Brand Creator … 9 Ways Creative Branding Can Rescue Your Marketing

Creative branding? An implicit or explicit effort? You would know what I meant if you were a brand creator. Let me explain.

Every business has a brand, whether explicitly planned or not. The critical question is how good the brand is. And how well it contributes to your marketing campaign. If you are leaving your creative branding to implicit efforts … well, it is not going to be very good and certainly not very creative.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

You just can’t say it. You have to get people to say it to each other.

– James Farley

With the advent of the Internet, the number of marketing options available to both budding and experienced entrepreneurs has become staggering.

Quite simply a brand is the collection of customer perceptions of:

• How they see you
• How they feel about you
• What they say about you

So you see it’s not about what you think. And people will form opinions about your business whether you want them to or not. So why not take explicit branding actions to influence these opinions.

Companies need to influence positive opinions by positive actions. Influence is the key operative word here. Meaning to inspire desirable and measurable outcomes. Emotional connection to our products and services.

Why emotional? Simple. Most purchase decisions have critical emotional connections.

So what are some of the best ways different businesses use their creative branding to market their products and services? Let’s take a close look at these businesses and their creative use of branding forces:

Tailor brands … differentiation

There is no more powerful component of a brand’s force than its differentiation. JetBlue’s brand screams out how it is different. And better. Free Direct TV and XM satellite radio onboard their aircraft. Leather seats. Unlimited snacks. Great legroom. Think of these discriminators and you’ll think of the JetBlue brand.

Unique positioning

Businesses should always be looking to reinforce their unique positioning. Like Best Buy and its employee expertise in home electronics. They have continued to strengthen this unique positioning with the Geek Squad and with Tweep Force.

Brand creator … positive experience

The Starbucks experience. Certainly, defines a positive brand feeling for its target customers. Unique products. Unique store atmosphere. Experiences to stimulate all the senses … visual, hearing, aroma, taste, and touch.

Creative branding … unforgettable

Have you ever been to a Whole Foods store? Not your average presentation style of culinary products. Helping customers visualize the full store experience. Or customer engagement. And taking grocery shopping to an interactive and collaborative new level. Unique and unforgettable. No wonder more top-of-the-line grocery chains are quickly following this lead.

Positive image

Create positive mental images? In our opinion, no one is better at this than Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer. Focused on delivering happiness and being the best in the business in customer service. Lots of use of surprising customers with random acts of kindness and special service.

Communications

A brand communicates every time it touches the customer … the moment of truth. It communicates with words, stories, emotions, and its personality. Yes, it’s personality. Marketing needs to manage all of these communications, making marketing responsible for each ‘moment of truth’. We include everyone in the marketing realm. No one does more of this communication management or does it better than Google.

Immersion

Customer immersion in the product and services. Disney World is certainly very good at customer immersion in its entertainment themes. Bass Pro Shop is very good at immersion in its products by setting up areas around its stores where customers can go and try their skills with Bass Pro Shop products. A unique branding style.

Giving back

As Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream brand puts it: “There is a spiritual aspect to our lives — when we give we receive — when a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them.” And that emotion reflects positively on the brand.

Trust

Not many customers think about what company’s processor is on their computer. And it is not because they don’t care. They just assume it is an Intel product. They buy the best technology and its reflection of customer trust in the brand and its products.

The bottom line

A significant portion of a company’s value is intangible, so a strong brand is a significant competitive advantage. As Philip Kotler wrote:

The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand, you are a commodity. Then the price is everything, and the low-cost producer is the only winner.

Brands, marketing, and communication have long been highly related. From TV ads and press releases to events and endorsements, the way consumers view a brand will influence their decision-making, so crafting and reinforcing a brand image has long been a top priority for marketers.

To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views, or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.

We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences

Remember this last input. Markets and customers are constantly changing. Therefore a business must constantly adapt its branding to the changes in the marketplace.