By M. Isi Eromosele

Today's marketplace is so crowded and fast-paced that very few people have the time or the inclination to search through claims of product or service superiority. Parity rules and acceptable performance is the price of entry. This is increasingly true in global markets as well.

Buying decisions are made on promises that transcend products, and promises are rooted and embedded in human emotions. It's all about human feelings and how they emotionally connect with a particular brand.

For marketers, it’s about marketing vision and creativity in managing the brand and in building trust by keeping promises to customers. It's looking outward toward your customers and their needs.

It's trying to find a meaningful difference that will set your brand apart within its market category. It's thinking less about what you can make in your factory and more about what your customers want. It’s about realizing the fact that customers do have feelings about and can develop attachment to what we purchase.

The reality is that most marketers still do not understand the power of a brand. Branding, the one thing that has the most dramatic impact on the success or failure of a modern-day business is also the least understood.

Brand building isn't a skill mastered in business school; in fact, it isn't even taught in most business schools. It's not as black-and-white or empirical as most want to think about business.

Your Brand Is Your Business

A company’s name is not a brand and neither is its logo. It's what these symbols mean and the feelings they engender from customers that makes the value of the brand.

Brands and the equity they engender are not the sole responsibility of the marketing department. The science of marketing is not a department. Everyone in your company is responsible for marketing the company. Your brand is not part of your business. It is your business.

Your product isn't always your brand, but your entire company and what it stands for is. Coke's fixed assets are worth about $17 billion, but according to one recent analysis, its brand value is worth $104 billion. Brands are the real assets companies own. Without their brands, they virtually have nothing.

Emotional Equity

The real value of a brand should be thought of in terms of its emotional equity, the way it makes customers feel. A brand is like an emotional bridge between a company and its customers. Branding your products sets them apart from all the other products in their category.

A great brand is a story that's never completely told. A brand is a metaphorical story that's evolving all the time. This connects with something very deep within the fundamental human appreciation of mythology. People have always needed to make sense of things at a higher level.

We all want to believe that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Companies that manifest that emotional sensibility in their employees and consumers invoke something very powerful about their brands.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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