not the name of your product or services. The foundation of your brand is your logo, the website, packaging and promotional materials that communicate your brand. Now, what exactly is a brand? A brand is the vision that drives the creation of products and services under that name. For instance, your vision can be to offer affordable quality products or services, efficient door-to-door delivery, safety measures, or producing environmentally friendly goods. The key belief of brand and its core values is the brand identity. How, what, where, when and to whom you want to communicate and deliver your product or service or message is your brand strategy. Brands, along with Research & Development (R&D), a real consumer orientation, an efficiency culture (cost cutting),

employee involvement, and the capacity to change and react rapidly are the organization’s most valuable assets, according to Strategic Brand Management. A strong brand is key to commercial success by providing the following main advantages: • High Brand Equity – Consumers prefer a particular brand over others, based primarily on their perception of the brand and the value. So does your brand stand for all the good reasons whether in terms of product or service in education or hospitality? • Increased product/service awareness – One of the key roles of advertising is to build awareness, and an easily recognized brand makes that task much more achievable. • Higher likelihood of repeat purchases – human beings instinctively avoid unnecessary risk. Buying things represents at least a financial risk in that money may be wasted if the product is not fit for purpose. Consequently, people tend to buy repeatedly from brand that they bought before and found to be satisfactory to reduce such risk. • Retail leverage – consistent branding and high brand equity grants your brand a purchasing power to set prices and dictate terms of purchase and sales. • Competitive edge – branding your product and service helps your brand have commercial advantages over other brands in your industry. In conclusion, when branding a product or service you should be tactical in selection of slogan and promotional materials. They should be consistent and complimenting the product, services or the industry you are operating in. Coca-Cola has been using consistent advertisement slogan and branding material over a century since its invention to sustain its brand identity in the mind of people. Coca Cola uses its iconic, timeless logo and focuses on coherent advertisement slogans in presenting Coke as having a refresher, happiness, good times and friends drink. Their latest campaign globally “Taste the Feeling” features happy people enjoying the simple joys of life with their significant others and friends. This is what an innovative advertisement and branding look like. It should be simple, easily recognized and speaks for itself. Today, Coca Cola has gained ultimate brand loyalty from many generations who have drunk, loved and shared their insights about Coke. The most effective way to brand you product or service is, first, through consistence in your theming of advertisement campaign and promotional materials. Give them a regular voice of what you stand for or what you are promoting. Secondly, consider getting your customers’ insight or feedback. If possible, let them have a say about your products or services and how they have transformed their lives or satisfied them. And these could increase your brand identity, gain customers or target audience loyalty and increase sales.