As a business, do you know what your brand says about you? Have your asked for feedback to see what type of reaction you receive. Understanding what your brand perception says about you is very important.

To help identify what a business owner should include in their branding strategy, I want to share an article entitled, “How to Analyze a Brand“. This article states that….

Brand and reputation are closely linked. Sometimes customers will form emotional attachments to specific brands, and they will spend more money to obtain one brand over another. A strong brand stands out and contains an element that customers identify with.

Below are a lists of components that you should include when you analyze your brand strategy.

• Brand Attributes
• Brand Identity
• Brand Definition
• Brand Messaging
• Brand Relevance
• Brand Differentiation
• Defend Brand
• Branded Content
• Rankings for Brand

The video below shares key information about building your brand. Watch it and then share your feedback.

Millward Brown Optimor released the 2009 BrandZ Top 100 and Brand Curve recently posted the highlights from the findings.

Jeremy Bullmore, author of Behind the Scenes in Advertising, columnist of ‘Dear Jeremy’, chairman of J. Walter Thompson Co. and subsequently of WPP Group, and Director of the Guardian, provided an introductory commentary for the BrandZ 2009 report. 

Bullmore argues against the notion that brands were invented by manipulative marketeers to pursuade consumers into purchasing high-priced but otherwise “unremarkable” commidities.

He claims that we’ve been building brands since 1955 when Sidney Levy and Burleigh Gardner’s The Product and the Brand was published by the Harvard Business Review. But that “brands had been around for a very long time before the Harvard Business Review brought them to our attention.”

He asks us to think back to our school days to understand the relationship between brands and individual perception of those brands:

“When you first started thinking of that school down the road from your own – the one that always beat you at games – you invented your first brand. It had a name – and it had a very clear personality. You couldn’t say exactly why you hated it – but you did. And what’s more, so did your friends. But if you’d asked the boys and girls from the school down the road what they thought of their school, you’d have got a very different answer. How puzzling. Exactly the same school, yet two totally different reputations.”

He explains that the observer creates the reputation of the brand - it can only exist in their minds and as each observer is different, so too are the reputations. And so, there would be a million slightly different versions of a brand’s reputation. He writes that, “Gardner and Levy drew our attention to the fact that the personality of a product, as created in the head of each observer, could be as important to its users as its function.” And so, the marketers must create and supply what Bullmore calls the raw material that real people can take to subjectively compose the brand image.

This is exactly what the Millward Brown researcher take into consideration. Strong brands enjoy what they call a favourable consensus of subjectivity. He concludes that the brand managers, “didn’t build those brands themselves; but they fed such enticing titbits to their audience that their audience gratefully did the rest.”

Time to feed the masses what they’re craving!

This week, Millward Brown released the 2009 BrandZ Top 100, the world’s largest brand equity study. “Millward Brown Optimor created the BrandZ Top 100, a ranking that identifies the world’s most valuable brands measured by their dollar value.”

The value of the top 100 brands has seen a marginal increase of 1.7 percent. Given the economic climate, this is a big deal! BrandZ reports that “when every key financial indicator plummeted, the value of the top 100 brands increased by 2 percent to $2 trillion.” In the BrandZ press release, Joanna Seddon, CEO of Millward Brown Optimor said that, “In the current environment, where the value of many businesses has fallen, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times. Those who continue to invest in their brand will be better positioned for business growth as the economic situation starts to improve than those who have cut spend.”

In the list, 85 brands remain from 2008. The top of the 15 brands entering the ranking are Pampers, Nintendo and VISA, all entering quite high on the list. The 15 that dropped off the list were from categories particularly hard-hit by the economic situation: cars, financial institutions, and insurance.

Check out who made the cut:

See anything surprising? Can you guess the 15 brands that dropped from the list?

Of the list, some are just hanging around, riding out previous momentum, while others are pushing forward, hitting the top 10 list of highest brand momentum and the top 20 risers list.

This Is Indexed is a great social commentary blog that uses probability plots, graphs and Venn diagrams. I’ve just discovered it myself, but have already found several archived entries that poke fun at big brand names. Have a look at some here for a light Monday read, then head over to the source for more!

Even without the brand names mentioned, I’d guess that few people wouldn’t know which brands are showcased in the flash card above.

The visual evoked by the above flash card aside, this observation made me laugh out loud! If only it weren’t so sad that self esteem is so linked to being a walking brand carrier!

Names that have become brands in themselves, Oprah being the queen of the first-name-only-brand.

What do consumers really think of your luxury brand? If it’s not coming from your target audience, do you care what they think?

Subscribe to This Is Index’s RSS feed for a regular dose of hilarity that makes you think. Or buy the book! Happy reading!

Consider how much brands influence our purchasing decisions. You might think that certain brands don’t have a strong hold on you, and you may be right, but we are bombarded by brands both from the outside looking in and from inside our own homes.

During my morning commute, I tried recounting all of the brands that I came across in the 2 hours since I woke up. It was a hard exercise. It’s not only a matter of brand perception, or of brand retention! For the life of me, I can’t remember what brand of shampoo I’m currently using!

Below is a list of the brands simply from memory, from 6am till 6pm. Tomorrow, I’ll redo this exercise noting all of the brands as I encounter them, and we’ll see how many escaped my memory today.

• Sony
• Colgate
• Gap
• H&M
• Tampax
• TTC
• Starbucks
• Nestea
• POM
• InCase
• Betty Crocker
• Blackberry
• Apple

I’m a bit embarrassed at the ratio of food brands to other brands. Clearly my dietary choices come to mind first and foremost.

If you were to pick the top 3 brands that stand out in an ordinary day, what are they?

Late last week, The New York Times threatened to shut down The Boston Globe unless cost cutting concessions were not given by its union - $20 million in cost cutting concessions that is - including pay cuts and the cessation of pension contributions. This after already undergoing “several rounds of deep cost-cutting and staff reductions,” according to the NY Times.

This week, the newspaper is launching a branding and subscription campaign.

With “One Story” as its tagline, the campaign focuses on the Globe’s photography and range of storytelling. According to EditorAndPublisher.com, the campaign will include 30- and 60-second TV spots on NESN during Red Sox games and more than two dozen prints ads in the Globe and the Metro.

To view the TV Spots, visit the Boston Globes promotions page.

How long will The New York Times give this campaign before pulling the plug and shutting it down? Is this the right step for a print media company?

TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley recently reported on the state of U.S. print media in Decline Of US Newspapers Accelerating. He wrote that “Declining revenues will ultimately force consolidation across print media in the United States, and many of those that fail to embrace change will be on borrowed time.”

Does the Globe really believe that a marketing campaign highlighting its photographic excellence and range of storytelling is “embracing change”?! I can hear the clock ticking for The Boston Globe. One thing’s for sure: If they want to focus on stellar photography, the Globe’s going to need a shiny new update to their website template - one that has the power to showcase those great shots!

For a taste of the Canadian media landscape, just visit @CanMediaLayoffs, a hard dose of news items relating to layoffs in Canadian media. Warning: It’s not pretty.

Americans can barely afford to fill up their gas tanks to get to work everyday, and Exxon and Shell are loving it! 

Exxon reported earnings for the second quarter of 2008 at $11.68 billion, up 14% from second quarter 2007 earnings (although this was lower than analysts predicted and shareholders wanted - I don’t feel sorry for them). 

Shell reported earnings for the second quarter of 2008 at $11.6 billion, up 33% from second quarter 2007 earnings.

I don’t like it, and as a consumer, it makes me dislike the Exxon and Shell brands even more than I did before.  Your thoughts…

Image: Flickr

The Wal-Mart logo has been replaced with an updated, “sunnier” version.  Wal-Mart hasn’t updated its logo since 1992 (you can see the evolution of the Wal-Mart logo on the Brand New blog.  Wal-Mart claims the new logo is meant to support its overall strategy to change its reputation from behomoth to local retailer of the people.  I’m not sure if anyone is going to buy that, but nevertheless, the majority of us (myself included) still shop there.

What do you think of this logo?  I can’t help but be reminded of Cingular when I look at it.  Take the poll below and share your opinion.

Images: Underconsideration.com and Walmart.com

When you think of brand positioning, you probably think of it in the terms you learned in Marketing 101 with positioning defined as how customers perceive your brand or product within the market of similar products offered by your competitors. 

Typically, marketers try to create brand position through advertising and promotions in an attempt to influence customers’ perceptions of their brands.  However, in today’s world of busy schedules and nonstop messages, companies need to find different ways to position their brand.  By listening to your customers and making changes internally, you can build your brand position organically. Read more

Earlier this week, John Moore at Brand Autopsy published a post called The Financial Impact of a Strong Brand Reputation.   It’s a great post about a study conducted by Communications Consulting Worldwide (CCW) that shows the correlation between your company and brand reputations and your market value, growth, stock price, etc.  

CCW works with clients to define, measure and manage the impact of their company and brand reputations to determine the overall value of those reputations.  This study used a number of CCW’s unique tools to analyze the reputations of various companies to determine how the perception of a company and brand reputation can impact the bottomline. 

Read more