The most valuable brand asset
A brand is a sum total. A brand is everything that a company is in the real world — it is every asset on the balance sheet but that is only a small portion of the value of a brand. What determines a valuable brand is the sum of perception that exists in every consumer’s mind. Value of a brand is determined by every interaction a consumer has had with the brand — every pleasant or unpleasant memory associated with the brand.
“[…] we apply personality traits to brands”
A good brand offers stability and creates trust and reliability — every time a consumer has interaction with the brand through different touchpoints, the experience has to be consistent with the brand. It is human to use human characteristics to describe things we experience, we can see faces in the rocky landscape and we talk about animals as they were human. In the same manner we apply personality traits to brands.
“The success and failure of a brand can be traced to management and its attitude”
But brands are more organic than rocks and more rational than dogs. Or at least the good brands. A lot of resources can be put into creating good brands but the most important ingredient in a good brand that is always left off the balance sheet is human capital. The success and failure of a brand can be traced to management and its attitude towards branding. A great brand needs a group of people behind it to implement the brand. Sometimes the brand is led by a CEO who knows how to create a great brand. Other times, the CEO has no knowledge of branding other than the importance of it and gives a person in charge of branding and marketing activities a lot of trust to create and implement a strong brand.
The World’s Best Energy Brands
This September, CHARGE — the first conference in the world about branding energy took place in Reykjavik. The high point of the conference was the CHARGE Awards. A total of 14 brands were nominated in 3 categories. Nominated brands were of all sizes and shapes, incumbents, challengers regulated monopolies and deregulated competitors. I was amazed by the quality of brands that were nominated and the passion and ambition driving them.
Power of the people
By looking at the nominees, I can say that becoming one of the best energy brands in the world is not something that can be bought and shipped out in a container. The winners were OVO Energy for best energy brand, Ecotricity for best green brand and Stedin for best transmission or distribution brand. These three are all quite different — thus the different categories — but what they all have in common apart from consumer centricity and great branding is great human capital with a passion and a vision. They have big ideas on the role of their brands in the energy space and the ambition and drive to deliver those ideas to the end consumer.
“It’s not [just] about the logo”
I get often asked “what is branding about?” It’s often easier to answer what branding is not about — and to sound like a broken record: It’s not about the logo, slogan or the jingle. You cannot buy a brand and have it delivered in a container. A brand is not an instant soup that comes pre-mixed. There is a recipe but the people preparing the meal are more important — they need to understand the consumer and how to alter and fine tune the recipe and how to present the meal for the consumer.
