Branding and Beyond

Experts say that brands enhance the product's perceived value to the customer and thus increase the brand franchise and brand equity. For marketers it is an implied promise that the level of quality which people have come to expect from a brand will continue with present and future purchases of the same product.

Mr Carlton Curtis, Vice President Corporate Communication of Coca Cola has a given an interesting way of defining brands. He says ““If all of Coca Cola’s assets were destroyed overnight, whoever owned the Coca Cola name could walk into a bank the next morning and get a loan to rebuild everything”. So how such strong brands are built? Can we or you build a brand? How long does it take to build a brand? There are many such questions which we want to seek an answer for when we read stories of brands like Mercedes Benz, Coca Cola, Volkswagen etc.

Brands are built on the strong foundation of consistent product performance, right pricing strategy and right media and communication mix. In yester years, when hordes of media options were not available; the brands had to depend solely on performance. The reason for this was that then WOM (Word of Mouth) was the fastest mode of communication which was reliable and had right effect while other forms of media were underdeveloped and their effect was quite negligible.

In fact even today WOM is the best mode of brand building, but yes the brands are lucky today as different forms of media options are available to support and take their messages to the right target audience. This media options have given rise to a latest trend in communication called Integrated Brand Communications or 360 degree communication, it uses all the media options available like print ads, tvc, internet, hoardings, events and other forms of OOH media to communicate one single message to the TA. Thus the target audience just cannot dare to ignore the message. Needless to say that this effective use of media has become a prominent tool for brand building today.