Marketing and branding experts can both agree that branding involves a lot of creative decision-making. The process of coming up with a brand is just like coming up with a marketing campaign. You need to choose your aesthetics very early on because this is how most of the world will pay attention to you i.e. visually. However, neither can agree on what is more important. The simple answer is both are important but they each have their own place. Much like what the word describes, branding involves something more permanent while marketing changes all the time. Marketing is subjective because one marketing strategy will be used for one product, and another for a different product. However, the branding of the business on those products, stays the same. Here are some example if you need a little more help understanding.
Age groups don’t matter
Ages don’t matter in branding. Marketing does care about age groups because you are trying to sell to a certain demographic. You will usually not entice the younger generation with something that was designed for the older generation. Yet, your brand can stay the same throughout many generations. Take for example Pepsi or McDonald’s. They have come up with various marketing strategies but their color scheme, logo, product type and style have stayed the same.
The key demographic matters
You know that when you’re creating a new product you will hope to please your core customers. They were happy with the previous product you sold, so you want to make sure you listen and satisfy this core base with the new product. When you’re marketing you’re talking to a group of people. You’re communicating with them directly and hoping to tap into their desires and needs. In branding, you are using a collective of your company ethos, your image portrayal, and your self-chosen consistent symbolic signal.
It’s about recognisability
It isn’t just logos and color themes that need to stay consistent in branding, but how your brand filters our into everything in your business. Take for example your brand compliance in letters, emails, documents, reports, presentations etc, this all needs to be consistently using the same font, color scheme, graphics, logo size and placement, as well as legal disclaimers. If you’re still wondering What is corporate branding? It’s about consistency across all your assets and actions. With many employees representing you, they need to have the most up-to-date templates so there is no confusion with the brand uniformity.
Branding has power
Ever heard of the term, ‘paying for the badge’? Well this is derived from the kind of power a brand can have. A brand can charge higher prices because it holds serious weight in it’s product category and or industry. This could be for the obvious things like success, innovations and performance. Marketing by itself, doesn’t have that kind of power to lure people in and give them a reason why they should pay more for your product.
Marketing should be seen as subjective. It has a new and often unique purpose. Branding however is consistent and for a broad audience. It’s the image you project and want to be seen as.
