Brand vs. Commodity
July 25, 2008
The next time someone in your company suggests to you that investing in brand development, positioning and messaging isn’t important, remind them that without your brand, you’d have little left to compete with than price. In other words, without your brand, you’re just another commodity.
Certainly, your products and company offer features and benefits that consumers want and need, but it’s your brand that makes those features and benefits recognizable and preferred. Those features and benefits are extensions of your brand. Will they function on their own without a brand to support them? Perhaps, but a brand makes those features and benefits much more powerful and helps to further differentiate them from anything else available on the market. The brand makes them special and makes customer loyalty possible.
Your brand is your most important asset. Think of it this way, despite all its time in business and all its successes, what is a company like Coca-Cola without its brand? What about a company like Mercedes or even McDonald’s? Would those companies survive and thrive without their brands? It’s hard to say, but investing in those brands and building them to what they are today has helped to grow those companies to become leaders in their respective markets.
So the next time someone in your company suggests to you that branding isn’t important, ask them if they think the leaders of companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s would agree. I bet that person will start to see the light.
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Written by Susan Gunelius · Filed Under Brand, Consumer goods
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2 Responses to “Brand vs. Commodity”
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Good points. I believe the channels of brand promotion are changing somewhat from your controlled, monitored message via traditional media to the extremely powerful word-ofmouth enabled by social media
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Sachendra, I completely agree with you. I’m a big proponent of leveraging social media to grow and sustain a brand. I’ll have to publish some posts in the coming weeks about branding and Web 2.0!