The Catalyst perspective on “branding”

Today’s operative term in effective marketing is branding. In one way, it’s just a new slant on a combination of time-honored aspects of successful marketing communications:

• Image/Identity
• Positioning
• Differentiation
• Developing top-of-mind awareness
• Building relationships with target audiences

On the other hand, properly understood and applied, the branding concept does create a healthy new paradigm for marketing. But once “branding” became a buzz word, many different definitions for it surfaced: a promise, an image, a relationship, a unique position... and on and on. However, these are results of branding, not the brand itself. Settling for these limited viewpoints only truncates, if not negates, the effectiveness of branding.

• Branding is, in essence: a person's collected experiences of an entity -- whether an organization, product, or service -- with a certain name.

So a brand is actually a memory -- everything remembered about it through interaction (whether in person, on the phone, at the website...), what others have said about it (personally or in the media), its advertising and other marketing communications, and actual experiences with the entity.

This is why consistency -- of the look, of the feel, of the “attitude” -- is so critically important to success. It's also why:

• Successful branding is a continual process and not a one-shot panacea.