Brand Image is Everything (Smart Monday/Positioning)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing. It’s a new week, thanks for stopping by.  Please continue to comment, re-tweet, Likes us on Facebook and share with friends.  Many more of you are tuning in and we are really building our brand.

Today we are going to talk about brand image vs. brand identity.

You have heard the expression “image is everything”.  Let’s take a look at brand image.  As we have discussed previously, brand image is the perception of your brand in the mind of your customer.  That perception is built over time given the experiences they have with your brand.

Canon camera ago clearly understood this point.  They launched a new camera called the Rebel with the slogan “Image is Everything”.  They hired Andre Agassi, the rebel in professional tennis at the time, to be their spokesperson and it was a great fit.  Canon had a sophisticated new camera; they had the rebel of tennis and a slogan that implied the camera took great photographs.  And Canon knew it was creating the right brand image as well.

Brand identity is what you want your customers to perceive.  All of your marketing, branding and strategies are designed to create the perception in customers’ minds of what you believe your product is with respect to its benefits both physical and emotional.

Branding is the process of using brand strategy and marketing to align customers’ brand image with your brand identity.

It is important to align brand image with brand identity so customers have the correct perception of your product.  If they don’t, they may seek out your product for the wrong reasons.  They may buy the product expecting one thing and get another, resulting in an unfavorable experience.  Additionally, if their perception is not accurate, they may not buy your product at all.

Your branding efforts should ensure customers understand the benefits of your product and that their brand image does in fact align with the brand identity that you want to project into the market place.

Thanks for joining us on another Smart Monday.  Stop by tomorrow for Strategic Tuesday. To discuss an online or face-to-face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.