EDITALK

Why to Build an Iconic Brand?

Across India and all over the world there are brands and brands being launched almost every other day, somewhere or the other. These could be start-ups, entrepreneurs, alliances or any other. However, what’s important is, that when these brands start promoting their products through social media, how much attention do they really pay to the most significant factor of all, which is about building their brands. Today, we are flooded with examples of brands that have been in existence for many years, but their names have still not been forgotten, they are etched in our memory forever, while there are the other brands too, who are comparatively new and more recent, but still not known or remembered. As a-case-in-point, if we take any industry, we will find names, that go with that industry, such as Amul for milk products, Colgate for toothpastes, Apple for mobile phones, Bata for Footwear, Titan for Watches & etc., all of which are benchmarks, in what they produce. These are names that carry a brand recall, they carry weight of what they represent, and most of all, come what may, they can never be erased permanently from the mind. Somehow, they keep coming back again and again. These are names that have worked on a long-term brand-building strategy rather than short- term gains. How many of us do truly remember the names of new entrants or do we? Whenever one plans to buy any product, regardless of its nature, it’s the names of yore, that usually strike one first. Somehow, the new entrants, just do not figure anywhere in that list. It’s always names that one has grown up hearing about or patronising on a regular basis that come to the fore. In fact, at times, when buying a product, one has to literally struggle, if one is looking for the name of a new or recent entrant. So, why is this happening at all? Why is brand building losing its relevance in the present-day? This is one debate that is following marketers everywhere; be they podcasts, LinkedIn feeds, conferences or boardrooms alike. Is it because, nobody has the patience to build an iconic brand anymore? Performance marketing has indeed taken over; creators have perhaps replaced celebrities, and algorithms for sure are the deciding factor in what people see. The answer is unequivocal. This is s phase. Those brands that burn their fingers but manage to survive through it, will return to the basics, and survive another 100 years. However, on the flip side, the new brands that think they’re too cool to invest in long term brand building and instead chase engagement and virality, well to be sure, they’re not planning to be around for even the next ten years, one dare say, as they are busy just working towards valuation and sale. That distinction between chasing engagement and building enduring memory, as many brands have historically done in the past, emerges repeatedly across conversations with marketers. So, where does one begin? What is brand awareness? Well, it’s the extent to which customers recognize and recall a brand, including its name, logo, products, and other identity elements. It is the critical first stage of the marketing funnel, because consumers must be familiar with a brand before they can even consider, purchasing its creations. Awareness exists on a spectrum ranging from complete unfamiliarity, to a high level of brand recall and recognition. The higher the brand awareness, the higher is the likelihood, that people will trust that brand and choose its products, over that of its competitors. Very simply explained – brand awareness = how well people recognize and remember a particular brand. And in this too, brand awareness can again be broken down into three very distinct levels: the first being Brand recognition, the second being its recall, and the third one being top-of-mind awareness. Each of these levels differ in depth. The first – Brand recognition (aided awareness) stems from a consumer’s ability to identify one’s brand when shown a cue (a logo, a colour, a tagline, or packaging). It’s thus aided in a way, because the customers don’t need to remember the name on their own; they just need to recognize it when they see it. Brand recall (unaided awareness). The second - Brand recall, also called unaided or spontaneous awareness, is a consumer’s ability to name a particular brand from memory, with no visual or verbal cue. It’s a stronger signal than recognition, as it proves that that particular brand lives in the customers’ head because of its consistently improving quality over time, and its equally consistent awareness about the pricing of its products, and not just when it’s placed in front of their eyes. The third – Top-of-mind awareness, is the highest level, as it’s the one brand, that comes to mind immediately, when a person thinks of a product category, ahead of its competitor. In short, the moral of the story is that recognition gets a brand short-listed, recall gets it remembered, and top-of- mind gets it chosen by default. Hence, a complete brand awareness strategy requires a well-planned and holistic approach. It begins with clearly defining one’s brand identity and audience and continues thereafter with intentional marketing tactics that place a brand before the right people. Those key tactics include content marketing, social media, PR, advertising, education, event presence and a continuous brand awareness measurement. The more distinctly and clearly a brand understands and identifies its target audience, the needs of its potential customers, their expectations from it, as well as their behaviour, the easier it becomes, how to reach them with the right message that stays put in their minds and hearts. In today’s time and era, it’s important yes, to keep improvising, innovating as well as technologically advancing one’s brand, but more important than all these factors, is to keep building one’s brand and communicating its individuality, special identity and uniqueness to its target audiences. Only then, will the brand be followed, remembered, and build its very own recall. In the Horological Industry too, there are examples of several Iconic International and Domestic brands that have built their names over years of hard work and toil that they have each put in, such that their brand recall is extremely strong and continues to remain so until this day, as they are remembered, just as much today, as they always were. And why is this so? It’s due to the consistent brand building that have constantly done and continue to do so even for the future. However, there are the other newer ones too, many of whom have come and gone, only because their market push was great when they made an entry into Horology, but then over time, they placed brand building on the back-burner for short-term gains, and lost out as a consequence. Many of them, have either disappeared completely, or even if still in existence, they have somewhere along their journey, fumbled in being able to maintain and mobilize their brand recall. So, today, a brand is a character by itself in the consumer’s world, but not every character earns a place in that world. Someone has described these expressions as: ”cultural objects” like ideas, products or stories that people want to own, quote, debate about and pass along. “Get the narrative and the participation right, and the effect compounds. Every product of a particular brand, makes the next one travel further, because people are already carrying the story forward. That’s what brand building is all about. Not the tools. Not the platforms. It’s the discipline to understand that stories take time to take hold, but once they do, they travel much farther than one can ever imagine. The brands that grow faster are not always the ones with the largest budgets or the loudest marketing. They are the ones with the Clarity Advantage, perception, promise and direction. Time does not create iconic brands, Clarity, sustained over time, does.

Hemal M. Kharod