Are Brands Born or Built ?

Let’s get this out of the way right away. Brands are never born, the are built from scratch. It takes years to build a brand. Brands are built on trust. Trust of the consumers, trust of the employees, trust of your investors, trust of your partners, trust of your suppliers, trust of your franchisees, trust of your lenders and trust of everyone else who interacts with your brand. Brands are built on a products / services to its core. It is built by relentlessly implementing the brand strategy and following every single process on a consistent basis. Brands are built by listening to the feedback from your customers, suppliers and other stakeholders and positively acting on it. Brand building is not a Quarterly / Half Yearly / Yearly project. It’s a continuous process.

Brand Building Vs Branding

Branding is a part of Brand Building. Branding includes Brand Logo, TagLine, Colour Palette, Jingles, Packaging design, office collaterals etc. Many of us confuse it with brand building. While Branding gives a Brand its presence, building that brand is a different story all together. Branding helps your target audience identify you. When we say Tata Motors, your brain immediately jumps to the logo of Tata Motors or their huge signage of one of their showrooms you must have visited or seen. That’s the power of Branding and is termed as Brand Recall.

Why Brand Perception is important ?

A Brand is a perception in the minds of people or business who interact with it. So for a consumer a brand is trustworthy if it satisfies his / her wants or solves problems quickly at a fair cost on consistent usage of your product or service. For your supplier, a brand is trustworthy if there is volume growth for him and he/she gets paid on time. For your employees, your brand is trustworthy if they make progress at their job, there is a work life balance, they work in an environment which is free from toxicity and they are able to enjoy their time at the job etc. For your investors, your brand is trustworthy when they get good returns on their investments and you are transparent in the disclosures. For your lenders, your brand is trustworthy once you repay the debt on time on schedule. These perceptions stem out of your business processes when it performs in the way it is designed to on a consistent basis.

Brand Lifecycle

A brand life cycle is generally different from a product life cycle. If your brand has a single product then both brand lifecycle and product life cycle are the same. Though they are different, the life stages remain the same. Introduction, Growth, Maturity & Decline. One needs to have thoughtfully crafted strategies for each stage of the Brand Life Cycle. Budget allocations, quick response plan, pricing plan, customer engagement plan etc need to be chalked out based on the lifecycle stages.

How Can Refitus help build your Brand ?

We are a team of professionals with decades of experience in management consulting & change management and possess hands on experience in designing and implementing Strategies & Business Processes, People Management, Branding, Marketing & PR, Finance, Accounting & Taxation. We have associate partners in various industries who play a significant role in scaling up operations and have deep market insights. Connect with us and lets start building your brand together.