Guest Lecturer

Branding

• Branding is a new-ish business tool
• Brand, trademark and goodwill weigh much more heavier than the actual product
• The power of branding is based mostly on recognition. If you recognise the logo of for instance the following brands you can ensure that the company has paid a lot of time and effort into reaching their position, even with a simple drawing of a logo and simple colours combined without the name of the company it can be easily recognised. 

• There are different positioning categories for different companies as to where they place themselves within the market. Based on the different target audiences and price points that they each distinguish themselves by. For ex: Waitrose vs. Asda, if we take waitrose we can see that their target audience is a high income household where as asda is targeted for low income household who save every dime and buy products in a very precise way and preferably being at a low price. Although they are both in the same field they are positioned differently within the market. 
• Different companies use different story telling to send their companies overall message across to the consumer, that is usually done through ads and campaigns.

For example: 

BMW gives a sense of escapaism, adventure, luxury, etiquette and passion. We can see through this ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gan-BYQdGDk all of these words being described. 

Nike gives a sense of confidence and building self esteem in their customer as well as courage and strength shown through their slogan 'just do it'. 

There are different aspects of brands that help make it successful and achieve its goals and position:

• Design- As Steve Jobs said "Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service." The consistency of design through the apple products is evidential which makes them lead the industry of technology.
• Customer relationship- Wherever you may be around the world it is most likely that you will find a starbucks that will be able to provide you with your perfect tall macchiato in the way you like it or have a Big Mac just how you are used to eating it back home, that it is essence of customer relationship.

It is important for a brand to focus on its values, mission, their point of difference and adaptability. When HSBC decided to become the world leading bank they knew exactly how to make it happen, by fitting it! By fitting into each culture and designing the bank to suit each society they have won the world over, in Bahrain they use islamic banking services for example.