THE IRISH TIMES/ERNEST & YOUNG Business Studies Series - Week 10:The process of creating a brand is more complicated than it seems, writes Caroline Madden
ON THE surface, the process of creating a brand seems relatively straightforward: simply choose a clever name for your product or service, concoct a snappy tagline, create a cool logo, and soon your tills will be ringing, right?
Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple, and things can easily go wrong.
The annals of marketing are littered with cautionary – albeit amusing – tales illustrating the damage that can be inflicted on a brand (particularly when trying to launch products into foreign markets) by a slogan with an unfortunate translation or unwitting cultural faux pas.
A prime example was “Schweppes Tonic Water” which, when originally translated into Italian read as “Schweppes Toilet Water”. Then there was Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” slogan, which was translated into the bizarre “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave” in China.
Perhaps the most famous brand blunder came when General Motors tried to market its Chevrolet Nova car in Central and South America, even though the phrase “no va” means “no go” in Spanish.
If some of the biggest corporations in the world can get their branding strategy so very wrong, what hope is there for businesses on shoestring budgets?
According to marketing expert Gerard Tannam of Islandbridge Brand Direction, it is entirely feasible for small businesses including start-ups to create a successful brand even if funds are tight.
The single most important step is to establish exactly who your typical customer will be and to draw up a profile of that person, which does not have to be an expensive process.
“What often happens is that a business will set out with something to sell and will have a broad sense of somebody who might buy it, but no real sense of who the real buyer is,” says Tannam.
“Instead of selling into the crowd, sell to one person at the very heart of the crowd.”
The real job of branding, he says, is to take a universal offering and present it to the consumer in a way that feels personal.
All the great brand taglines, such as the Bulmers “Nothing Added but Time” slogan for its cider drink, show “tremendous understanding” of where the customer is coming from, he says.
McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” slogan is another good example, says Tannam, because it shows an understanding of how its target consumer might react to buying a fast-food meal.
There is no reason why small businesses cannot craft taglines that are “strong and meaningful” and that connect with their audience.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, starting a brand from scratch was very difficult,” he says.
But now a huge amount of free or inexpensive imagery can be accessed online, as well as templates for logos, fliers and so on. All that is required is thought and effort, says Tannam.
Stephen Vard of brand design consultants the Vard Partnership agrees that knowing your audience is key. “It’s really about learning to excite and engage that audience,” he says.
Vard advises businesses to keep the message behind their brand as simple as possible. He highlights the brand identity of Innocent smoothies as an excellent example of this. “Everything the brand is about reflects that one word,” he says. “Honesty and simplicity are completely ingrained in everything they’ve done.”
(You can check out innocentdrinks.co.uk to get a greater insight into Innocent’s branding strategy).
Choosing a simple but clever brand name is vital, Vard says, but there is one major problem at this stage: many of the best brand names (or at least the website domain names) are already taken.
Therefore it is essential that you check that the .com domain name, or at least the .ie domain name, is still free before committing to a name.
It is also important that all of the brand’s “touchpoints”, ie points of interaction between the consumer and the brand, are consistent. This means that your business’s brochures, website and advertising campaigns must reinforce the original brand message. Again, Innocent has excelled in this area. “Innocent is brilliantly consistent. It’s innovative, original, but consistent,” says Vard.
Finally, best of luck to all the primary and secondary school students participating in the Fingal Student Enterprise Awards taking place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Blanchardstown today.
Series concludes
