Brand Building or Advertising?
Foundational work, habit building, compounding actions—it’s all work that’s hard, unsexy, and easy to defer. So what do we do instead? We trade it for a flurry of actions untethered to the deep, foundational work a brand needs.
We kick dirt around instead of digging ditches. Weeks and months later we look back and wonder why we haven’t made any impact of substance.
This is the hard work of building a brand. (To beat a dead horse) It’s so much more than logos, typefaces, and colors…
It’s defining what your organization does and why it matters.
It’s refining a clear, resonating promise of value the market understands.
It’s structuring the whole of your organization to best deliver that promise.
Is it worth it?
To build and sustain a brand with value, two elements are necessary:
A promise, rooted in value and differentiation, made to the market and kept
Compelling advertising to communicates this promise
But defining and refining your brand’s promise to the customer can feel like wheel-spinning. Is it necessary? What if you started with advertising and figured it out from there? Is there a benefit to doing the hard work first?
A pretty significant return, it turns out…
1 + 1 = 11
In a study, BrandZ compared the increase in brand value over a ten year period based on these fundamental behaviors. The results were pretty shocking…
Brands with weak advertising and weak brand proposition, only grew by 20%
Brands with strong advertising and a weak proposition only grew by 27%.
Brands with a strong proposition but weak advertising grew by 76%.
And brands with a strong proposition and strong advertising grew by a staggering 168%.
So what does this mean?
Perfect your promise, then communicate it.
In a shoot-out between branding building and advertising: build the brand. And if you want exceptional results, combine both to drive value exponentially.
Starting with a strong brand promise before coming up with a creative way to share it is the best way to increase your brand's worth. This way, you'll get the biggest bang for your marketing investment.
