Master the Three Types of Branding
What Is a Brand?
The term brand refers to a business and marketing concept that helps people identify a particular company, product, or individual. Brands are intangible, which means you can't actually touch or see them. As such, they help shape people's perceptions of companies, their products, or individuals. Brands commonly use identifying markers to help create brand identities within the marketplace. They provide enormous value to the company or individual, giving them a competitive edge over others in the same industry. As such, many entities seek legal protection for their brands by obtaining trademarks.
Personal Branding
Within a company or organization, there may be anywhere from one to many people that also have personal brands.
Think of Apple and Steve Jobs. Two brands, related but separate, and each brand had its own followers and fans.
In much the same way, your company may have a leader, a CEO, or even a lower-tier member with a brand of their own. How can your content help boost that personal brand’s reputation? A branding consultancy can provide insight into this.
Company Branding
A company or corporation may have a brand of its own.
Strike that. A company or corporation *should* have a brand of its own. Any company has a reputation of some kind, be that good or bad. The trick is in crafting a positive reputation and helping as many people as possible know about it.
The reputations these companies and organizations have don’t exist by accident. They are purposeful, the result of smart branding.
Your company needs to have a specific brand they want to put out into the world, a reputation they want to have. This brand can be reinforced through your content. A branding consultancy can handle this work for you.
Product Branding
Even within a company, individual products may also have their own brand. McDonald’s has a brand, but the Big Mac and McRib have their own reputations, for better or worse. A car company, Ford, may have one brand, but a specific car, the Mustang, will have its own reputation. So there are Ford fans that don’t much like the Mustang and vice versa.
In your company, you may have several products or services that you market through content. What brand do these offerings have? What reputation do they have? How would your entire company benefit if some products developed their own brands, related to but separate from the overall company brand? A branding consultancy can handle this work as well.
The Bottom Line
Brands are one of the most important and valuable assets that a company or person owns. They can make or break a company, so it's important that firms do their research before launching a product or service, or before they open their doors for business. Successful branding can help the company attract and retain a customer base, which can lead to brand loyalty while giving it a leg up on the competition.
Contact Ravyn Design today, one of the best brand identity firms in Toronto!
If you want your luxury brand to outpace the competition in your chosen marketplace, then schedule a call with our brand identity experts today!