Between Marketing and Branding

According to America’s most famous marketing professor, Philip Kotler, “marketing takes a day to learn, but a lifetime to master.” Yet there is a popular belief especially among top management that marketing is nothing but common sense. As a matter of fact Hewlett-Packard co-founder, David Packard is easily remembered for saying “marketing is too important for the marketing department.”

Subtly supporting this view is Jacques Chevron (1999) of the JP Group, who posits that marketing and its sister branding are too important to be left to marketers alone. But those in opposition to this position allude to marketing being 90% strategy and 10% execution (Al Ries 2005). The easy part, according to them, is the 10%, while the difficult part is the 90%.

“Marketing is no longer a business tool: it is at its very foundation” so says Tina Schneidermann, president of Global Leaders, based in South Africa. As companies engage in price wars, globalization and logistical challenges, selling a relationship and a product will surely make the difference between success and failure.

While most people agree that the marketing department should drive growth, a lot of marketers are too busy concentrating only on one growth area i.e. customer acquisition, using one tool to achieve it: advertising (Jonah Bloom 2005).

Marketers easily forget that growth will come through customer retention, innovation and the identification of growth markets. It is time we replaced old marketing with new marketing that is holistic, technology-enabled and strategic, enabling companies to reach their target customers’ activities, lifestyle, and social space more effectively.

The fundamental differentiating factor for all products is the brand, which Vincent Grimaldi (2006), managing partner of The Grimaldi Group, New York, defines as a combination of attributes, communicated through a name, or a symbol, that influences a thought process in the mind of an audience and creates value.

In this age of distinctive identity creation, it is posited that brands need to speak to customers in different languages; brands need distinctiveness and personality, which differentiate them from competitors in order to persuade their target market to identify and make a purchasing decision (Graham Taylor 2004).

Your brand is your name, your logo, your trade dress, your burning scar on the side of your product (Christopher Kenton 2005). There is a school of thought that believes you own your brand, while your customers own their impressions, and you can influence those impressions with the quality of your product. However, the customer is present in the mind of company management so that the latter’s vision of the brand’s values should incorporate all they know and feel about their customer.

‘Branding’ is described as a catch phrase in advertising and brand managers are now found in marketing departments of large corporations. Meanwhile it is opined that branding is a brilliant response to the fact that traditional advertising no longer works (M. Phillips & S. Rasberry 2003).

Branding is the foundation of marketing and cannot be separated from business strategy; it goes beyond putting a label on a fancy product (V. Grimaldi). The brand experience is very key to the image of the brand – this is the sum total of all impressions consumers gain from interactions with your product, company, etc. For example, how your receptionist answers the phone is as important as the courtesy shown by your truck drivers. All these strongly influence the brand image often closely associated with brand reputation.

A good image will certainly improve your brand equity, i.e. the sum of all distinguishing qualities of your brand, drawn from all relevant stakeholders, that result in personal commitment to and demand for the brand (brandchannel 2005).

Coca-Cola is probably the best-built brand in the world today (David Placek 1998) as it keeps adding and creating value. Before branding or even management emerged, it is understood that the company was already spending over $11,000 on mass advertising campaign as early as 1892. Its trademark, which was officially filed in the US that year, has consistently been displayed with the same script to this day.

It is the duty of every staff in an organization to successfully help implement a brand strategy, while the development of the strategy itself involves a small number of executives and their associates. If there is lack of consistency among all the contact points with the customer, you cannot build a great brand, e.g. the brand message makes a promise on which the organization fails to deliver.

Branding and marketing are so closely related that people usually mix them up .A brand is the result of marketing consistency. Marketing is extroverted while branding is introverted; both are separate disciplines (Jacques Chevron). While marketing is expected to work fast, branding is a slow process because communicating the personality of a brand is synonymous with communicating a person’s character; you cannot do it proactively. Communicating the character of a brand takes time and branding is complex by design; unlike the focused marketing message with its USP “hype.”

The truth is the values and associations that constitute the character of a strong brand can never be one-dimensional, while the plurality of messages with which the marketer must contend, becomes the brand’s asset.

For an effective brand strategy, a company must not only be vigilant about its product and service quality, but it should also be prepared for emergencies.

By Yusuf Danesi | This article was posted on 2007-07-03 01:13:03

About The Author:

Being Excerpts from a Paper presented by Yusuf Danesi, rpa, Assistant Director (Planning, Research and Statistics) of the Advertising practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) at a Retreat organized for newly-recruited Galaxy Television (Lagos) Business Reporters on Thursday, June 15, 2006, at Festac Town, Lagos.

Definition:

In marketing, a brand is the symbolic embodiment of all the information connected with a product or service. A brand typically includes a name, logo, and other visual elements such as images or symbols. It also encompasses the set of expectations associated with a product or service which typicaly arise in the minds of people. Such people include employees of the brand owner, people involved with distribution, sale or supply of the product or service, and ultimate consumers.

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