Nowadays, all products are branded, but what exactly is a brand and what is the true meaning of a brand? This article quickly sorts out the definition of brand and its past and present life to help everyone better understand the brand. At the same time, it shares some opinions on how to build a brand. I hope it will be helpful to you. What is a brand? What is the use of a brand? How to build a brand? Various schools are in chaos, who do you believe? Tarrant has sorted this out and will take you to overlook the brand map, quickly understand the true meaning of the brand, understand the past and present of the brand, establish brand thinking, and know how to start building a brand. 1. What is a brand? Brand originates from the Old Norse word brandr, which means "burning" brand. The brand theory in the modern sense was formally proposed by David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, in 1950. The brand's development to this day is only a century old, but it has experienced rapid development. Over the decades, the definition of brand has been continuously enriched: Philip Kotler, the father of marketing, said that a brand is a symbol and a promise; David Ogilvy, the godfather of marketing, said that a brand represents an image; David Ogilvy, the originator of brand equity, said ·Ike said that brand is an asset; Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, believed that brand represents a "lifestyle"; Trout, the founder of positioning theory, said that brand is the mental resource of consumers, and brands must seize consumption In summary, a brand can be defined as follows: a brand is an asset, a corporate asset, and this asset exists in the minds of customers and potential customers. middle. The value of brand is often underestimated. Good brand equity can bring attention to a company, gain trust, boost sales, increase premiums, and reduce risks. This picture on the screen vividly tells us how the brand is created. The left side is the customer's perception, and the right side is the company's products, marketing and culture. The more contact points a customer has with an enterprise, the more comprehensive their understanding of the enterprise will be. In turn, the better each contact point between a company and its customers is, the higher the customer's evaluation of the company will be, and the stronger the company's brand will be. In the next section, we look at the 70-year history of brand development. You can find that every step of brand development is the continuous expansion and optimization of brand touch points. 2. Brand development history The emergence of brands first comes from the necessity of competition and the uniqueness of product touch points. Let’s take a look at the bottom layer. Brand starts with distinction. First, as the market scale expanded, there were more goods. In order to allow consumers to distinguish different goods of the same category in the market, producers began to mark their own goods. For example, Procter & Gamble named a soap Ivory Soap to differentiate it from other bulk soaps at the time. We used to have rice flour, oil, soy and vinegar in bulk, and later we had Haitian soy sauce and arowana oil. It’s the same thing. P&G's ivory soap logo is still in use today. Later, in order to prevent counterfeit and shoddy products and protect its own patents, trademarks and patents began to emerge. Trademarks and patents are important legal basis for brand protection. The most famous example is Levi’s application for patent protection for jeans. At that time, the United States was in the midst of a gold rush. A businessman named Levi used denim to sew wear-resistant jeans, which were welcomed by the gold diggers. His friend Davis, a tailor, discovered that rivets could make the pants more durable. Stronger. In order to prevent piracy, Davis and Levi applied for a patent for this invention in 1873 and jointly founded Levi's Company. The anchor line of the Levi's logo After World War II, the global market gradually formed, and the establishment of transnational brands and global brands helped business expansion under different political and cultural systems. For example, Coca-Cola, Sony, and Samsung have all begun to use brand tools. Sony's story is particularly noteworthy. At that time, Sony was trying to enter the US market. Bulova came to the door and said that it wanted to purchase 100,000 units of Sony products, but the condition was that the Sony brand could not be used. You know, the order amount of 100,000 units was higher than Sony's total capital at the time. But the Sony CEO at the time, Akio Morita, whom Jobs called his idol, defied the board of directors, refused to accept the order, and chose to enter the United States with his own brand. Later, he told Jobs who came to ask for advice that this was the best business decision in his career.

After "The Autobiography of Akio Morita", channel dealers also began to focus on establishing their own channel brands, so that they could negotiate prices with manufacturers and gain higher profits and voice. For example, with the rise of store brands such as Wal-Mart, Hema, Gome Suning, etc., Gome Electrical Appliances and Gree Air Conditioners once had conflicts because of this. Gome even banned Gree from stores. In addition to downstream channel brands, upstream supply chain companies, that is, toB companies, have also begun to have brand awareness, so Intel and Qualcomm emerged. These supply chain brands are also called factor brands. The most well-known is undoubtedly Intel's advertisement, which successfully created its own brand image of Elements, and Waiting for Light has become a classic. With the popularization of the Internet, creating comprehensive influence has become the desire of all enterprises. Both Apple and Huawei are building full-factor brands, unifying supply chain and channel brands into an overall brand. It can be seen from the history of brand development that the touch points of the brand are constantly extending from appearance and image, to legal protection, to channels and supply chain. At the same time, brands are very powerful in improving the commercial competitiveness of enterprises. Otherwise, it would be impossible for upstream, middle and downstream companies to rush to build brands. 3. How to build a brand. Now that we know what a brand is and how it came about, let’s take a look at how to build a brand. Nowadays, there are many ways to build a brand, but which one is reliable? First, we cannot look at brands in isolation. The brand is not a point, but a hub, which serves as a link between the previous and the following. Let's look at this picture. We are ultimately able to position our brand through market insights, customer segmentation and target customer selection. Then, brand building is achieved through the 4Ps of product, price, channel, and promotion. Simply put, building a brand means having a clear positioning and doing what you say you will do. First, find your own advantages and give customers clear and stable expectations and promises (positioning). Then, on the one hand, use products, prices, channels, etc. to fulfill this promise (capability support). On the one hand, brand promotion is used to reach customers’ minds with promises (brand promotion). Through "brand promotion capability support", we will do what we say, continue to promote the brand flywheel, and achieve the growth of brand equity. Secondly, how can we keep our word? Let’s use the brand house model to make it concrete (see the figure below for details). First of all, the roof must be the brand positioning, it is the top-level design. How to position the brand? Just mentioned briefly, it is market insight, customer segmentation and target customer selection. In addition to this perspective, two perspectives, enterprise and competition, can also be added. For example, the company's mission, vision, values, and the unique value of the industry in the future can all be put into the consideration framework of brand positioning. With the roof of brand positioning, there must also be a foundation. The foundation is 4P, product, price, channel and promotion. In plain language, the relationship between them is: sell this "product" at this "price" at this "venue", then let's start "screaming"! Small clarification: Promotion in 4P can be vividly understood as "crying": using a set of combined tools and methods to shout. The current combination of tools is technically called IMC, Integrated Marketing Communication, which is integrated marketing communication. Integrated marketing communication is the integration of four types of communication tools: traditional advertising (Advertising), digital marketing (Digital Marketing), public relations (Public Relations) and sales promotion (Sales Promotion). They play different roles in different purchase decision-making stages of customers. function. "Minimalist Marketing" Hu Chaona's promotion is actually part of the brand communication system and a very important part of marketing, so we have specifically listed it when we talk about it. Well, in addition to the support of 4P, the brand also needs to have a management system, which is also the foundation. The purpose of management is to prevent 4P from deviating from positioning and to always focus on positioning. Finally, after we have achieved the foundation, we still have to talk about it and pass it on. This area can be divided into brand recognition and communication. Brand recognition is about making differences so that customers can remember us at a glance; brand communication is about making influence and continuing to speak out so that customers will remember us more firmly, have a deeper impression, and never forget us.

In short, from this brand house and the marketing map just now, we can clearly see what the entire brand system is and what tools we can use, so that we can think about how to build a brand in our own work. Finally, to summarize: Brand is the most important asset of a company. It exists in the minds of customers but is in the hands of the brand owner. As long as we position ourselves well, focus on brand positioning, continue to do what we say, and use "capabilities to support brand promotion", we can promote the brand flywheel and continue to move forward, allowing the brand to continue to create higher value.