Brand Strategy, Brand Assets and Campaign Strategy
What's the difference?
Are you ready to think?
Many people do not seem to know the difference between brand strategy, brand assets and campaign strategy. Understanding this difference matters to the ultimate value of your brand's equity over time.
Brand Strategy
Simply put, a brand strategy is the "positioning" of your brand's unique and differentiated value in the minds of your consumer. A successful brand's value is positioned in a manner that is so clear and concise that its meaning can be intellectually consumed in a few moments time. This very specific image comes to mind when your customer sees your brand, hears your brand, and ultimately consumes your brand.
The impression left inside their mind's eye must be the "reason" they will select your product over your competitor's product. This now emotionally driven "reason" for purchasing cannot be replicated by your competition. The personal connection you create to your brand is strong enough that it is capable of influencing the masses, and can do so for a sustainable amount of time.
If your brand flawlessly delivers on its highly focused promise of value, then the press and blogs will find it newsworthy, and fertilize the seed you've planted with your customer. Once the press validates your brand, your advertising, SEO, packaging, promotions and POS messaging become more credible and your desired brand position becomes tangible in your customer's mind.
A successful brand strategy is one that is sustainable over time, ideally, 10 to 20 years time.
This articulation of your brand's position according to your brand strategy is symbolized with the creation of its core communication assets. Call them "brand assets" if you're feeling all fancy-pants like.
Brand Assets
Brand assets can come in many forms that all work together to symbolically tell the story of your brand's value.
Both individually and collectively, the brand assets have a sole purpose: to create an iconic presence in your consumer's mind that visually, phonically and emotionally symbolizes the brand's value and its promise of value. The ultimate goal of these brand assets is to be unique and carry a tonality that perfectly aligns with the intended virtues of the brand's value, allowing your brand to "own" a specific "idea" inside your target customer's mind. When the brand fulfills its promise of value, the brand assets visually and phonically symbolize the specific value in an iconic manner in your customer's mind's eye.
Brand assets can come in many forms. Recently, I saw the Brand Director for Coca-Cola speak about their recently refined brand assets. He admitted they started to "lose sight" of their core brand asset elements. More critically, they had diluted the very brand assets that had helped them achieve a dominant market share and exclusive connection with the consumer! So for 2009 and beyond, you will begin to see a much cleaner articulation of this leading brand, reverting back to their roots, stripping away the fancy graphic effects that Photoshop enabled their brand designers to go bananas. Their newly refined assets only include imagery and voice that is true to Coca-Cola of old.
- The scripted Coca-Cola [removing all fancy drop shadows or added fizz designs to it]. No more Coke logos for the original product; diet drinks are ok.
- The simple "ribbon" [removing all fancy drop shadows or added fizz designs to it]
- The silhouetted image of the old fashion green bottle
- Primary Color: Coca-Cola Red. [Extreme use of red as background color]
- Primary Color: Coca-Cola White. [Coca-Cola logo knocked out of red]
- Primary Color: Coca-Cola Bottle Green Glass [dust this off and use it aggressively]
- Primary Color: Coca-Cola itself [a back lit shot of the coke liquid itself]
- Secondary Color: Silver
- Secondary Color: Black
- Primary Image: Coca-Cola being poured into the silhouetted bottle image
- Phonically: No more "Coke" only Coca- Cola. Coke is now the phonic preference for Diet Coke and Coke Zero, but not the original Coca-Cola.
There are more core brand assets for Coca-Cola, but you get the point. They are focusing their brand identity back to the imagery that symbolizes the invention of the soft drink that refreshes and brings joy to its consumers.
So tell me. If your brand were capable of achieving iconic status, the visual and phonic symbolism for a specific value, one that your customer values most, then why would you change it?
If your brand agency did its job, and positioned your brand for the most valuable position possible, in terns of market share opportunity, then you shouldn't have to change your brand strategy or its core brand assets.
What you can change is your Campaign Strategy.
Campaign Strategy
The brand strategy and its associated brand assets serve as the common denominator--the DNA in every campaign execution over that 20-year period. When the brand strategy is cemented it becomes the foundation for the campaign strategy and related communications over time. This foundation allows the campaign strategy to adjust the creative executions to communicate contextually in the most personally relevant manner possible in order to capitalize on:
- Innovations in your brand
- Changes in customer attitudes, demands and obsessions
- New demographic and market opportunities
- Competitive campaigns
- Competitive innovations
- Specific public environments your brand "lives" in [example: Fenway Park versus Gillette Stadium versus The Garden]
Well, I have more to say on this, but if I don't get to work, Amanda is going to hunt me down and I don't want that.
In the end, it's not about you knowing your customers; it's about your customers knowing you. Be absolutely certain they know you for the "idea" they value most. Craft exclusive brand assets to be the icon of this value at a glance, every glance it gets. Be consistent over time with your brand assets. Assume they are not broken in the first place. Adjust your campaign strategies to address the dynamic needs and attributes of the marketplace.
It is easier said, than done.
Peter Getman, Principal Brand Director
MicroArts Creative AgencyLabels: brand design and development, consumer packaging design |
|
|
| |
 |
MicroArts Creative Agency |
 |
10.06.2008 @ 8:32 PM |
 |
0 comments
|
|
|
|
|
