DB Brand Works

Why Brand Positioning Strategy is important for Digital Marketing

Deepak Bhatia — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 16:52:42 +0000

- 20 March 2020 - By Deepak Bhatia When it comes to Digital marketing all companies think is revenue and lead generation. Social Media marketing whether organic or paid is focused on lead generation. Not complaining, but what ever happened to your core function on digital platform - “to engage” with your audience. But is creating engagement with you audience so easy? I wish. As the audience on Digital has evolved in the last 10 years so have the platforms and so have the rules to do digital marketing. It’s no longer that your TG will be impressed with your likes, people following you, shares, etc. stats. Simple, because they don’t care. All your TG on digital wants is info, smart info. Info which they can connect with and one that makes a relation with their consumer aspirations. If your digital brand fails to gauge this, no paid likes can help your business either. What to do? Create a brand positioning for your digital brand as part of your digital Marketing strategy. A concise brand positioning always keeps a brand on digital and social media “safe”. Yes you heard that right.Safe.Why so? Simply because when you have a clear brand positioning for your brand that reflects on the digital Marketing platform as well, you further can define your brand aspirations in line with your TG aspirations via several exercises such as Brand Persona Mapping, Semiotics studies Digital brand voice, digital brand messaging,etc.All of these work together in tandem to help you achieve the brand essence and brand personality in order to not just create brand awareness and brand noise but also eventual lead generation. Now imagine using this entire crux in your SEO. Voila! There you have it. The right mix of ingredients for a successful digital campaign. Also, keep in mind that there are plenty of graphic communications projects out there that do not need a brand strategy; they just need effective graphic design.But that isn’t the case when it comes to Digital Marketing Communications. Finally, I believe something as organizationally and strategically important as an arts organization’s visual image should be driven by a brand strategy, not solely a design strategy. But are advertising agencies really able to gather an understanding on your Brand Positioning? In most cases no because the focus is simply on making a brand campaign that can quickly go viral. Brand Design agencies or Brand strategy agencies though have their pros in general but the effect has weaned off over the past several years. Digital Brand Positioning strategies can be conceived and arrived upon in several ways. It can be derived from the brand attributes, competition, core application, the types of consumers involved, platform features such as Instagram or LinkedIn or Quora , the features of the product or service. All these attributes represent a different approach in developing positioning even though all of them have the common objective of projecting a favorable image in the minds of the online consumers or audience.

The post Why Brand Positioning Strategy is important for Digital Marketing appeared first on DB Brand Works.

Why Companies need Brand Design and not just Numbers to Grow Business

Deepak Bhatia — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 16:40:54 +0000

- By Deepak Bhatia - -20 March 2020 A couple of days ago, I failed rather miserably to convince the CEO of a large diversified company that design is a badly needed investment for them. The company has been flat-lining revenue and has seen a steadily eroding bottom-line over the last decade. Market leadership of the past is no longer their reality. Competition, an ever more demanding consumer and not much new at their end has led to a steady decline in profits over many years now. Now more than ever, the company needs consumers who PREFER the brand, are LOYAL to the brand and are also able to ATTRACT a new consumer base to fuel growth. Preference, Loyalty and Attraction are emotional decisions. Rational things like price, specifications, service etc – only ratify an emotional decision. The most successful brands in the world, the fastest growing brands in the world and the brands with the most loyal customer base- are all brands that trigger an emotional response from their audience. These decisions are made made in the limbic brain – the part of the brain that is responsible for emotions. Unlike the neo-frontal cortex where language is processed, mathematics and logic reside, the limbic brain processes images, and other sensory stimuli. For the desired outcome, the brand needs to connect with the consumer at the emotional level – not through words and bullet point rationale, but through sensory branding that delights and converts. And drives a new generation of customers to adopt the brand. Design does not simply mean a pretty picture, aesthetically balanced. Rather, it is a specific solution that triggers affinity and adoption in the amygdala that resides deep in the limbic brain. Amygdalae perform a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making and emotional responses. To arrive at this incisive trigger, there is needed a tremendous rigor in decoding the visual world of a brand, category and consumers – understanding the role of color and fonts, and then creating a visual system that supports the brand. Since this is not a measurable or quantifiable activity such as say a quantitative analysis, or even advertising that suggests an input -output causation, design is frequently seen as extraneous to a business transformation exercise. “Design is fluff. A visual ‘nice to have’ – not essential to the turnaround of business!!!” “Can you give us the same at 1/4 the cost?” “Our advertising agency will give us the logo for free – as a part of their retainer!” “Why can’t you do this in two weeks?” “Why don’t you take the color from option A and tweak option B?” “This does not say anything. How do we know what consumers will think?” These are common questions – and the design fraternity has done little to answer these persuasively and convincingly. Brand rejuvenation heralding new energy of the management, the new intent in product design and a new thrust towards innovations and new business areas is essential business strategy. It cannot be seen as a cost. It is an investment. A logo is much like a bar code. All the perceptions about the brand attach themselves to a logo – and unfold when our brains scan it. Logos need to be powerful repositories of such information – at once both uniquely differentiated to be distinct from others, and also simple enough to be memorable. Brands that leverage design can cut through clutter and establish their leadership faster. It is time that board rooms across the world woke up to the power of design.

The post Why Companies need Brand Design and not just Numbers to Grow Business appeared first on DB Brand Works.

HOW TO GET THE BEST PACKAGING DESIGN FOR YOUR PRODUCT

Deepak Bhatia — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 05:42:59 +0000

If you are planning your product packaging redesign for your product and going through several color,varints,fonts and images option,the question is do you end up being more sorted or confused? The answer lies in whether you really understand the concept of packaging design testing. The objective of this packaging design testing is to filter out several likeable options to arrive at the most relevant option which suits your customer preferences, their purchase intent and their brand value for your brand. Hence, designing packaging should first start from a strategic design perspective wherein someone like a Brand strategy design agency or brand strategy Consultant can help you decide what your actual Brand positioning is in the market rather than what you perceive. Then, after you have arrived at the actual brand essence for your brand which then you should use it to strategically design yourbrand packaging designoptions. The focus should be a mix of function + visual appeal. You should collect plenty of data for your prospective packaging designs from your earlier brand immersion:

Observational research
Online surveys
Guided assessments
In-depth one-on-one interviews

This is the info you used to shortlist of options. However for your redesign, you’ll be going beyond basic research and testing your packaging options against your biggest competitors to see how your option matches up. Now when you have these options, you shortlist using a few Product design testing techniques:

In-Person Displays

The most common technique testing strategy is to set up a physical display that mimics the target audience’s actual shopping experience. The objective here is to seehow users react to real-life displays and see how each packaging option fares in the retail shopping environment. Consumers especially in supermarkets have a tendency to check out a packaging design from a distance 10 ft.( when they enter a supermarket or a hypermarket), distance of 5 ft. ( when thee observe the pack while they are in the aisle of the section) and 2 ft.( when they actually see the product on the shelf)

Virtual Storefront Displays

You can even set up online virtual displays that simulate the shopping environment and let viewers look at products side-by-side. This is an easy way to get substantial amounts of data for relatively little work. Compared to the hassle of setting up in-person displays, virtual storefronts for product comparison are super easy to implement.

Instinctive Responses

Ask the customers what they saw first in the pack design, what element caught their attention, the colour, and thenfont, what appealed to them the most. FAQs you should focus upon:

How engaging is each package design?
Is the product understood quickly while the customer sees the pack?
Will the pack design affect the frequency of the purchase?
What kind of pricing expectations do customers have based on the packaging?

There’s a lot to cover here, so you’ll need to make sure you perform enough tests with big enough sample sizes to make the data worthwhile. The more data you have, the better, though you’ll likely need to balance your need for data against your budget and redesign timeline.

The post HOW TO GET THE BEST PACKAGING DESIGN FOR YOUR PRODUCT appeared first on DB Brand Works.

Consumer Perspectives of Cultural Branding

Deepak Bhatia — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 05:40:56 +0000

According to the report, 25% of product purchase decisions are led by cultural relevance. A brand attaching itself to culture, which the study also learned is a term as big as the side of a barn, is nearly as important as having a strong brand image. Brands fight for mindshare and this research indicates that there is an opportunity for companies to tap into the power of culture. The survey asked 865 consumers about their opinions regarding brand involvement with culture, and perhaps not surprisingly, the survey found that the brands that are “culturally relevant are brands that align well with cultural events, promote trends that define today’s culture, and support social issues that benefit everyone.” Not just that consumers are OK with it, but consumers think it’s important for being involved—giving back, philanthropy this pointing out that a survey found that 58% of consumers agree that brands should be philanthropic. “A lot of consumers expect it for brands to be involved. But what “culture” means has shifted. The research looked at definitions of “culture” and found that 83% of consumers think of the term as something beyond the traditional notions of family, food, language, or religion. Instead, respondents also include “pop culture” (music, arts, social trends, etc) and “current affairs” (sports, current events, politics) into the culture bucket. Brands, the survey suggests, should take notice. Culture, according to Stephanie Prager, global head of agency development at Twitter, “is broad-based, and how you identify what those cultural moments are that are relevant and resident to your brand is where we start to be able to be more targeted in how brands can actually inject and interject themselves in those moments.” While product price represented 25% of a consumer’s purchasing decision making, the perception of a brand—the brand attributes and qualities—pushes 31% of the decision-making process.And that’s where there’s opportunity for brands. Greg Longstreet, CEO of Del Monte, explained how the packaged food company has put “sustainability” at the heart of its messaging. Its recent campaign, Growers of Good, is a “holistic approach” to working with family farmers, protecting the environment and producing nutritious foods, Longstreet said. “It’s very much interwoven in our values and beliefs,” he said, adding the company has increased its marketing spend 25% on media to support the Growers of Good message.

The post Consumer Perspectives of Cultural Branding appeared first on DB Brand Works.

BRAND STRATEGY VS DESIGN STRATEGY

Deepak Bhatia — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 05:38:47 +0000

Behind every successful brand, there is usually a well-defined, coherent strategy. In all reputable branding agencies, before a brand identity is created, and before any work begins on designing the brand expressions and envisioning the brand experience, strategic design thinking analyses and defines all aspects of the brand: its proposition (what), its purpose (why), its brand positioning (where and how), and its brand personality and values (who). It is this intellectual foundation that governs the creation of an effective and relevant brand. A Brand Strategy contains at a minimum:

An identification of, and recommendations to resolve, an arts organization’s major communications issues (e.g. misperceptions to correct, new ideas to communicate, organization issues that needed to be rectified to ensure effective communications).
An analysis of the audiences with whom you want to communicate.
A Position Statement that focuses people internally on how think about your organization and is used to inform critical organization messages and visual identity.
Key Image Attributes, almost personality traits, for your organization that need to be communicated via messages or visuals. These often suggest graphic identity development.
Primary Organization Messages, and supplementary ones, that always need to be communicated about your organization.

Sure, there are variations on the names for the components that I list, but the components are pretty much consistent across the board. A BrandDesign Strategy always has a graphic design outcome at its core. A Brand Design Strategy could include a number of components including:

A Creative Brief based on and is informed by the communications issues that were identified in the Brand Strategy.
A visual analysis of comparable and/or competitive arts organizations’ graphic identities.
An analysis of an arts organization’s current and possibly past graphic identities with an opinion on which aspects that may have accrued equity over time.
An analysis of the symbology and meaning behind current or proposed graphic directions.
An analysis and recommendation on the various design directions that could be followed to create an arts organization’s graphic identity.
Design studies of layouts, image styles, typefaces, and/or colors

Keep in mind that I think a brand strategy and a design strategy are both important, however I believe that design strategy should stem from brand strategy. Also, keep in mind that there are plenty of graphic communications projects out there that do not need a brand strategy, they just need effective graphic design. Finally, I believe something as organizationally and strategically important as an arts organization’s visual image should be driven by a brand strategy, not solely a design strategy. I hope this helps better clarify and identify services that you need, are asking for, and are being offered.

The post BRAND STRATEGY VS DESIGN STRATEGY appeared first on DB Brand Works.

All About Consumer Insights that every Marketer should know

Deepak Bhatia — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 05:36:20 +0000

As marketing professionals, we should always be observing our customers: Their habits, behavior, and feedback serve as a yardstick for measuring the strength of your company's relationship with its customers. And if you're not watching your customers, someone else—probably your competition—is. One way to understand customer metrics is to compare it to driving your car. When you're behind the wheel, there's a lot happening: You're constantly monitoring the vehicle's metrics, such as speed, engine temperature, and fuel levels, along with observing traffic and road conditions. There's no justification for not bringing the same level of monitoring to your customers. A customer insight, or consumer insight, is an interpretation of trends in human behaviors which aims to increase effectiveness of a product or service for the consumer, as well as increase sales for mutual benefit. Customer insight analysis allows you to identify patterns in their buying, learn about their business operation, including product lines and find out exactly what's important to them. ... You'll also be able to build stronger relationships with your customers as your conversations will always be relevant to them. Here are five steps marketing professionals can take:

Continually monitor customer activity

Marketers should always be reviewing customer information. Metrics have quickly become the lifeblood of marketing, and modern measurement tools make it far easier than ever to produce stronger analyses in near real-time. As data pours in, you should be reviewing primary results while keeping an eye on the secondary information: Primary data refers to total sales, what products/services are the top sellers, the revenue generated, and the primary channel source. Secondary information can provide insight into the geographic regions, time of day, type of customer, purchase volume, product category breakdown, and price levels. So what are some of the most effective ways to gather customer insight? A strong customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as Salesforce, is one of the best tools available. It addition to being able to capture detailed customer contact information, a CRM solution allows you to analyze granular data and find common threads.

Ask for input

You can get feedback from your customers in a lot of ways. Surveys are probably one of the most widely used vehicles, but companies need to move beyond just scratching the surface of customer insight. Customer preferences can change in an instant, and trying to accurately measure customer behavior can at times seem like trying to nail Jello to a wall. But asking the right questions and using the proper feedback vehicle can help you get a clear understanding. A basic survey asking about favorability toward a product is one method, but it's limited. Having customers rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5 is a start; though valuable and necessary, it gives you only a single data point of customer opinion, and it's difficult to ask follow-up questions to probe a bit deeper for insight into the intensity of the response. In-person interviews/surveys can be more helpful. Selecting a handful of customers and asking open-ended questions lets you discover what keywords and phrases they use to describe your products, and give you an opportunity to keep an eye on their body language. These interviews always provide deep information that you can't get from just a standard survey. When conducting in-person interviews, it's also important to include not only your most loyal customers but also those who aren't as loyal. If you can talk with customers who also buy from your competition, all the better, since you'll learn why they're buying from the other guy and not you. 3.Build relationships Marketers are always on the lookout for influencers who can help attract new customers. Your top influencers are probably right in front of you. Satisfied customers are sometimes your best salespeople, and developing relationships with them can lead to strong word-of-mouth promotion, which turns into higher overall sales. Cultivating and maintaining relationships with customers is a vital step toward building customer loyalty and creating evangelists. It seems a simple idea, but it requires a tremendous amount of commitment from your entire company. The rewards, however, can be incredible. To build relationships, you must know your customers well. You'll then be able to identify potential influencers among them to cultivate them, which is why it's important to have a CRM system that can help you manage your marketing and communication process. This process, conducted properly, provides deep knowledge about your customers and gives you opportunities to reward loyalty with special deals, maintain an accurate record of feedback and communication, and spot downward trends before they turn into a landslide. Rather than being driven by a day of the week, contact can be based on specific actions, such as downloading a coupon, referring friends, or registering for a contest. If customers feel their needs are being met, or better yet, exceeded, they are more likely to speak favorably about your business and rate it highly on sites such as Yelp or Google reviews.

Measure twice, cut once

Experienced carpenters and woodworkers follow the mantra of measuring everything twice before cutting the lumber, because once the saw has trimmed the wood, there's no going back. The same can be said for marketing campaigns. Marketers already apply this principle when they ask their graphic design department to create several variations of an advertisement or brochure. Determining which option you prefer is a small version of A/B-testing. In this case, the marketing department is the customer. You may narrow it down to two designs, and test these on different external customer segments to determine which drives a stronger response. A/B-testing is smart business. It's prudent to test messages before engaging your full audience: If you blindly send an untested campaign to your entire customer base, it may be tough to recover if the campaign is ineffective. Understand communication channels It's a multichannel world. And the better you understand how your customers interact with it, the more effective your marketing campaigns will be. Customers don't get their information from a single communication silo, they get it from multiple sources, including social media, websites, email, radio, search engines, and television commercials. If you know how your customers use each to get information, the better you can harness the power of each channel. For example, understanding the advantages of the social media channels your customers use helps you stay in contact with them. You might offer special promotions to Twitter followers, make product announcements via Snapchat, and use Facebook as a customer support tool. A customer who has a bad experience might go to Facebook and complain to you and the rest of your followers. If you're engaged with Facebook, you can quickly help the customer and show others that you're a company that listens, wants to address problems, and values customer satisfaction. Accordingly, you build trust in your brand, sustain loyalty, and attract new customers. In 2015, a long-time frequent flyer was having problems with his account and was unsuccessful in reaching the airline to get the problem resolved. After many fruitless efforts, he tweeted the airline to get its attention. Still, no response. He did, however, catch the attention of a competitor, which said he could transfer all his miles and maintain his well-earned status. That's a big win of a major customer for the competition, and a big loss for the incumbent. Conclusion : As a marketing professional, you need to know your customers. They're more than just entries on a spreadsheet. Each has needs, and they've all determined that their needs can be met by your company. If you understand and manage the process for gaining customer insight, you will help your company continue to grow. If you don't, your competition certainly will swoop in and take those valuable customers away from you.

The post All About Consumer Insights that every Marketer should know appeared first on DB Brand Works.

BRAND STRATEGY FOR BEGINNERS

Deepak Bhatia — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 05:25:02 +0000

According to a Neilsen survey, 59% of consumers prefer to buy new products from brands familiar to them. As a small business, you may be competing against big brands with devoted customers and unlimited marketing budgets. That’s why you have to find ways to differentiate–with a solid brand building process of your own. Your brand is your reputation! Now, brand building being simple? The truth is: branding doesn’t happen overnight…or even in a few months. Building a brand is definitely a process. However, the ongoing effort will result in establishing long-term relationships with your customers. This can lead to a steady increase in sales, more projects, word-of-mouth referrals, and advocacy for your products or services. How do I develop a brand strategy? Now, we don’t get asked this all that often, however, without a brand strategy in place, you’re setting your brand up to fail. First of all: What is a brand strategy? Put simply, a brand strategy is a document that encompasses exactly what your brand is about. A well defined and developed brand strategy will touch on all aspects of your business in great detail. Your brand strategy should outline beliefs, visions, goals, and plans, that can all be achieved as your brand grows and develops. Your brand is not; Your logo, brand name, website, or your product. That forms part of your brand identity, which should reflect your brand strategy. My favourite definition of branding comes from Amazon Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos: Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room. And to control and guide that, you need to develop a brand development strategy that keeps your business and brand running in the right direction. Like anything else in life, you can get answers and start developing your brand strategy by asking the right questions. First things first though, make sure you’ve read The Ultimate Small Business Branding Guide, as that acts as a bit of a primer for this post. So, what are the 5 main questions should you be asking when developing your brand strategy? 1. What is Your Brand Mission, Brand Vision, and Brand Story? 2. Who Are Your Brand’s Target Customers? 3. What Problem Does Your Brand Solve? 4. Who Are Your Brand’s Competitors? 5. How Does Your Brand Acquire It’s Customers? Conclusion: How Do I Develop a Brand Positioning Strategy? Start off by answer the questions above. If you’ve never dug into developing a brand strategy before, then this should give you more than enough to be thinking about.

The post BRAND STRATEGY FOR BEGINNERS appeared first on DB Brand Works.

Classifying your Brand Personality – Using Brand Archetypes

Deepak Bhatia — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 14:33:42 +0000

It is human nature to perceive, classify and stereotype whatever we see. It could be a person, group, object, a mobile phone, clothes, culture, food, race, tradition, and even a belief system. Brands are nothing but perception. Like I said, its only human nature to even consider even brands of businesses as living beings. So one should not be surprised if brands can have personalities of their own.

In the world of Branding, Brand experts have used several brand measuring told and brand assessment models to arrive at the correct brand positioning strategy before launching a brand.

One of the most effective models of brand assessment and brand audit and which serves as an important weapon in the armor of any brand positioning strategy is the Brand Archetype.

What is a brand archetype?

Archetypes are a concept originally conceived by famed Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. In marketing, a brand archetype is a genre you assign to your brand, based upon symbolism. The idea behind using brand archetypes is to anchor your brand against something iconic—something already embedded within the conscious and subconscious of humanity. In the minds of both the brand owner and the public, aligning with a brand archetype makes the brand easier to identify.

In all there are 12 classified Archetypes devised by Carl Jung. They are as below:

Brand Archetype #1: The Sage

Motto: The truth will set you free.
Driving desire: to find the truth
Goal: to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world
Biggest fear: being duped, misled—or ignorance.
Strategy: seeking out information and knowledge; self-reflection and understanding thought processes
Weakness: can study details forever and never act
Talent: wisdom, intelligence
Also known as: expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, philosopher, academic, researcher, thinker, planner, professional, mentor, teacher, contemplative, guru
Archetype Brand Examples: BBC, CNN, Gallup, PBS

Brand Archetype #2: The Innocent

Motto: We are young and free.
Driving desire: to get to paradise
Goal: to be happy
Greatest fear: to be punished for doing something bad or wrong
Strategy: to do things right
Weakness: boring for all their naive innocence
Talent: faith and optimism
Also known as: utopian, traditionalist, naive, mystic, saint, romantic, dreamer
Archetype Brand Examples: Dove soap, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream

Brand Archetype #3: The Explorer

Motto: Don’t fence me in.
Driving desire: the freedom to find out who you are through exploring the world
Goal: to experience a better, more authentic, more fulfilling life
Biggest fear: getting trapped, conformity, and inner emptiness
Strategy: journey, seeking out and experiencing new things, escape from boredom
Weakness: aimless wandering, becoming a misfit
Talent: autonomy, ambition, being true to one’s soul
Also known as: seeker, iconoclast, wanderer, individualist, pilgrim

Brand Archetype #4: The Ruler

Quote: “He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.” ~ Aristotle
Motto: Power isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
Driving desire: control
Goal: create a prosperous, successful family or community
Strategy: exercise power
Greatest fear: chaos, being overthrown
Weakness: being authoritarian, unable to delegate, out of touch with reality
Talent: responsibility, leadership
Also known as: boss, leader, aristocrat, king, queen, politician, role model, manager or administrator
Archetype Brand Examples: IBM, Microsoft

Brand Archetype #5: The Creator

Motto: If you can imagine it, it can be done.
Driving desire: to create things of enduring value
Goal: to realize a vision
Greatest fear: mediocre vision or execution
Strategy: develop artistic control and skill
Task: to create culture, express own vision
Weakness: perfectionism, bad solutions
Talent: creativity and imagination
Also known as: artist, inventor, innovator, muse, musician, writer or dreamer
Archetype Brand Examples: Lego, Sony, Crayola

Brand Archetype #6: The Caregiver

Motto: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Driving desire: to protect and care for others
Goal: To help others
Greatest fear: selfishness and ingratitude
Strategy: doing things for others
Weakness: martyrdom, being exploited
Talent: compassion, generosity
Also known as: saint, altruist, parent, helper, supporter
Archetype Brand Examples: Lego, Sony, Crayola

Brand Archetype #7: The Magician

Motto: I make things happen.
Driving desire: understanding the fundamental laws of the universe
Goal: to make dreams come true
Greatest fear: unintended negative consequences
Strategy: develop a vision and live by it
Weakness: becoming manipulative
Talent: finding win-win solutions, making the complex appear simple
Also known as: visionary, catalyst, inventor, charismatic leader, shaman, healer, medicine man
Archetype Brand Examples: Disney, Tide

Brand Archetype #8: The Hero

Motto: Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Driving desire: to prove one’s worth through courageous acts
Goal: expert mastery in a way that improves the world
Greatest fear: weakness, vulnerability, being a “chicken”
Strategy: to be as strong and competent as possible
Weakness: arrogance, always needing another battle to fight
Talent: competence and courage
Also known as: warrior, crusader, rescuer, superhero, savior, soldier, dragon slayer, the winner, and the team player
Archetype Brand Examples: Nike, Ray Ban, Avengers

Brand Archetype #9: The Outlaw

Motto: You’re the only one.
Driving desire: intimacy and experience
Goal: being in a relationship with the people, work and surroundings they love
Greatest fear: being alone, a wallflower, unwanted, unloved
Strategy: to become more and more physically and emotionally attractive
Weakness: outward-directed desire to please others at risk of losing own identity
Talent: passion, gratitude, appreciation, and commitment
Also known as: partner, friend, intimate, enthusiast, sensualist, spouse, team-builder
Archetype Brand Examples: Victoria’s Secret, Durex, Lady Godiva, Hallmark

Brand Archetype #10: The Lover

Brand Archetype #11: The Jester

Motto: You only live once.
Driving desire: to live in the moment with full enjoyment
Goal: to have a great time and lighten up the world
Greatest fear: being bored or boring others
Strategy: play, make jokes, be funny
Weakness: frivolity, wasting time
Talent: joy
Also known as: fool, trickster, joker, practical joker or comedian
Archetype Brand Examples: Amul , M&M, Jim Carrey, Kapil Sharma, Motley Fool, Muppets

Brand Archetype #12: The Regular Guy/Girl

Motto: All men and women are created equal.
Driving desire: connecting with others
Goal: to belong
Greatest fear: to be left out or to stand out from the crowd
Strategy: develop ordinary solid virtues, be down to earth, the common touch
Weakness: losing one’s own self in an effort to blend in or for the sake of superficial relationships
Talent: realism, empathy, lack of pretense
Also known as: good old boy, everyman, the person next door, the realist, the working stiff, the solid citizen, the good neighbor, the silent majority
Archetype Brand Examples: Home Depot, WalMart, Visa

The post Classifying your Brand Personality – Using Brand Archetypes appeared first on DB Brand Works.

Strategic Brand Design – A Key to unlock your Brands potential

Deepak Bhatia — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 11:14:40 +0000

In a cut-throat world where every business person is trying to get a bigger customer pie, brands have had to go through an evolved journey. Especially in the last 15 years, brands are no longer famous only due to their TVCs or print campaigns.

In today's times, a parent company that has multiple children brands needs to carefully think strategically as to how to position each one of them as a wrong approach to brand positioning could facilitate brands eating out each other within the same parent group.

This is called as Market Cannibalism. The company that best showcases this process is Coca-Cola, when it started developing a wider catalog of drink brands such as Coca-Cola Light, Zero, Vanilla, Cherry and many more. As the market share of the original Coke went down, the marketing of these new drinks increased the company’s soda market share.

By doing this, the company’s intention is to harm their competition even more than they harm themselves in order to gain global market share.

However, to do this, before introducing a new product brand in the market, the parent brand has to decide whether to create this new brand within this umbrella or a completely separate brand with no connection to the parent umbrella. An Indian brand that best illustrates this is Fast track. For the first 2 years, no one realized that Fast track is a watch brand from the house of Tata that also sells Titan. As Titan had a different matured audience, Tata wanted to create a watch brand only for the youth or for those who want to feel youthful. There comes Fast track with super-fast millennial brand design and brand positioning – “ Move on”.One thing to notice is that Tata created a complete differentiated brand architecture here. I shall explore architecture more in my next article.

Hence, to achieve a relevant brand design positioning, one must first create a sequence to the brand strategy. This will vary for already created brands and for brands that are about to be created from scratch. In branding and marketing terminology, they are called Brand Rejuvenation and Brand Creation respectively.

For Brand Creation, the steps involved usually are as below:

1. Semiotics Study of the Product/service – Cultural evolution and its acceptance of the product/service

2. Semiotics study of the TG – Understanding the culture of the personas of your TG

3. Brand Immersion – A dipstick survey in the TG market. A face to face interview with the internal stakeholders of the brand owners w.r.t their perceived brand vision and understanding

4. Brand Audit - Competition Analysis and cross-category audit

5.Identifying the Brand Core – The actual functional offering

6. Identifying the Brand Personality – Where does the brand fit in the archetypes

7. Identifying the Brand Essence – The DNA that differentiates the brand from the competition

8. Final Brand Positioning – Compiling together steps 5,6 and 7

9. Strategic Brand Identity – Brand Design of the Identity based on the defined positioning

10. Brand Messaging – Creating messaging buckets out of the carved Brand Strategy for Integrated Marketing Communication

The post Strategic Brand Design – A Key to unlock your Brands potential appeared first on DB Brand Works.

Branding – Why it is Important [4 Golden Points]

Deepak Bhatia — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 23:31:55 +0000

If you ask me, what branding is and how crucial it is for a company in marketing.

I would merely answer you, branding to a company holds as much importance, as a foundation for a building does.

You see all those renowned brands like Armani, Fendi and so on, and their brand name. It costs billions alone.

Doesn't matter, whether you sell coffee beans or industrial spare parts, clothes or foodstuffs. The key to marketing lies in the brand name itself. That's why it's pretty more tough to decide. What colours could best represent their brand mission than it seems to be?

The process of branding?

Branding is the key to the success of any product.

Yes, let me tell you something, if you aren't sure of how you’d break down your approach, you are doing it wrong. To explain, one needs to have confidence in one's brand more than that once speech. Having faith and providing an explanation with a proper gesture is what attracts your clients to know more about your brand.

I am sure you must not be unaware of Dave Holston, author of The Strategic Designer. He, who will let you walk through brand developing processes starting with researching to developing brand values and then communicating it all through your designs in his Brand Strategy Course.

And also, with it, he shares four significant reasons that why company brands.

1. Branding Advantages By Providing A Competition in the Market.

Well, it doesn't matter if your organisation is a non-profit or a for-profit organisation, what matters is it needs to hunt for resources, fundings and talent, and audience attention, of course.

To win in hearts of people,e all you need to make is your category, organisations and plan implementation strategy robust enough to tackle storms. In short, built a roadmap which outlines specific actions and measures distance for reaching their goals within a stipulated duration by outmanoeuvring their peers for needed resources.

If that's done the organisation’s brand correctly could mirror their strategic plan and take more initiatives that will make their organisation reach the crest desired of.

2. Brands Provide a Stable Asset

As you know technology, it changes every after night, and this could cost the company immensely. Either you stay updated with the innovations or your products will fail to gain an audience. This is the main reason why companies are bought and sold. But all those strong brands sustain through all these changes.

That's why it is said that brand is the most sustainable asset any organisation could afford and when it's oriented with the overall strategy of the organisation it can function as the whole central organising principle for the entire organisation’s decision making.

For instance, take the Coca-Cola brand, it has been around for more than 12 decades while some of the world’s other most valued brands have made a mark for a mere 50 years, and most other corporations only last for 25 years.

3. Brands Provide Economic Value

Do you know, the magazine Businessweek has once concluded that brands account for more than one-third of shareholder value? Thus, the value of an organisation is divided into two major areas: the intangible assets and the tangible assets.

And brands, being intangible assets leaves us with the conclusion that the value of most successful businesses comes from their intangible assets, with having brands as the most prominent of these.

You see Coca-Cola, accounts for over 54% of the stock market value with having brand value worthing 67 million dollars.

Even certain non-profit organisations like the Red Cross and the importance of their brand is an excellent aid in attracting donations and volunteers. Thus, brands play a crucial role in attracting be it employees, partners or most importantly audiences to an organisation.

With having a good brand name, you can rule the marketplace, create awareness for organisations and develop the mutually beneficial relationships with your customers. Suppliers and those in public so that it would be pretty more natural to reach their goals.

Read here, Brand Strategy, Important as Part of Your Brand Positioning and Design?

4. Brands Set Expectations

Don't you think we live in a world based on promises? Just because restaurants promise to provide you with fresh food made in a clean environment. You are excited to check in there. Same goes for organisations.

Branding itself is a promise made to the public, making similar agreements with companies, products quality and services. When brand promises are kept, audiences respond quickly with loyalty and affection.

But when that's not done, the reputation once made breaks as quick as possible putting a question mark there. Your ability to fulfil promises is a stage, and all you need to be is an adept artiste there.

Yeh interestingly, products have a little influence to do with the decision-making process.

Same goes for its service for much of our experience is earned with product quality and service is created through the associations. They’ve made with the product through advertising - brand identity and the environment in which the product is experienced.

The post Branding – Why it is Important [4 Golden Points] appeared first on DB Brand Works.