Category: brand essence
The term essence is the abstraction that audiences take away after experiencing the brand. It describes the fundamental, timeless elements ascribed to a brand.
The essence is stated in a word or, a phrase. If you must use more than a brief phrase to describe the essence you have not identified it.
The brand essence you identify should be true of the brand as well as the sub brands. It elicits an emotional benefit.
For example, the essence of the Target stores’ brand might be described as “cheap chic”; the emotional benefit might be the ability to look stylish and trendy, even on a budget. The company reinforces the brand essence with trendy, iconic advertising, packaging, retail design, and stylish, but affordable, merchandise.
It’s also important that the brand essence has been consistently present since the beginning of the brand, otherwise, customers, employees and partners may be confused by what the brand is intended to represent, or feel that it is misleading or untrue. Authenticity, clarity and consistency help to reassure customers, employees and other stakeholders that they can trust the brand to deliver what it claims to deliver.
Identifying the Brand Essence
First, make sure that you understand the brand essence from the standpoint of the customer. Utilize a combination of techniques, from surveys to focus groups to interviews to help identify the essence. Avoid confusing customers with marketing lingo; instead ask them in ways that are understandable to laymen.
Explore the history of the brand; what was the early brand intended to communicate to stakeholders. Look at early advertising, communications, etc.
Consider the changes occurring in the industry; what are the characteristics of successful brands within your industry?
Criteria for Evaluating the Brand Essence
Ask these questions to ensure that you’ve identified an effective and authentic brand essence:
- Is it simply stated from the customer’s point of view? You should be able to describe the essence in a way that even a nonmarketer can understand.
- Is it one word, or at most, a short phrase? If it requires explanation, then you’ve got some work to do.
- Is it honest and authentic? It’s okay to be aspirational, but don’t try to make your brand into something that it’s not.
- Is it true of the brand as well as sub-brands? Brands and sub-brands are part of the same ‘family’; as such they share the same brand essence (DNA).
- Is it relevant across geography? Don’t assume that customers will react the same way in different parts of the country or different parts of the world.
- Does it enable growth? Think to the future – will the essence be as meaningful then as it is now?
- Is it potentially ownable? Does a competitor lay claim to the same essence? If so:
- Does it tap into a higher-order emotional benefit?
- Has it been present from the beginning of the franchise? Try to identify an essence that is true of the brand since its beginnings to leverage employee, partner and customer perceptions of the brand.
The kerfuffle over plans by The Washington Post to offer a series of sponsored dinners with Obama administration officials, lawmakers, lobbyists, business leaders, Washington Post editors, and reporters, illustrates what happens when a company doesn’t understand or ignores the essence of their brand.Read more
Captive brands are actually in-store brands that differentiate themselves based on brand versus price positioning. Captive brands do promote their affiliation with the retailer, are frequently positioned head-to-head with national brands, and receive marketing promotion and support beyond that typically given to store brands. The focus on brand differentiation enables captive brands to have stronger margins versus traditional store or private label brands that sacrifice margins to achieve low price positioning.
Brandweek points to Walgreens (WAG) bioInfusion hair care products, and the CVS (CVS) Cristophe line, both of which compete with Procter & Gamble (PG) Pantene, as successful captive brands. Because these two captive brands receive greater marketing support than typical store brands, they position themselves as premium brands similar to the quality and pricing of consumer packaged goods brands from companies like P&G. This helps retailers to achieve a “richer margin” on captive brands versus national brands.
Usually captive brands are created by the retailer. But in some cases they are abandoned national brands that find new life as captive brands.
One example of a national brand reborn as a captive brand is ‘White Cloud,’ a toilet tissue trademark abandoned by Procter & Gamble. Wal-Mart (WMT) licensed White Cloud and relaunched it as a Wal-Mart in-store brand of toilet tissues. It is a captive, versus a store brand, because it leverages its significant equity as a former national brand to differentiate itself from other tissue brands, versus competing solely on price.
Nuprin, an abandoned brand of ibuprofen painkillers is another example. The Nuprin brand name was sold to CVS and relaunched as a store brand.
Because of their attractive margins, captive brands will increasingly put pressure on national brands. For example, Walgreens says their bioInfusion line, created just three years ago, is now “one of the top brands in the entire hair care category."
Sources:
Retailers Rally Behind Their 'Captive Brands'
Can a Dead Brand Live Again?
See also:
brand defined
store brand, private label
national brand
positioning statement
point of difference
pain point
target audience
frame of reference
reason to believe
brand essence
portfolio architecture
commoditization
brand architecture
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A brand is the sum of all the associations, feelings, attitudes and perceptions that people have related to the tangible and intangible characteristics of a company, product or service.
The American Marketing Association defines ‘brand’ as “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers…A brand may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller.” But the meaning of brand extends to intangible aspects as well, such as associations, feelings and experiences. Philip Kotler, one of the world’s foremost experts on branding offers this definition:
A brand is a complex symbol that can convey up to six levels of meaning:
The extent to which a brand can convince the customer that they provide more meaningful tangible and intangible benefits than competing brands determines the overall strength of the brand.
Brands are important to companies because stronger brands are able to command and sustain higher margins than weaker brands. Brand strength is judged by many measures, including ‘substitution’, the likelihood that the customer will purchase another brand if their brand is not available, price premium, awareness, etc.
Brand positioning strategies attempt to shape the associations, experiences, feelings, attitudes and perceptions that people have about a brand so that they not only view the brand positively, but see the brand as a solution to a specific need, want or ‘pain point’ that they may have.
The completed brand positioning strategy is used as a guideline to determine how the brand is represented, i.e., in logos, taglines, names, colors, products, services, distribution channels, communications channels, messaging, etc.
More info:
- Attributes: A brand brings to mind certain attributes. Mercedes suggests expensive, well-built, well-engineered, durable, high-prestige automobiles.
- Benefits: Attributes must be translated into functional and emotional benefits. The attribute “durable” could translate into the functional benefit “I won’t have to buy another car for several years.” The attribute “expensive” translates into the emotional benefit “The car makes me feel important and admired.”
- Values: The brand also says something about the producer’s values. Mercedes stands for high performance, safety and prestige.
- Culture: The brand may represent a certain culture. The Mercedes represents German culture: organized, efficient, high quality.
- Personality: The brand can project a certain personality. Mercedes may suggest a no-nonsense [person, for example].
- User (Primary Target): The brand suggests the kind of consumer who buys or uses the product. We would expect to see a 55-year-old top executive behind the wheel of a Mercedes, not a 20-year-old secretary.
Philip Kotler Source: Marketing Management, Eleventh Edition, 2003, Prentice Hall
The meaning of 'brand' within the context of online data reporting:
When used to refer to online content or publishers the term 'brand' can have a slightly different meaning. Most likely it refers to a collection of online branded content across a collection of websites that display a consistent, shared brand identity. In this instance, most syndicated research services will count the websites as a single brand for reporting of statistics and other data. A website can only exist under one brand at a time.
Source: Nielsen Online
See also:
captive brand
store brand, private label
national brand
positioning statement
point of difference
pain point
target audience
frame of reference
reason to believe
brand essence
portfolio architecture
commoditization
brand architecture
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Suggested Reading:
The Reason to Believe provides proof that the brand delivers the benefits that it promises to deliver, that benefits are true and credible.
The reason to believe is a key element of the positioning statement.
The reason to believe can include:
- Technical reasons to believe/superiority claims (e.g. 30% faster, or;
- Functional benefits that help prove the emotional brand benefit (e.g. provides superior coverage)
Each benefit will not necessarily have a separate and distinct reason to believe, but the reason to believe collectively should prove to the consumer that the brand does, indeed, deliver its benefits as claimed.
Also referred to as “Brand Proof Points,” “Proof Points,” or “Support”
Criteria for evaluating Reasons to Believe/Proof Points:
The attitudinal and demographic description of the core prospect or customer to whom the brand is intended to appeal, or to whom the marketing plan is directed.
Criteria for evaluating the target audience description:
- Should balance size and relevance. Your target audience must be large enough for your efforts to be profitable, but not so large that it is generic. Don't make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone; if you do, you will not be able to effectively differentiate your brand.
- Be inclusive of users and non-users - What are the opportunities to grow revenue by converting the most likely non-users of your brand into users?
- Makes it clear who the target is, and who it is not
- Reinforces the essence of your brand by ensuring it is consistent with the characteristics of your target audience. For example, if the essence of your food brand is about being natural and 'pure', its unlikely that people who are uninterested in nutritional topics would be a good match for your brand.
Questions to consider as you develop target audience description:
- Who is your brand's best customer?
- How do you describe your best customers?
- Demographic
- Psychographic
- Technographic
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Are there opportunities to divide your target users into groups (segments) that will enable you to make your communications to them more relevant and effective? Using the natural foods brand as an example, dividing your target audience into athletes and moms may permit you to develop communications that are more relevant to each segment, than if you tried to market to the group as a whole.
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What is the value of each target user group to the company? Does the target user group contribute enough revenue to make it worthwhile to market to them? You may find, for example, that people who make their own soap love your natural food brand, but there aren't enough of them to market to efficiently.
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What’s the 'pain point' for each target user group? Does your brand solve a specific, important need or problem for the target user? Is it a need or problem that another brand is unable to solve?
See also:
brand defined
captive brand
store brand, private label
national brand
positioning statement
point of difference
pain point
frame of reference
reason to believe
brand essence
portfolio architecture
brand architecture
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