Creating the Visible Brand in a multi-channel world — web, retail, print and electronic media. We send these brand "bites" monthly to give you insights and tips on building value, uniqueness and loyalty for your brand. Your brand's critical differentiation helps your customers find you, remember you and come back to you.

BrandGuidance.com Launches — Steven Donaldson's Brand Blog Launches

Before we dive in, I want to alert you to a new brand resource web site www.brandguidance.com. We are posting branding articles, links books and important info on branding on this site. As part of an ongoing interaction on branding, marketing and design I've started a blog (Go to top navigation BLOG button. Your commenting encouraged!) to create a dialog. Please feel free to comment on anything you read here or on the blog. I'd love to get a broad array of opinions.

HOLISTIC BRANDING — ADVERTISING? THE LOGO? PACKAGING? WHAT'S THE BRAND?

Or, "Why palm trees mean great beer." Branding demystified. And, who controls the brand — the customer or the company?

Building a unified brand message at all touch points of the company.

A brand is a promise. You've probably heard this before. We do believe that it's a powerful way of viewing your brand, but we carry it one step further: the brand promise is an internal experience. A brand gives people the ability to have a concise (ideally) "mini-experience" of what a company or product stands for and what can be expected in the actual experience of the brand at every touch point — even when you are not consuming or interacting directly with the brand.

It can be visual reminders, e-mails, online media, associations, experiences, colors and people that all become cultural validation for why this brand is unique and valuable. Each of these becomes a clue to the consumer — this is what I want — a fulfillment of the brand promise.

The focus of creating and building brands is really about developing consistent and precise associations that reflect what customers want. References in touch points that communicate to the customer become valuable branded experiences that can make or break a company, depending on their accuracy in describing the actual brand experience and on how well they resonate with the market. It's important that all levels of a company (all possible touchpoints) support the brand message to the customer.

A Unified, Consistent Brand Experience Fulfills the Brand Promise.

Corona isn't just a beer; it's an escape from your 9 to 5 life.

For example, the compelling and very visible ad campaign that portrays someone on a beach turning off an alarm clock. No, he's not at home getting ready for work-he's at the beach, being reminded of that cold Corona. The television, print and billboard ads of this series are so consistent that the simplest image of a palm tree and someone's feet in a beach chair evokes the brand experience — RELAXATION AND ESCAPE.

Among hundreds of beers, both imports and domestic, how did Corona create this brand's powerful claim to an evocative experience? Their campaign wasn't about competing on flavor, taste, carbs or calories. They claimed the experiential territory connected to imbibing a Corona. Consistency in a well-done campaign like this builds a branded experience in the mind of the consumer. You will leave everything behind when you drink this beer — no worries.

Once a great brand dominates an area of experience, it's very hard to dislodge it from this territory. Consumers get one idea in their head and continually look for reinforcement. This is why all the elements that go behind building a brand message and getting it into the realm of consumer experience are critical.

What part of this campaign is the brand? Isn't the brand really about delivering memorable images and words over and over to create a specific association with a product? These messages, no matter how memorable, are not the brand. They are extensions or reminders of what the experience should be. But these, and the logo, are not the brand.

The successful brand actually lives within the mind of the customer as an experience.

The Brand As Customer Experience

So, your brand is really about the consistent and repeatable experience of the customer. Creating and sustaining positive experiences of the brand does not come from ads, logos, web sites or direct mail campaigns. These "reminders" are connections to the experience. The brand brings us something that we identify with the visual reminders-the things that say, "This is Jet Blue" or "Disney" or "Cisco Systems" or "Google." These simple symbols at their best embody powerful brand values that reinforce experience and build loyalty. Poorly implemented, they are an impediment to understanding the brand, or even create negative brand perceptions.

Ultimately, the customer's actual experience of the brand — when they fly JetBlue, for instance — is the acid test. Did the actual flight experience deliver on the brand promise? The constructed brand must therefore be an authentic reflection of what is delivered. In the case of Corona, the beer really is from Mexico, a fairly good brew, light and thirst-quenching, that would be good in a tropical environment — it comes through by rationally supporting the built experience of the brand (in contrast, imagine sipping your Guinness under the palm trees).