By M. Isi Eromosele

With the evolution of the global market, the brands developed with an appropriate strategy became more and more significant in the world marketplace. 

What is the distinction between a simple product and a real brand? Brands today have never been more powerful and prominent. Today, a brand is no longer just a logo on a product, but more like a carefully orchestrated experience, supported by complex marketing budgets, activities and sophisticated psychology.

For achieving the umbrella organization’s objectives and keeping the profit maximized, companies need to pay more attention to their brand management. More and more strategic methods and concepts have to be implemented for leveraging the brand.  

A reputable, strong brand can provide significant power, but conversely, it does not last for ever and is not wholesomely shielded from external market threats. A brand must be built up watchfully, and then must be constantly maintained and managed in a committed way from all the stakeholders of the enterprise.

We live in a world of brands, and there is practically no moment in our lives when we do not encounter varied iterations and manifestation of brands. Brands are of vital importance in the subsistence and success of companies, and their right management calls for understanding all their details and complexities.

This requires knowing what the real essence of a brand is as we cannot hope that we can readily identify and overcome branding related problems, challenges.

Foundations For Brand Building

The world is moving, technology is constantly changing and relentless messages are thrust at consumers, hoping to capture their eye. Marketers are trying thousands ofchannels to let their customers get in touch with their brands and products.

Since the right competition makes information harder to get through to the intended audience and target group, it has made brands harder to be differentiated.  Furthermore,products and services are becoming more and more commoditized, new techniques and competitive advantages are copied at higher speed than ever.

As such, individual brands have to differentiate themselves, carve out their unique value proposition for their customers, stake out distinct market positions of their own and clarify the attributes that stand them apart from their competition.

Establishing and maintaining uniqueness is the only way to make the products and services look attractive in any targeted market segment, enabling them to stay longer in the market. Today, marketing has to be aligned with the brands’ message. More and more firms need to realize that one of their most valuable assets is the brand name associated with their products or services.

Brands are genuine assets and, like other forms of asset, they can appreciate considerably in value as a result of careful development and management.

A strong brand usually acts as a guarantee in that it fulfills or even exceeds the customer’s expectations. In other words, the brand assures a higher level of stability in business due to smaller fluctuations in demand and brand loyalty, which can result in higher revenue and lower distribution costs. Furthermore, strong brands have a positive affect on investors, which lead to lower risk and securing of future cash flows. 

Strategic success can only be achieved through leveraging the brand, because the brand is one of the most strategic and worthy assets a firm owns.  Every brand starts as a physical product, non-differentiated from the others; its market success or failure depends mainly on the quality of its utility.

Due to the competitive nature of today’s global marketplace, nearly all industries can benefit from branded products. All of the traditionally brand-conscious industries, including fashion, restaurants, and consumer goods are being forced to continue to brand heavily, perhaps even more strategically than ever before.

Even financial services, which was one of the last frontiers, is coming around to seeing the importance of branding by for example tagging banking packages and even mutual funds coming up with amazing titles to attract customers.

The examples below are other industries for which strategic branding is inevitable: fast food, beverages, retail, automobile, pharmaceutical and entertainment. 

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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