What is a Brand?
There seems to be some confusion with people surrounding their understanding of what a brand actually is. In our opinion, building & nurturing a powerful brand is the most important strategy that a business must focus on to stand out from their competition. The market is often cluttered and business’s need to build their own tribe of followers, i.e. those people who believe in what they believe in.
Tribes
We all know those brands that have built strong tribes, who are emotionally attached to the brand i.e.: Apple, Coca Cola, Nike etc. For example take Coca Cola, their Chief financial officer cannot put a value on their balance sheet as to what their brand is actually worth, but they are clear on one thing that it is worth more than the sum total of all of their assets and is therefore priceless to them. In the 1980’s Coca Cola decided to scrap the original taste of Coke and invested billions of dollars rolling out the new flavour Coke all over the world. They made a fatal mistake though and never considered the reaction their Tribe would have. There were customer help lines setup to deal with people all over the world who saw the brand as part of their life and who hated the new flavour Coke. Coca Coca were forced to reverse their decision and reinstate the original flavour coke which cost them a lot of money. Sales of original Coke then rocketed and they over took Pepsi with some saying it was a clever marketing strategy. It wasn’t, they just got it very wrong and some heads were chopped following the fiasco.
So always assess your brand through the eyes of your customers, remember its not what you think that counts it’s what they say that matters!