Saturday, September 29, 2012

BRANDING 101


 Good morning class, sorry, I mean, readers. MJ here. Now while branding and designs maybe my passion and forte, to the average person, its basically a logo and stationery, and to some others, well, you’re thinking ‘????’, Let correct some misconceptions and enlighten some people along the way. Now as much as I would love to get all technical and form “tush” guy, by giving some superfluous definition of branding, I’ll let Wikipedia and google do exactly what they’re made for so get to searching. However, permit to offer a description in layman’s terms, ahem..

Branding, my dear readers, is the reason why you feel comfortable banking with GTB and not some random Microfinance bank or shoddy financial institution….
Branding,… is the reason why you’d go into the new KFC’s in town and feel comfortable buying lunch but be put off at the sight of some roadside hawker selling the same products….
Branding,…is the reason why you feel more comfortable buying fuel or diesel at Oando  as opposed to ‘UNCLE DEBO’S PETROLEUM COMPANY LTD’…

Branding,…is the reason why you’d feel comfortable flying aero, than, ermm,…some other airlanes…(even though aero don dey mess up for some time now.)
Branding, I tell you, is the reason why you’d rather drink dansa than some random fruit-concoction…

You may claim its quality, but, truth is, quality without proper ‘packaging’ as we like to call it, can only get you so far. You need to have, (wait for it…) B-R-A-N-D-I-N-G!!
While you may vehemently disagree with the above stated instances, for a plethora of reasons (see grammar!! U wan try) branding to a very large extent is what draws customers in, by being unique, attractive and consistent. A brand resides in the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospective patrons. It is the emotional connection between the product or service and the customer. Branding successfully differentiates products and services in an over-crowded market place. It is how you know that “Khaki is not a leather”.
I can hear someone saying, So? Why should I spend money on branding? What is it worth?..well, let me leave you with some figures…as at the last time I checked (just now..), coca-cola’s brand name, I repeat, brand name in 2012 was worth a little over   $74 billion,


Johnson&Johnson (those guys that make everything from insecticide to baby powder) had their brand name pegged at $3.1 billion (2006 facts), and more recently, the great Dr.Dre sold a 51%stake in his beats by dre company to htc for a whooping $100 million,…so, ermmm…any more questions?



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