So, What is a Good Brand?

Almost everyone has an "idea", an informal definition of a "brand" floating around inside their heads.

But it is surprisingly rare to find a marketing practitioner who can say, "This is how my organisation defines 'brand’, and this is how we manage that brand throughout our organisation." Sharing a common brand definition between the service user and creative, between the manager and the marketer is important. So if our definition isn’t clear, make this our first step.

We need to think beyond the brand as merely a logo and colour scheme. Achieve that and we can create or enhance a truly world-class brand. We need to understand or create three things:

• The brand's personality
• The relationship the brand has with the audience
• Visual icons, symbols or other representations of the brand such as the logo or a character

The three steps to building a brand are:

1. Create a character or personality for the organisation, based on that brand-person's reputation, attitudes and behaviour.
2. Build a relationship with your target market based on that personality. Do this over time, using advertising in addition to all other communications, including the way employees are trained to interact with the public.
3. Reinforce the relationship and trigger recognition with consistent visual symbols. These symbols can include everything from a colour scheme and logo to an imaginary character, or the leader of the organisation.

Corporate and product brands:

• The corporate brand should be based on genuine qualities that exist in the organisation itself. Ideally, the corporate identity should reflect the organisation's culture, values and practices.
• It's difficult or impossible for a rival or associated body to duplicate your culture - much easier to copy the product or service.

When creating product and service brands you can exercise greater tactical freedom. Take a sharp, critical look at competitors in the market category. Then devise a brand identity that will appeal to customers.