How to practise brand building

Brand building, also called branding, means de­vel­op­ing and es­tab­lish­ing a re­cog­nis­able brand. By employing various measures and strategies such as design, com­mu­nic­a­tion, tonality, logo, company name and product des­ig­na­tions, you can shape your brand or add value to your corporate identity.

What is brand building?

Brand building refers to es­tab­lish­ing a brand or brand image as­so­ci­ated with your company, service offering, contents or products. In other words, it’s all about creating a corporate identity. An appealing, high-quality brand adds value to a business by conveying a positive image to clients. Suc­cess­ful brand re­cog­ni­tion is as­so­ci­ated with re­li­ab­il­ity and brand values. Brand building en­com­passes marketing strategies including ad­vert­ising campaigns, net­work­ing events, image campaigns or charity actions and col­lab­or­a­tions.

The main goals of brand building or branding include:

• Es­tab­lish­ing a brand identity for companies, products, services, in­di­vidu­als (e.g., in sectors such as art, politics or en­ter­tain­ment), in­sti­tu­tions or websites and online shops
• Shaping your business image for an improved market position
• Strength­en­ing customer loyalty or retention through memorable branding
• Positive influence on pur­chas­ing decisions and tapping new or larger client groups
• Defin­i­tion of unique selling pro­pos­i­tions, which can be auto­mat­ic­ally linked to your brand

What’s the dif­fer­ence between brand building vs marketing?

While brand building is closely linked to marketing and can serve as the goal or basis of a marketing strategy, the terms aren’t identical. Marketing uses ad­vert­ising measures to add customers and drive sales while brand building includes more abstract goals.

This includes, for example, strength­en­ing customer loyalty and creating a positive brand per­cep­tion. And while marketing is tech­nic­ally possible without brand building, branding doesn’t work without specific marketing and ad­vert­ising measures. At the same time, branding strategies should always be included when defining your marketing strategies.

Types and strategies of brand building

Brand building plays an important role in de­vel­op­ing a corporate brand and brand identity for the self-employed as well as small, medium and large companies. The goal is becoming a re­cog­nis­able brand. Your name, logo or ap­pear­ance should trigger positive as­so­ci­ations among (potential) clients and foster customer loyalty.

The various types and strategies of branding include:

• Product Branding: Products are perceived as brands (e.g., Coca Cola, Apple devices or IKEA furniture).
• Corporate Branding: The company appears like a brand or is perceived as a brand in­de­pend­ent of the specific product (e.g., Disney, A&T).
• Employer Branding: Employees and (co-)owners identify with the company or brand (e.g., Apple, Tesla or Facebook).
• Personal Branding: In­di­vidu­als are perceived as brands through personal branding and become ad­vert­ising vessels for products or or­gan­isa­tions (e.g., David Beckham, Brad Pitt, or Greta Thunberg).
• Emotional Branding: Marketing and ad­vert­ising efforts for better branding are emo­tion­ally conveyed through emotional branding to appeal to customers and clients sub­con­sciously.
• Retail Branding: Describes retail companies that are perceived as brands (e.g., Amazon, Alibaba or Rakuten).
• Co-Branding: In co­oper­a­tion with other brands, co-branding leads to the creation of joint products or services boosting the per­cep­tion and vis­ib­il­ity for par­ti­cip­at­ing brands.

Important steps and measures for suc­cess­ful brand building

For suc­cess­ful brand building you should be able to answer the following questions:

• What should your brand represent or convey?
• Who’s your brand’s audience?
• Which USPs create a dis­tinct­ive and unique brand?
• Which measures, channels and media are you going to use to market your brand?
• Which storytelling tools could help boost your brand re­cog­ni­tion?

As a simple guide for brand building and brand design, you can use the checklist below:

Brand design

Brand design is among the most important aspects of brand building, because how a brand is perceived largely depends on its visual design. A suitable logo and emo­tion­ally appealing brand colours are central to this purpose. For example, Coca Cola uses a dis­tinct­ive corporate logo, strong colours and product design. In com­bin­a­tion these aspects embody its unique brand identity. Equally important are ty­po­graphy, visual language as well as graphics, il­lus­tra­tions, an­im­a­tions and icons.

Value of a brand

A suc­cess­ful brand convinces with a striking design, the quality of its products, and its brand and corporate values. This includes a brand’s social com­mit­ment, focus on equality, en­vir­on­ment­al awareness, social justice, and team spirit. These aspects bolster customer loyalty and improve the image of a brand.

Register and secure brands

Ensure you protect your brand name or create a trademark ap­plic­a­tion to secure your brand.

Brand storytelling

A suc­cess­ful brand tells a story which sets it apart from others. Visual storytelling through ad­vert­ising measures on social media, online, pro­mo­tion­al videos or other media is one important tool. You can also condense plenty of in­form­a­tion into brand slogans and your website in­form­a­tion.

Integrity and flex­ib­il­ity

A re­cog­nis­able brand has a re­cog­nis­able design and a strong story. You’ll want to keep an eye on current social and creative trends. Don’t shy away from non-linear or new ap­proaches and measures. This is a great way to extend touch­points and reach new audience groups. A touch­point analysis using customer journey mapping is always useful.

Com­mu­nic­a­tion/tone

The storytelling approach is also closely linked to your com­mu­nic­a­tion and the tone of your brand. Ensure that all brand com­mu­nic­a­tion cor­res­ponds to the re­spect­ive marketing measures and brand values.

Marketing guidelines for company culture

A uniform ap­pear­ance is based on clear brand guidelines to define and com­mu­nic­ate corporate goals across teams. Brand-building measures must be measured against these goals.

Assets of a brand

Brand assets are closely linked to brand design. The style guide and design guidelines ensure the creative and visual ap­pear­ance of a brand remains uniform and con­sist­ent across all areas.

Positive customer journey

Customer sat­is­fac­tion and an un­der­stand­ing of brand per­cep­tion from the customer’s point of view is par­tic­u­larly important for brand success. Branding should ensure your content is user-friendly and adapted to different devices. From first contact with a brand to con­clud­ing a sale, a positive user ex­per­i­ence makes for a suc­cess­ful customer journey and brand ex­per­i­ence.

Examples of suc­cess­ful brand building

Strong and appealing brands tend to be at the forefront of the market. If you shop online or in-store you already know that a brand can sub­con­sciously influence your pur­chas­ing decisions. Brand building enables you to tap into the same strategies to establish a re­cog­nis­able brand. Check out success stories and best practices for some ideas of suc­cess­ful strategies. These can help shape the direction of your brand building. Here are some of the most suc­cess­ful examples of brand building.

Google

Once a compact search engine with a striking logo and colour scheme, Google is now a billion-dollar IT group spanning many different in­dus­tries. The group regularly invests in new tech­no­lo­gies and security features. The success of Google is in part due to its clever marketing, brand building and ac­quis­i­tions of com­pet­it­ors. The company now plays a major role in shaping people’s and company’s online identity.

Amazon

Amazon has quickly become the market leader in eCommerce thanks to its excellent online shopping features. AWS is one of the largest cloud platforms globally. Amazon’s success has been shaped by its excellent customer service, the Amazon Prime concept, and its dis­tinct­ive design. The same can be said of Amazon’s storytelling, its versatile range of services, and suc­cess­ful branding. Speedy delivery maintains a positive brand per­cep­tion.

Apple

Apple has always focused on customer loyalty, from logo to product design to its pro­pri­et­ary software solutions. The high quality of its products, personal branding and the ‘cult of per­son­al­ity’ created around Steve Jobs as well as emotional branding using modern, original ad­vert­ising in the form of com­mer­cial clips have played a major role in shaping Apple’s brand per­cep­tion. Likewise, co-branding through, for example, col­lab­or­a­tions with artists such as U2 and its uniform design language continue to drive its highly re­cog­nis­able brand.

IKEA

The ad­vant­ages of IKEA products (DIY con­struc­tion, low prices, min­im­al­ist design in original colours, etc.) are also com­pon­ents of its brand identity. This has been sig­ni­fic­antly shaped by emotional storytelling in the form of original, funny and emotional ad­vert­ising campaigns.