Building a strong brand is more important than ever. Brands play a huge role in the decisions we make as consumers and employees by providing familiarity, reassurance and an understanding of what to expect.
Brands also make us do irrational things, like paying twice as much for a shirt with a desirable logo. Brands convey trust and make us return to buy more. This makes having a strong brand one of the most enduring competitive ‘moats’ for growth.
Building a brand
There are lots of ingredients that go into the development of a brand. Everything from logos, colours and tone of voice, through to touchpoints, positioning and marketing. The best way to think of brands is as a system of interconnecting parts, that combined form the complete brand experience.
For a brand to become and remain successful, the experience has got to be positive.
Brand is a subjective perception of value based on the sum of a person’s experiences with a product or company that ultimately influences that person’s sentiment and decisions in the marketplace.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/brand-experience-ux/
Poor experiences kill brands
Ok, so that statement is a bit extreme, but even if we are not a customer, our perception of a brand is subjectively based on both our direct experience and what we hear from trusted sources.
Whether it is news reports of misbehaviour or customer complaints popping up on social media, our perception of the brand is influenced and we are less likely to engage with it.
On the positive side…
When we have a positive experience with a brand, we are happy to use it again and to recommend it to our friends.
Positive experiences work best when the brand experience is aligned well to the brand message. A marketing campaign that sells the message of a high quality user experience needs to be backed up by a…. well a consistently high quality experience.
Thanks for reading 🙂