By: Alexandra Bigley

March 2024

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Brand Marketing 101

University of London

School of Business

Summary

PART 1

• Brand identity & image
• Brand Purpose
• 3 E’s

PART II

• Why brand experiences matter
• Digital brand experiences
• Designing Brand Experiences
• Signature pricing

PART III

• From silos to synchrony
• Aligning the 3 Bs
• Global alignment
• Alignment
• Brand portfolio management

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PART IV

• Brand identity & image
• The 6 A’s of brand engagement
• ABCs of Behavior Change

PART V

• Brand health: The traditional approach
• Internal brand health
• Employee-based brand equity
• Brand value and valuation
• Brand Metrics

By: Alexandra Bigley

March 2024

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PART I

Brand Identity

& Image

Brand Identity

Brand Identity: Unique characteristics that influence a brand’s perceived personality, appearance, and behavior. A brand’s identity encompasses tangible and intangible elements, including its history, name, personality, and visual identity.

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Brand Image

Brand Image: How an audience perceives and interprets signals coming from a brand through different touch points. In other words, brand image comes from the audience.

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Example: Volvo Brand Identity and Image

Volvo is the IDENTITY. Safe is the IMAGE. Safety is the core purchasing behavior.

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Brand Purpose

Brand purpose: a company's reason for being and the things it stands for aside from the usual business goals and objectives.

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Brand Purpose: Employee Engagement

• Think about what connects the brand to the customer and the employees to the customer, through the brand.

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• When your employees understand the purpose you're engaged in, they’re more motivated.

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• A deep purpose motivates your employees to be more productive, more engaged, and to provide more value to your customers.

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Brand Purpose: Company Examples

3 E Model of Value Creation

The three values: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Experience

Effectiveness: Products and services need to be the requisite of quality to be considered, but any value difference is quickly imitated. Like most maturing industries, each product or service delivered is nowhere near the incremental value of the past.

Efficiency: Prices must be competitive to be considered, but with few exceptions it’s not the reason you’re chosen over your closest competitors.

Experience (Key Differentiator):Designing and delivering stimulating differentiated experiences.

Recognize that your product & services only exist to create value for consumers.

PART 1 – Recap

• The complementary approach urges brands to focus on the following:
• Consumers
• Employees
• Experiences

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• Why does the complementary approach extend beyond marketing?
• People across the organization need to deliver on the brand promise
• The customer journey cuts across business processes

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• What concept is closely aligned with ‘brand differentiation’?
• Competitive advantage

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• What describes “brand image?”
• What people think and feel with respect to the brand.

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• Which factors foster a perfectly competitive market?
• Competitors offer products that are the same
• Customers pretty much know everything

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• Benefits of having a strong brand purpose?
• Customer relevance
• Attracts and motivates talent

• What are drivers of value creation?
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Experience

By: Alexandra Bigley

March 2024

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PART II

Brand Design

& Delivery

Why Brand Experiences Matter

Brand

‘Why you exist’

A promise

Experience

‘What you do’

The proof

A successful brand experience evokes a positive emotional connection with its audience. Customers go through a range of emotions (like happiness, inspiration or nostalgia) when they interact with a brand, and when the experience is positive, it creates a lasting impact that fosters brand loyalty.

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Digital Brand Experiences

The term digital brand experience refers to the overall experience a consumer has with a brand at all digital touchpoints. Those can be for example: website, blog, social media channels, apps, chatbots and augmented reality.

Benefits: More efficient, cost-effective, personalization opportunities, enhances and enriches the experience.

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Designing Brand Experiences

Note: Build the brand in the image of the consumer.

Steps to Designing the Brand Experience (the spine of a brand’s customer journey)

1. Outline the attributes of each of your products and services
2. Connect the attributes to consumer benefits
3. Determine competitive bent
4. Create customer journey(ies)
5. Pinpoint parts of the journey where you can infuse and celebrate the brand and highlight key points of differentiation.

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Example: The Airbnb Experience

Airbnb's focus on the customer experience is reflected in its range of unique and personalized accommodation options, its user-friendly interface, its commitment to safety and security, and its commitment to innovation.

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Signature Pricing + IRONMAN Example

Turn pricing into something that brings the brand to life or that shines a light one the unique aspects or key differentiators of the brand.

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Example:

• The IRONMAN is exhausting (takes a huge physical, emotional, and mental investment to compete)
• But when a race is announced, tickets sell out in minutes & costs hundreds of dollars to enter.
• The IRONMAN event gives you something you can’t buy and when you achieve it, no one can take it away. You’re an IRONMAN for life.

Why Brand Experiences Matter

• The complementary approach urges brands to focus on the following:
• Consumers
• Employees
• Experiences

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• Why does the complementary approach extend beyond marketing?
• People across the organization need to deliver on the brand promise
• The customer journey cuts across business processes

​

• What concept is closely aligned with ‘brand differentiation’?
• Competitive advantage

​

• What describes “brand image?”
• What people think and feel with respect to the brand.

​

• Which factors foster a perfectly competitive market?
• Competitors offer products that are the same
• Customers pretty much know everything

​

• Benefits of having a strong brand purpose?
• Customer relevance
• Attracts and motivates talent

• What are drivers of value creation?
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Experience

By: Alexandra Bigley

March 2024

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PART III

Brand Leadership & Alignment

Connecting the Dots

Alignment with business, brand, and behavior in the process of creating consumer value.

Business: Organizational purpose, vision, mission, and strategies

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Brand: customer value proposition and positioning

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Behavior: organizational values, employee value proposition, competency framework, and leadership model.

From Silos to Synchrony

Manage the brand across silos for a consistent customer experience.

Inverted Pyramid customer value model: The opposite of a top down approach. Instead, frontline employees interfacing with customers is at the top followed by supporting functions and management. The frontline is paramount for a positive customer experience.

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360 degree feedback is essential for thinking about collaboration across functional silos to ensure a consistent customer experience. Build systems and structures on the back end that to deliver a seamless, on-brand experience.

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The sales funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty) can be the enemy of building customer-centric brands. Focusing on the customer journey and those different touch points that create the overall experience. Shift from sales perspective to customer perspective.

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Brand Portfolio Management

A Branded House serving different customers. A portfolio of products and services.

Different value proposition for the same group of customers.

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Map brands inside the organization. Think about their strategic role what customers they serve, and the nature of the promise.

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Need to be very clear about what are the segments the different product/service lines are serving.

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Each sub-brand needs is different, so establish different personas, while unifying under the Master Brand.

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Think about your brands as not just a promise to the customer but as a way of delivering that promise through the organization.

Key Takeaways

• Your brand is your most valuable asset
• Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints
• It is the promise of an experience – the emotions attached to it is the brand perception
• Brand perception is positive when the 3 Bs (business, brand, and behavior) align.
• Brand perception suffers when external values are misaligned with the internal culture
• Because Brand perception is informed by the customer experience
• If the internal culture is siloed and functions don’t collaborate to create a streamlined experience, the customer suffers and ultimately negatively impacts the brand perception
• Brand differentiation and perception is rooted in the customer experience. Forget price and products. Those are easily replicated. Brand value is not just a monetary number. Value is driven by consistently delivering on a brand’s promise through differentiated and exciting consumer experiences throughout the customer journey.
• Experiences breed memories and and emotional attachment to those memories. A successful brand understands the critical role emotions play during the purchasing process and how to continue to harness them to build brand loyalty.
• That’s why a lot of research and strategic foresight goes into designing brand experiences, including identifying a product or service’s key attributes and aligning them with consumer benefits, determining the product or service’s competitive advantage, mapping out the customer journey, and selecting what touchpoints will celebrate the brand and highlight points of differentiation among its products and services.
• Personalization and innovation
• Pricing is perception of product or service value
• Instead of a top down approach, the frontline (people who interact with the customer) should be at the forefront
• 360 feedback is essential for collaboration across functional silos and brand consistency
• Every brand within a house of brands should have its own persona, but also unify with the Masterbrand

Key Takeaways Cont’d

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• Personalization and innovation keep customers engaged
• Pricing is perception of brand value
• Instead of a top down approach, invert the pyramid, the bottom of the pyramid where the the frontline usually resides is at the top because they directly interact with customers and have the biggest impact on perception.
• 360 feedback is essential for collaboration across functional silos and brand consistency
• Every brand within a house of brands should have its own persona, but also unify with the Masterbrand