Brand is a name, a phenomenon, a sign, a symbol that identifies the product, the service we would like to sell and also distinguishes it from its competitors in the market.
Brands have become the basic elements of the current market environment. Nowadays it is not enough if a company can manufacture a good product or offer a good service with a good business plan. It is not enough if people know, hear about these or use them. For in this increased information flood, a lot of manufacturers and service providers will remain only one of the performers in the market, if the brand becomes blurred and obscure in people’s minds. Multinational corporations have invaded and occupied the customers’ minds and since they are huge, they can operate with different sales numbers, causing serious difficulties for smaller local companies. Customers are able to remember only 5-6 brands within a given product category, thus the companies have to fight for a good position, i.e. to be as frontwards as possible in the customers’ minds when it comes to make a decision.
The gist and essence of branding is to support the process through which people can distinguish a certain product or service from its concurrence. From the perspective of the competition, this is very important, since if the customers cannot make a distinction, they will decide upon the basis of price, not on the basis of quality or necessity.
A good brand promises only as much as it can keep
It is wise to learn from the multinational companies, it is not a shame to acquire and apply the techniques they use, however these have to be adjusted to the financial and human resources of the local companies. It is very important, though, to prevent and avoid the danger of blowing the marketing balloon so big that the enterprise should become unable to fill it with appropriate and decent content. This is exactly why a good brand promises only as much as it can keep. We mustn’t make the mistake of just wrapping a product or service smartly and think that everything can be sold this way. A good brand shall only promise what the customer will actually get and the enterprise shall be able to keep the quality of the service it has promised. For, if these things are not implemented it will lead to disappointment and consequently the customers will turn their backs to the product or service, and once this has happened it can never be changed, the disappointed clients will never come back. We mustn’t expect more from a brand than it is capable of providing permanently and consistently. People should expect only what it can provide.
Developing brands is a must
The brand’s task is to make the customer decide, to find that narrow emotional and intellectual path on the basis of which the customer will choose that specific brand out of the other products or services. Once the customer and the product have found each other, it’s the product’s role to keep the customer.
The best product is always based on consumer requirements. But since the market is so crowded, a simple, continuous manufacturing of the products is not enough – we have to develop the brand. The greatest difference between the two is that a product has to be sold, while a brand is bought. Products simply reply to consumer demands, while a brand is wanted.