Brands are now more important than ever. Brands are dead.
So which one is it?
Brands are about relationships. Relationships that are centred around ownership: who owns what and what it is they own. They are a visible mark that tells a story.
With a symbol, a few words and perhaps some music, brands have the ability to create powerful meanings. They can be intensely evocative, conjuring the strongest associations and allegiances. In their most powerful forms, we either love them or loathe them - think of national flags and sporting emblems.
But for a lot of the time, we don’t even notice them.
Weak brands are particularly common in B2B marketing as opposed to consumer marketing. For example, when it comes to cans of baked-beans, there is one brand for me. I’d rather go beanless than break that allegiance.
But is the same true for a company buying a baked-bean canning plant? Perhaps not. Well, why not?
Relationships with brands
As a company selling products or solutions to other companies, what good is a brand? I suppose the broad answer is that a brand can generate such strong associations of trust, satisfaction and fulfilled-expectations that customers simply won’t look at another brand, won’t consider another supplier.
Trust and satisfaction. These are important elements in relationships with customers. So are expectations. Expectations that satisfaction will continue. The trust that buying, owning and using your products will be 100% consistent with past experiences or with proposed deliverables.
Brands mean ownership
We can all recall an example of a piece of advertising that lost its link with the brand: “Great ad! Clever, striking, sharp, funny, hard-hitting. What company was it?” No brand = no ownership.
In B2B marketing, branding is about saying: we own this product.
It may also be about saying: we own its reliability, its short lead-times and its quality. We also own its support, its maintenance and its future up-grading. Most of all, we own the positive contribution it makes to the continued success of our customers’ business. All of these things are ours: this is what we represent.
B2B branding is the work of building associations in the market between a company’s ownership of the brand and ownership of what the brand represents.
These associations of ownership have nothing to do with the brand symbol, its shape, its colours or its slogans. It’s the relationships around ownership.
What is your brand?
What relationship do B2B companies have with their brands?
To answer that question, you might want to think of the brand as a reflection of the company in a mirror. You hold the brand up to this mirror and it reflects everything the company represents. You don’t see the brand staring back at you, you see the company.
When the CEO holds the brand up to this mirror, what do they see? Is the same image reflected back when production, finance, sales, distribution and marketing look in the mirror?
There are probably as many different images in this mirror as there are people looking at it. It becomes such a confusion of various images that it’s meaningless.
No matter what this company is selling, the brand may as well be symbolised by a blue potato eating a camel.
Market reflections
What a company thinks of its brand is irrelevant in comparison to what the market thinks of the brand. What the market sees reflected by the brand is really all that matters.
Very often in B2B, the market may well include distributors and wholesalers, overall solution-providers, specialist consultancies or professions, and support and service providers - as well as direct customers or end users.
In addition, there may be user-groups, financial analysts, commentators in the media, standards boards and statutory regulators, industry associations and the general public.
Each of these represents a market reflection - the way the brand is seen by the individual components of the market.
Markets become confused and uncertain if the image reflected by the brand is unclear and inconsistent. So people draw their own conclusions. They create their own associations, set their own expectations and decide for themselves how much they trust the brand. Consequence? Ownership of the brand is lost.
This generates perceptions in the market that may have no relation to what the brand actually represents:
‘Oh? I never knew you made those.’
‘I didn’t realise you guys sold all that’
‘What? You mean you can handle this too?
‘I didn’t know you could help us internationally’
‘Oh yes, I know XYZ Inc. They sell those potatoes that eat blue camels. Don’t they?’
Are they talking about us?
More than ever, market reflections - that diversity of associations being made with the brand by the market – are what influences a company’s ability to increase sales, retain customers and protect margins. And this influence is increasing rather than decreasing.
For example, there is growing interest in the significance of social media as a way for people to share their experiences about suppliers and products. And this goes both ways, companies are joining the discussions in order to present their brand-messages.
It’s now probably more important then ever for B2B companies to ensure delivery of an honest, balanced and relevant reflection of their brand to each component of the market.
Be the brand
Brands are not the business of designers and communications agencies. It’s not that designers and agencies produce poor or inappropriate work. Quite the reverse. It’s just that they have no influence over how their clients build and maintain trust and satisfaction, or consistently fulfil their customers’ expectations. That’s not their job.
As B2B companies become more and more visible to their markets, it has to be true that the brand is the company. No matter what your business you are in, your brand is your real business.
In his book Ackoff’s Fables, Russell Ackoff describes a problem-solving process he calls ‘idealized redesign’. Although not specifically related to branding, the process is certainly relevant for a company that wants to ‘Be the Brand’.
“assume that the entity that has the problem was destroyed last night, but everything else remains the same. Redesign that entity so as to eliminate the problem that faces it. The redesign is subject to only two constraints: first it must be technologically feasible, and second, it must obey the same externally imposed constraints (e.g. the laws of the land) to which the current system is subject.
In addition, it should be designed so that it can (1) improve itself by learning from its own experience, (2) adapt to a changing environment, and (3) be improved by being redesigned again in the future.”
Marketers can use Ackoff’s idea of ‘idealized redesign’ to map-out what their brand should look like in the market’s eyes. And they can start the process by asking the (long) question: what are the absolutely essential market reflections the company requires to attract and retain customers and to maintain margins?
The answers should provide a stimulating roadmap for the company’s future development.
More on brands and branding:
Brands build business Outcomes make the difference The Long Hello: building brand-relationships
Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line
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