Organisations and brands need to ‘dig deep’ to find their core, before they can develop long term, sustainable branding programmes

Powerful brands, as we all know, emanate an aura of appeal and trust. But why do some succeed and others not? The external manifestations of a brand are many – name, logo, product, packaging, promotion, social media presence and many more. But this is merely the skin that has been placed upon them to give them recognition. These are the indicators of something that lies far beneath.

All successful brands start with a deep, inner commitment to ‘who they are’ and how they wish to position themselves against the competition or similar offers in their marketplace. This can be the case for private and public sector brands. They are both competing for space in our minds and our hearts. Which mobile phone to buy? Which charity to support? The rules of branding apply to both equally.

To have any chance of long term success, brand owners need to begin with an exhaustive investigation into what the ‘essence’ of the brand is. What is at the core of the brand that will be appealing, believable, relevant to a chosen audience – and sustainable?
Every aspect of the brand has to be analysed from the core offer (usually a product or service) to its name, its values, how it might ‘look and sound’ and ways in which it is to be promoted.

The branding programme carried out for Advantage Austria began with such an analysis – what was at the core of ‘Austrian Trade’, as it was called initially – a semi-governmental organisation whose mission is to promote Austrian business abroad and encourage inward investment into Austria? After a period of research, it became clear that it was the (often hidden) individuality and ‘specialness’ of many SMEs, who held deep expertise in each of their lines of work, that gave Austrian business its distinctiveness. At their core they were ‘Surprisingly Ingenious’. The brand name did not support this and had to be changed, then its ‘clothing’ developed – new logo, typefaces, colours, photography and verbal style – and applied to everything from stationery to brochures and their website. You can read the full story in the Stories section of this website.

In the case of Indesit, the European white goods manufacturer, they had a strong market positioning that they wished to further strengthen by consolidating under one Masterbrand. They needed to unite different product brands under this. Again, they went back the core of what they do as a business. Here they re-discovered the importance of honesty and not overclaiming in a marketplace which valued brand efficacy. At their core was a promise not to continually revolutionise their products, a potentially disruptive force, but to simply make them better gradually, day by day. Their new brand essence and promise to their customers was to be ‘Simply Better’ every day. And from this flowed their new ‘look and feel’, supporting this claim. Again, you can read the full story on this website.

You can read other stories that speak to the importance of having a strong and well thought-through brand essence as the essential underpinning of powerful brands – for Airtel in India, Schlumberger Business Consulting and World Cancer Research Fund.