As of today, the total number of brands that exist in this world lie between 500,000 to 700,000! We started our article with this fact to put things into a little perspective. Seeing this number, you will realise how much competition exists at any given point of time, for any brand in this world. And this competition is not decreasing, but increasing every second at an unstoppable pace!
Now, in this world where the rate of competition is this high, how do you make your brand stand out and tell its story? It is quite obvious that if you own a brand or work for a brand, you will want it to shine and this is where the process of branding steps in! For most people, who are not aware of the technicalities and importance of branding, the first thing that comes to their mind when they hear the term is logo design. Let’s be honest here, this is just a small planet in the multiverse that is branding. Surprised? We get it. Your mind might be brimming with questions by now, and you will be glad to know that we have answers to all your questions, so read along to get enlightened!
What is Branding? - The simplest version
The ambiguity regarding the concept of branding is high, so we will fill our article with as many examples as we can, but before that let us give you a basic definition of branding:
Branding is a process of recognition, production, and management of the assets and behaviours of a particular brand in a way that creates a perception in the minds of stakeholders of what the brand represents. (for Varnan, though, branding and storytelling are not that different!)
Did this definition confuse you more? Let us try to explain with an example.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘coffee’? For us, it was Starbucks! Why did this happen? Why did you and we immediately think of a famous coffee brand as soon as we heard the term ‘coffee’? This happened because of branding.
Even though Starbucks never made any grand TV advertisements or made any taglines that one could remember, Starbucks’ branding game was and is extremely strong. If you look at its logo anywhere, you would recall the brand name immediately.
Starbucks was the first company ever to revolutionise the barista game, write customer names on their coffee cups and call out the names of the customers to get their coffee! This is all part of branding! Starbucks owns more than 20,000 cafes all around the world and its sales account for more than 50% of the total cafe market as of today! As we said, we love ourselves some stories!
The most important brands in the world reached where they are because of the mind-blowing amount of hard work and of course a fantastic branding strategy in place.
There are more reasons to believe that branding can make or break a product or service:
Consistency
Consistency is greatly valuable for a brand and is greatly valued by the customers. Branding helps achieve an overall consistency and unity in a brand’s online/offline presence, logo, marketing, content, products, services and advertisements. This is important to send a clear message from customers to potential business partners about what your brand stands for. Which in return helps in better recall value.
Worth
The first point to always remember is that every brand is an asset. What a brand is presenting to its customer base not just in terms of marketing but also in terms of sales and revenue, is of foremost value. Branding helps in marking a clear difference between sales and revenue, and also debt and liquidation.
Revenue generation
Branding not only helps you to differentiate between sales and revenue but also helps you generate it and manage it. By determining the sales and marketing strategies, the results will not only be faster but also much better and refined.
Representation and perception
With the help of branding, a brand will be able to talk to its customers! Branding lets a brand depict its core values, where it started from, where it expects to go, and what it can deliver to its audience. With branding, a perception about a brand is created in people’s minds, and with good branding, that perception can be really great too!
Loyalty and trust
Loyalty and trust are the two most promising factors that branding offers! Branding helps establish trust between the brand and its customer base, so after availing of a service the customer keeps returning. Branding gets brand-loyal customers, which is extremely important for any brand to keep moving upwards on the ladder of success!
Security
Without paying attention to branding, all your original ideas can be stolen even before you could implement them to make your brand shine. Branding secures the identity and ideas of the brand and also executes them in a way that reflects on the brand’s personality!
Versatility
Branding helps a brand expand its horizons to every form of marketing that exists- online or offline. Branding also offers a great amount of assistance in reaching the lesser and least explored markets and methods of marketing!
Takeaway
By the time we were done writing this article, we realised how there are so many other smaller details and benefits to branding that one could spend days explaining and still would not finish! However, we tried to enlighten you, in the best way possible, and we really hope we reached at least halfway there! At Varnan, we believe in delivering our clients and their brand the best of all worlds, and that is what we have done till now. We are so passionate about doing what we do, that we work for every brand like it is personal! So, if your brand has a story, we are ready to narrate it to the world!
