Having a Brand Identity is not enough

Brand recognition alone is useless. Today every plumber has a brand and a slogan on the side of his truck. The world is drowning in brands and slogans

Robert Bloom author and ex – Chairman of Publicis Worldwide

Although we are not there yet in either the USA or Australia, the sentiment is right – recognition alone is not enough!

Virtually every category of consumer product and service is now crowded and in some cases overcrowded with brands. However this is not the case in for most of the small and medium enterprise categories and this presents a tremendous opportunity for those that can create a brand identity that connects with their target audience.

Branding strategy is more than meeting functional needs

“Main purpose of branding is to get more people to buy more stuff for more years at a higher price.”

Marty Neumeier, author “The Brand Gap”

The purpose of branding is to become the name people think of immediately when they want what you sell.In the beginning, brands differentiated between products and services. Today they meet aspirational needs as well functional requirements. Brands are a means of means of self expression. They are a mirror, a status symbol, they reflect our dreams and embody our values.

The effects of emotional branding strategy

Emotionally based campaigns are not only more likely to produce very large business effects, but also produce more of them, outperforming rationally based campaigns on every single business measure.
Les Binet, an econometrician and business analyst, analyzed the 25 years and  1000-plus cases on the UK IPA Effectiveness Awards database

Brand Positioning linked to Profits

An analysis of 55 US corporations found that brands that grew differentiation between 1993 and 1995 also grew operating profits significantly more than brands that failed to grow differentiation, and more than brands that merely increased salience.
-Du Pleiss, Advertising Likeability, Admap, UK, October 1998.