How To Make The Brand Exert Its Greatest Force

　　我們生活在一個充滿品牌的世界，品牌給了消費者豐富多彩的選擇，也給了商業世界無窮魅力的想象空間。當我們做出一個購買決策時，品牌可以從很多重要的考慮因素中凸顯出來，而同時品牌本身也代表著很多產品特點，包括很多理性和感性的因素，因此品牌很大程度上幫助我們做出最后的選擇。

Since brand plays an important role in consumer choice, it is particularly important for enterprises to understand the force of the brand and enhance the force of the brand.

How much does the brand contribute to the business value?

How can we maximize the role of brand?

Different industries have different brand forces.

Simply put, brand force is the contribution of brand in the business income related to brand.

Since the brand is related to the business itself, the brand force is related to the characteristics of the industry.

For example, the brand power of consumer goods is usually higher than that of industrial products.

When choosing industrial products, brands often play the role of "admission ticket", and enter the scope of customers' selection in bidding. Therefore, the role of the brand is to enhance popularity and to indicate some important technical parameters and characteristics of products.

When customers enter the product comparison selection, customers are more concerned about price, service and some specific terms, so the role of brand is limited.

In the consumer goods industry, consumer decision making is relatively simple, and brands express many perceptual characteristics, playing a "chemical role" in the instant of consumer choice and decision making, so brands can play a great role.

From the Interbrand global Role of Brand study (see below), the brand force of consumer goods, services and industrial products is only half of that of the former, so the difference in brand force between industries is very large.

Therefore, when putting brand resources into practice, managers must first have rational expectations, and make sure the timing of the brand's role, that is, where does the brand work and when does it work?

Brand forces have boundaries.

In 1991, Dennis Carter, the then Intel marketing manager, launched a very important brand activity: "Intel Inside" marks were printed on every computer panel equipped with Intel chip processors.

The following year, Intel inserted the "Intel Inside" picture in the advertisements of computer manufacturers in 130 countries and regions around the world, with 5 Ding tones.

The advertising campaign has been an unprecedented success. It not only enhanced the brand awareness of Intel, but also cultivated the mass market loyalty to Intel chips.

For a chipmaker, investing in resources for brand promotion is an attempt to increase downstream customers' choice of products. Many B2B companies also think about this.

Brand can only form a great pull only when it comes to terminal consumers.

PC manufacturers choose chips to focus on the technological strength and price of chip manufacturers, while in the commercial negotiations, chip manufacturers are in a weak position in the face of strong downstream customers, so the strength of the brand is at the end of the industry chain, that is, the consumer market.

Such examples are numerous.

Fiber Leica, DuPont material, automobile brake system ABS and elevator brand advertisement are all the extension of the brand boundary of the manufacturer to the mass market, so as to firmly hold down the downstream customers and enhance their negotiation ability.

Another aspect of the brand force boundary lies in where the brand embodies the opportunity of differentiation.

The attributes of many products, such as unique design, product function, or price, are not factors of brand differences. Some attributes need to be perceived by consumers, such as experience, technology, safety, etc. (see below).

When consumers buy cars, safety, control and appearance are important choices, but the importance is different: brands have less influence on appearance, consumers can judge by their own aesthetic vision, and safety and manipulation are consumers' very difficult to judge by rational or professional knowledge, so the influence of brands is relatively large.

Enterprises should consider selecting the most influential factors of brand force when investigating differentiated positioning, so as to form the most relevant influence on consumer decision-making.

A breakthrough in brand power depends on business models.

In 1975, a high-end fashion shop in Spain was born. Its clothing products are closely related to popularity and the price is reasonable.

Such a positioning made it a success at once, and opened several chain stores in a few years.

By 80s, the company claimed that "only two weeks would be able to design a new product and sell it in all its stores", which was unthinkable at that time, because the usual industry cycle was 6 months. With such a cycle, the company could supply about 10 thousand new products every year.

Customers are coming in and business is booming. This company is known as the world's clothing chain brand Zara.

What is more interesting is that Zara did not do any commercials in the process of globalization in 90s, but put money into new shops.

The strategic success of Zara's commercial success is that it accelerates the design cycle and improves the efficiency of the entire supply chain.

However, for Zara consumers, they get more fashionable styles and fashionable clothes, and the price is not expensive. This "popular fashion" makes Zara play the role of industry subversive.

In fact, many industries are faced with an excessive competition in the market environment, the same industry chain, the same positioning, no difference in products, brand in the existing mode is very difficult to play a role.

This is like selling water. If the enterprise expects to play its role through advertising, its final result will only be disappointing.

Business model is now a popular concept, which determines the market competitiveness of enterprises.

The force of brand also drives enterprises to think about how to break the existing business models and constantly develop and innovate.

For example, Google search engine has changed the old way of retrieving information with dull professional words, creating a new experience mode in the face of massive information search.

Today, only the innovation and even the subversion of business mode can make the brand continue to gain competitive support. Especially in the traditional industry, only the business mode innovation can make the brand get strong power.

Correlation and consistency between brand positioning and market

Maintaining brand consistency and consistency is an important part of brand management, and Nike sets an example for management in the industry.

The relevance of Nike is reflected not only in the "competition and challenge spirit" of the brand promotion campaign, but also the participation of ordinary people in the spirit of sports. Its slogan "Just Do It" also expresses the public's desire for sports and the awe of the spirit of competition.

On the other hand, compared with Nike's product diversity (sports shoes, ball tools, equipment, leisure products) and brand very clear and consistent image, the product variety does not weaken the brand. How does Nike achieve this consistency?

The consistency of Nike benefits from the efficiency of brand management.

Nike's brand management is centralized at headquarters, and the regional divisions make relevant regionalization changes on the basis of implementing the headquarters strategy, but this change is reported to the headquarters for examination and approval.

In addition, the creativity and execution of brand on each product line must also be managed by the headquarters, and advertising companies' management of advertising, advertising language and advertising activities is basically done by a company.

This correlation and consistency ensure that Nike can remain stable and consistent in complex market and cross product brand management.

In contrast, the brand management of many companies, facing diversified product categories and different regional markets, makes their own decisions, positioning and spreading all kinds of flowers, resulting in a vague understanding of the brand and even unclear what information the brand wants to convey.

Quantifying brand force is the basis for calculating brand value.

Increasing the strength of the brand is to maximize the use of brand to stimulate business, and the growth of business value also reflects the growth of brand value.

Of course, to inspect the value of an enterprise brand, we must evaluate the long-term competitiveness of the enterprise brand. Therefore, scientific measurement and tracking of brand will help to understand the increase or decrease of the brand value of the enterprise, so as to help the enterprise to manage its brand assets actively.

The business thinking behind the brand forces is very worth pondering and pondering. To enhance the brand's force and make the brand truly become a core competitiveness of enterprises, let's take a look at several other important revelations.

1. understand your industry and understand how brands play a role.

2., where is the boundary of the brand?

The closer the end customer is, the stronger the force of the brand is; the more relevant the purchase drivers are, and the more sensitive the factors are, the more effective the brand is.

3., improve the brand force, so as to think about how to change the business mode.

4. to improve the efficiency of management brand, we should start with consistency and relevance.

5. the active management of brands requires more accurate tracking and measurement of brand value and the scientific management of brand equity.

(the writer is a guide to Interbrand China strategy group, and engaged in brand training, brand value assessment and quantitative model analysis. He is a master of business administration at Fudan University. He worked as a research, industry expert and strategic consultant in Nelson and McKinsey, and has 11 years of research and consulting service in the retail and consumer goods industry. He has rich experience in consumer research and retail format innovation.

He believes that brand strategy is not only for customers to develop inspiring ideas, ideas, but also to provide customers with landing solutions, but also with creative thinking to challenge the inherent thinking and action mode.