Branding - Creating Perceptions in the Consumers Mind - Essay Example

The primary thing is that branding is not a straight-jacketed, isolated, and sterile activity that is totally severed from the nature of the product being branded but is rather an aspect of the overall process of product designing, manufacturing, and marketing (LePla & Parker 2). The primary purpose of branding is to educate the consumers regarding how a high-quality and innovative product stands apart and is way ahead of the substitutes being offered by other competitors. The popular belief is that it takes loads of money to create a successful brand. Yet, the fact is that brands are built in the minds of the actual consumers. Hence, there is no consumer who does not want a product to be bereft of the time-tested attributes like quality, utility, usability, durability, credibility, reliability, and reputation. Therefore, if a company has a viable product that meets all these attributes and possibly a little extra, the concerned marketing experts can easily push that product into the consumer consciousness, within an affordable budget and some productive effort. Thereby, the primary purpose of branding is to bring to fore the key attributes that differentiate a successful product from its competitors, to be consistent about the claims it tends to make regarding a particular product, and to make sure that the product stands by these claims when actually bought and used by the consumers, to identify and target the particular audience who have a need for that particular product and to educate and convince them regarding the product (LePla & Parker 5).

            Products like people have a character and a personality. However, in recent times, marketing experts have been so entangled in the personality ethic that they have simply lost sight of the relevance of the overall character of a product. A branding approach based on personality ethics is more about believing that the success of the product is solely dependent on its public image and the mass perceptions associated with it (Covey 19). In contrast, a branding approach based on character ethics holds that if a product like a person is supported by a quintessential solidity of quality, character, and integrity, it will definitely be able to hold on to and justify the image and perceptions being created about it, thereby leading to a successful brand (Covey 22). This is my essential belief about professional branding. Certainly, creating and managing consumer perceptions is important, but such perceptions are bound to fizzle out in the short term, if not backed by a product that is about quality, technology, utility, durability, and reliability.

            Many apt examples do support this essential belief about branding. For instance, the success of many famous brands created by Apple like iPod and iPhone owe it to the fact that Apple places the consumer needs and requirements at the center of its closely integrated effort at product designing, manufacturing, and marketing (Greg 1). The crux of Apple’s branding approach is to identify the consumer needs, to design and manufacture a quality product that fulfills those needs much better as compared to other competitors, and to eventually educate the consumers and highlight the key attributes of that product in a consistent and planned manner, thereby leading to a successful brand that is able to withstand the challenges posed by time and altering technologies. Take another company that is Nokia that is fast losing its sales to more dedicated competitors like Apple. This is because Nokia was so sure that it could keep on churning out successful brands, by simply relying on the popularity and appeal of the brand Nokia that it simply ignored to ascertain the altering consumer needs, which were simply not being met by the existing Nokia brands. Later on, when Nokia realized this, it was too late, and the smartphones marketed by it by resorting to costly advertising campaigns simply fizzled out in a matter of days.

            So, branding is essentially about creating perceptions in the consumers’ mind and the more closely the quality and the utility of a product aligns with the promised perceptions, the more likely is it to evolve into a successful brand.