It is indeed a very important step to establish corporate identity system and carry out necessary advertising, but don't think that a strong brand can be born only by corporate identity system and advertising.
Corporate image recognition is only the external representation of the brand, and advertising can only improve the visibility of the enterprise, but it can not form brand reputation and brand loyalty.
Differentiation is the essential feature of a brand. The purpose of building a brand is to distinguish it from other brands and establish a unique positioning, image and value in the eyes of customers. If we don't consider the positioning and value that truly represents the brand connotation, the brand packaged and publicized only from the perspective of corporate image is like a vase produced on an assembly line. Although beautiful, it is the same, and it is very easy to be imitated and copied by others. Things that are easily imitated and copied by others cannot constitute brand elements. The brand should be unique, and the unique brand connotation and brand promise are the most critical factors in shaping a strong brand. ? Three transformations? Brand is not a good medicine but a deadly poison for enterprises, which will make enterprises lose the opportunity to build a real brand because they are too obsessed with a brand illusion.
Myth 2: To be a brand is to sell, and the enterprise with the first market share is naturally a strong brand. When consulting enterprises, we found that many managers of enterprises hold a view that our products are of good quality, have a number of technical patents and have the best market share in the industry. It is also a national inspection-free product and a provincial and municipal brand-name product. We are already a strong brand.
Is that really the case?
Concepts such as market share, patented technology and national inspection exemption represent a short-term competitiveness index of enterprises, while having a strong brand means that enterprises have long-term competitiveness, and the ability to achieve sustainable profits by relying on brands in the next ten or twenty years represents the driving force for maintaining long-term stable development of enterprises. A strong brand represents a kind of value, a kind of belief and a kind of orientation, which can exist independently and does not need capital entities. Nike has no factories in the world, but it is the overlord of the global sportswear industry; The president of Coca-Cola dared to say that even if all Coca-Cola's factories were burned with a torch, the bank would try to get a loan the next day. Can we do that?
At the same time, the benefits brought by the concepts of market share, patented technology and national inspection exemption are attached to the products, that is, the products must be sold to realize profits. A strong brand can not only generate profits attached to products, but also enhance the company's stock market value and intangible assets value through the continuous improvement of brand value. To put it bluntly, a strong brand can earn another money in the capital market by relying on investors' expectations of the brand's future profits.
Take South Korea's Samsung as an example: in 2003, the brand value was $654.38+008 billion, and in 2005 it became $654.38+05 billion, and the intangible assets increased by $4.2 billion in two years. Although this money is not cash, it can achieve the same benefits as physical assets in many aspects such as future corporate mergers and acquisitions, new product listing, product premium, financing, stock market value and so on. Yates, CEO of Interbrand? Frampton once said: For Samsung, brand value has always been a very important strategic tool? .
It can be said that there is nothing wrong with taking market share as an indicator to measure brand value, but it is a big mistake to think that market share is equivalent to brand.
Myth 3: Is a famous brand a brand and a trademark a brand? Famous brand? It is a noun with China characteristics. Literally, it should mean? Famous brand? . Release? Famous brand? Confusion about brands is not uncommon among managers of local enterprises. This conceptual error often leads to a misunderstanding: as long as customers know the name of our company, we are a strong brand. Under the guidance of this misunderstanding, enterprises often focus on advertising, while ignoring the connotation of cultivating brands.
Advertising can bring popularity, but it can't bring customers' reputation and loyalty. Fame is only one of the elements of brand building. Fame is easy to get as long as you are willing to spend money. What you can get easily with money is often not different, and being different is one of the essential elements of brand building. It is wrong to rely solely on advertising to build a brand.
The products of industrial production enterprises are means of production, and customers are mainly concerned about whether the products can create value for them and how much profit they can bring. In the process of bidding, well-known brand-name products can indeed add many advantages to enterprises, but when everyone is well-known, they will stand on the same starting line. At this time, the competitive things are the core things of the brand: brand positioning, brand personality and brand value.
Another view is that a trademark is a brand.
Trademark is a concept of legal category and brand is a concept of marketing category. A brand includes a trademark, which is an integral part of a brand recognition system. Trademark Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) (200 1 Revision) defines a trademark as a visible sign (including words, graphics, letters, numbers, three-dimensional signs, color combinations and combinations of the above elements) that can distinguish one's own goods (including services) from others' goods (including services).
Trademark is a kind of intellectual property, and trademarks of well-known enterprises are also intellectual property. Its owner is an enterprise, and it is tangible. Brand is the brand of products or services in the eyes of customers, which belongs to customers and is intangible. When a company's products or services can't satisfy customers, customers can easily delete the brand from their minds.
Myth 4: Brand strategy is a big business, and it takes a lot of money to build a brand. When talking about brand strategy with some entrepreneurs around us, some bosses of small and medium-sized enterprises said: brand strategy is a big business, and it takes a lot of money to build a brand. We don't have the strength at this stage, so let's wait and see. This view comes from many small and medium-sized enterprise managers' misunderstanding of brand awareness.
Indeed, both Samsung and Intel have invested billions of dollars in brand upgrading, which is by no means affordable for SMEs.
But not all brands are made of money. Money is a sufficient but not necessary condition for building a brand, and making a brand is by no means the patent of a large enterprise. The development of any brand will go through the process from weak to strong, and the brand will never be achieved overnight. Brand strategy is actually a kind of mentality and concept of enterprise managers: customer-centered, constantly improving customer value, positioning and focusing, differentiation and consistent communication. The promotion of corporate image is rapid, but the penetration of ideas is slow. Brand communication needs to be from the inside out. It requires enterprises to let every employee deeply understand the connotation of the brand and highly agree with it, and then let every employee bring this connotation (value, positioning and personality) to customers.
The experience of many successful brands proves that the brand strategy has actually begun when the enterprise establishes the correct brand concept and brings this brand concept to every employee. Although the company didn't have much money for publicity at first, it did a good job in basic work. Once the time is ripe, the emergence of a strong brand is only a moment.
Let's take a look at the story of Acer, a well-known IT manufacturer in Taiwan Province Province. Acer, founded in 1976, is the fourth largest PC manufacturer in the world. At the beginning of 2007, British brand consulting company BrandFinance released a report on the most valuable brands in the world, and announced 250 most valuable brands in the world to the industry. Acer brand ranked 229th, the only company in Taiwan Province Province. At the same time, the report also shows that Acer's brand value accounts for 765,438+0% of the company's assets, and the brand's contribution to the company's assets is high, ranking third in the world.
As early as 198 1 years ago, Acer's founder history established the brand concept. They have gone through the arduous process from starting from scratch to OEM for European and American brands, to creating their own brands while insisting on OEM, and then to separating brands from OEM, which is the most representative brand case in Taiwan Province IT industry.
They not only designed brand identification and brand positioning, but also tried to spread the brand through various channels. At the beginning of Acer's business, there was no money for advertising, so what was Acer's brand communication strategy before 1995? Poor marketing method? (Poorman Marketing): Try not to advertise brainwashing, and stick to it? Long-term operation? Concept, first adhere to the shaping orientation, and then pursue popularity; Disseminate consistent brand core values with constantly refurbished news events; Use frequent news media exposure to gain advertising benefits. For example, 1986, Acer set up the first prize of Longteng scientific paper; 1987, initiated by Kaohsiung? Thousands of computer classrooms? Activities, attracting 65438+ 10,000 people to operate; In addition, it also held many international computer Go competitions, computer summer camps for students and business strategy seminars for related enterprises. It was not until 2000 that Acer increased its investment in brand promotion and became one of the top 500 brands in the world in just seven years.
There is no strong brand that became famous overnight. The road to brand building is arduous and long. It took South Korea's Samsung 30 years to become a global brand list, and it is common to spend decades and generations trying to build a brand. Brand growth is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change. Establish brand concept one day earlier, and realize brand dream one day earlier. Time waits for no one, and enterprises that start to make brands after they are strong will eventually lose the opportunity for development.
Therefore, small and medium-sized enterprises that have solved the problem of survival should start planning brand strategy as soon as possible, and find the right direction in terms of brand value, brand positioning and brand personality, but they should not aim too high. Instead, they should first establish a correct brand concept within the enterprise and then gradually implement brand strategy according to the current situation of the enterprise.
At the same time, brands are not rootless trees, nor castles in the air. Small and medium-sized enterprises should lay a good foundation before establishing their image. If there are still shortcomings in product quality, production management and marketing, we should first improve them. This promotion is also an indispensable part in the process of brand building.
Myth 5: As long as the product quality is excellent, you can gradually form a brand. Product quality is an important element of brand value construction, but it is impossible to build a strong brand only by relying on product quality. Because there are huge differences between strong brands and other brands, strong brands are unique and cannot be copied, while quality can be copied.
Quality can be replicated because any enterprise can improve product quality by improving equipment, introducing advanced technology and management mode. Although the product quality of different enterprises in an industry will definitely be different, customers cannot distinguish and perceive these differences in detail. If there are several manufacturers whose products are exempt from inspection, all of them are produced by enterprises of the same scale, all of which adopt the most advanced technology and have a good reputation, then customers will think that the products of these enterprises are similar in quality. In the iron and steel industry, this phenomenon is particularly obvious: for a construction unit, the construction steel products produced by Shougang, Tangshan Iron and Steel Co., Anshan Iron and Steel Co., Baotou Steel Co., Ltd. and Wuhan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. can meet their requirements for quality, and they will think that the products of these manufacturers are of equal quality and can be used by anyone.
What can be copied is worthless. Since quality can be replicated, the product premium brought by quality alone is unstable, unsustainable and unreliable. How do different manufacturers catch up between quality and price? The waves behind the Yangtze River push the waves before? Endless.
Brand is completely different: the shaping of a strong brand requires the painstaking efforts of one generation or several generations, and its rich connotation and unique value orientation cannot be copied, so the premium brought by the brand is stable, lasting and reliable. An enterprise that relies too much on quality and ignores brand building and innovation may be arrogant, but sooner or later it will be surpassed by those powerful brands.
Sanyo Company of Japan in 1990s was a Japanese electronic product manufacturer that once kept pace with Sony and Panasonic. Since the late 1960s, Sanyo Company has abandoned the development of its own brand and started to implement it? OEM strategy? Take advantage of Japan's advantages in manufacturing at that time, such as leading quality control system and complete industrial system, and OEM for other big companies. The implementation of this strategy has brought a short-term glory to Sanyo: from 2000 to 2002, Sanyo became the world's largest OEM manufacturer of digital cameras, with a global output of 30%; Sanyo also works for digital camera brands such as Sony and Kodak. It is also the world's largest mobile phone battery OME manufacturer, producing mobile phone batteries for many brands of mobile phones such as Nokia.
In the years after 2000, Japan's economy was depressed, and Sanyo made huge profits by OEM. At its peak, Sanyo's share price far surpassed that of competitors such as Panasonic.
Although OEM has brought short-term glory to Sanyo Company, it has laid the groundwork for the future crisis. Sanyo's brand value and technological innovation ability continue to decline because it has been obsessed with the profits brought by OEM for a long time and neglected brand building and innovation. Although Sanyo's R&D funds are increasing every year, they are actually only used for the improvement of OEM production lines and not for the development of new products at all. In just a few years after 2002, Sanyo's market leading position in LCD projectors, semiconductors, plasma TVs, mobile phones and other fields was replaced by South Korean manufacturers such as Samsung and Panasonic. Sanyo's product competitiveness and price competitiveness have declined rapidly, and even there is no chance to OEM South Korea's Samsung. Sanyo's products are put in the most inconspicuous place by many Japanese electrical appliance sellers, and no one cares. Sanyo brand has thus become a third-rate brand.
People often say? Happiness never comes in pairs, but it never rains? This sentence sometimes works surprisingly well. June, 5438+October, 20041October, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale occurred in Niigata, about 260 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, Japan, where Sanyo Electronic Semiconductor Factory is located, which led to the complete paralysis of Sanyo Semiconductor Factory. This natural disaster caused Sanyo to suffer losses as high as $690 million, and Sanyo was greatly weakened. In the following three fiscal years (2004-2006), Sanyo suffered losses continuously, with a total loss of 440 billion yen (about 3.7 billion US dollars). Three consecutive years of losses, large-scale recall of mobile phone batteries in 2006, large-scale recall of washing machines in 2007, and false accounting scandal made Sanyo worse. Sanyo, which once dominated the world by OEM, is facing an unprecedented crisis.
Sanyo's case tells us that it is impossible not to pay attention to quality, and it is impossible to only pay attention to quality and bury our heads in OEM. Quality is easy to be imitated and surpassed, and only brand is the core of long-term competitiveness of enterprises.
The birth of a strong brand is no accident. Successful brands cannot be created by advertising, improving product quality and increasing market share. Is any one-sided and fragmented understanding of the brand the same? Blind people touch elephants? 、? Frog in the well? Stories are generally ridiculous, and the cost of making strategic decisions based on superficial or even wrong brand cognition is extremely expensive.
People have known and studied brands for hundreds of years, and strategic brand management has become an increasingly mature science. Only by understanding the brand with a scientific attitude and a scientific concept of development can enterprise decision makers avoid those brand cognitive misunderstandings that seem ridiculous but are terrible; Only a far-sighted brand strategy can lead enterprises to embark on the smooth road of creating a strong brand as soon as possible.
It is the real starting point of brand strategy to let enterprise decision makers take the lead in getting out of the misunderstanding of brand cognition!