In this blog post, we will further discuss how to create a powerful and memorable brand and how you can apply it to your own business.

If you want your business to be successful, you need to create a powerful and memorable brand. This may seem like a daunting task, but it can be done if you follow the essentials of world-class branding.

4. Brand Activation

Brand activation contemplates the initiatives, plans, and actions that may be necessary to build the image and brand experience that we want.

Any company has five dimensions through which it can express what it believes in and what characterizes it as a brand. These are its products and services, processes and people, communication of all kinds, and the physical and digital environments.

The activation of these dimensions consists of four stages to having a memorable brand:

1. Identification of Contact Points

For each of the dimensions, we do an analysis and identify all possible touchpoints or contact possibilities with our stakeholders. Establishing a hierarchy of significance and priority in terms of the weight or impact that each of them may have on the brand experience is also important. It will naturally be in the physical surroundings of the point of sale in a store. However, personal attention is also important. And to build a memorable brand that works in the digital space, this will be the most important feature to focus on.

2. Construction of the customer’s journey

The customer journey is not always linear and frequently switches channels. After you’ve analyzed the various touchpoints or contact points, you’ll need to figure out and record the path your customers take throughout their interaction with your product. 

You may rely on the following sources to build this “journey”: 

• Information retrieved from interviews 
• User feedback.
• Communications requesting collaboration to improve the experience. 
• Satisfaction evaluation surveys 
• Data analytics

3. Design of experiences

The experience puts the methods and identity resources developed during the early stages of the branding project to the ultimate test. Some retailers have taken advantage of the COVID-19 health concern to enhance value by utilizing technology like augmented reality. All of these products must be viewed as possibilities to create the brand experience, which must elicit the sensations and emotions associated with the images that the brand wants to create.

A tip: every little detail counts, and you always have to exceed expectations.

4. Monitoring

Continuous measurement at all levels is critical for identifying opportunities for improvement and optimizing the experience over time. There are numerous tools or types of specific KPIs that allow us to know objective data on how a brand is working. There are many ways to evaluate the contribution and performance of a brand, but depending on the objectives and type of brand in question, you will need some metrics or others.

5. Brand Management

The management of a brand is much more than just the implementation or launch of a new product or service. It’s a long-term process that includes at least seven key elements: 

• Strategic Direction

A Brand Management Plan is a set of guidelines and metrics that you can use to assess the health of your brand and track its progress. It must:

• Define clear objectives and a strategic plan for 3 or 5 years, as well as
• Establish some key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the brand’s progress toward its goals, and
• Define the mechanisms and market intelligence that allow us to know when we should update or review the brand strategy or some aspect of the identity. 

How to anticipate the changes that may occur.

Organization of brand management responsibilities and functions

Teams with this specific responsibility must exist in the templates. Otherwise, brand management can hardly be effective and efficient. 

With a cross-cutting vision of the organization, the figurehead of brand management, the brand committee, and brand ambassadors should all have defined functions, roles, and responsibilities. 

Beyond that, it’s critical that the CEO is a role model for the brand and that his decisions set an example.

Management Processes

These documents will serve as a guide for executing a consistent and coordinated execution across departments that are also supervised, adequate, and objective. Establish metrics to assess your brand’s performance and identify areas for improvement, and keep track of them using result tables.

Leadership and culture

No company can build a strong brand without the commitment of its entire organization. Your brand must be rooted in corporate culture, or better said, the other way around (the culture in the brand). It is necessary to set up education and training systems in this area.

Ideally, compensation systems should be linked to brand objectives.

Relationships with stakeholders

Brands are built based on the experiences generated by interaction with their audiences. As a result, brand management plans must include tools to assess the quality of this interaction.  Some examples are 

• Brand sentiment reports, 
• Perceived image, health and brand strength, 
• Conversion data (the funnel) 
• Investor Relations Evaluation 
• Brand management tools, and 
• Satisfaction indexes both internal (employees) and external (customers).

Risks that can impact the brand

Brand Risk is a specific model for managing risks that affect brands in the broadest sense of the word and not just their reputation. This model makes it possible to properly categorize the different risks to which brands are exposed. It also helps define plans to mitigate their impact if they occur and ensure key coverage. 

The risks that affect brands are not only of a reputational nature—which is also a consequence and not a cause—but of many types: market, strategic, operational, etc. As a result, its management must be shared among various areas of the organization, in addition to the risk manager’s responsibility in companies that have this position.

Brand management tools

Efficiently and professionally managing all documents, materials, people, and processes related to the brand, marketing, and communication activities is not an easy task. Depending on your needs, managers and the brand team can use different brand management tools. 

Today, there are tools to implement the brand consistently, such as BrandMaker, Chorus, Kontentino, Canva and empower®. 

6. The Secrets to Longevity

It is more challenging than ever for brands to maintain their longevity in a turbulent, competitive, and unpredictable world. Today’s brands confront the task and opportunity of helping make the world a better place. Companies’ environmental commitment cannot be a separate marketing activity but must be incorporated into business and brand strategy.

Building complicity and building brand communities of high commitment and loyalty are priceless, but are not the only conditions to endure. You need to:

• Have a clear purpose and a distinctive identity and personality.
• Build and rebuild from your essence, keeping the focus.
• Be flexible and open to change.
• Anticipate and be proactive.
• Challenge yourself.
• Extend your purpose by reinterpreting concepts and sectors.
• Be sincere, authentic and transparent.
• have a high commitment to society and the world.
• Be open platforms for collaborative innovation.
• Be not just a product manufacturer but see yourself as a service company.

In Conclusion

As seen in this guide, building a successful and memorable brand is not easy. Many aspects are involved; all of them are essential and their coordination is essential. That is why a specialized team, both internal and external, is needed to carry out this process successfully. 

And remember that building a memorable brand is a continuous and constant process.