We’ve already discussed how to define a brand in part one. Now, we are going to explore why the C-suite should care about its brand at all.
It’s not just numbers, although that certainly is the end game. Remember that brand is the business. Like the business, brand is about being effective, meaning carving a position with a market that is highly productive financially and competitively, and efficient, meaning serving the market in as cost-efficient manner as possible. Brand helps maximize and expand return on investment.
A brand is worth paying more for. Strong brands command premium prices and oftentimes premium margins to go with them. Why would you pay more for a Patagonia puffy otherwise? And surely you can stand a less expensive grande soy latte from someone other than the local Starbucks. Perhaps you’re a value-oriented consumer who appreciates higher design. There are no alternatives to Target and IKEA for you. You’ll drive there and load your own furniture to save more for Danish design. No problem.
Today’s CEOs understand that brand is an asset that holds valuable consumer equity and tangible financial value to an organization. Brand value refers to the profit generated by a brand. It’s real money. In simplistic terms, brand value is sales – cost = profit. Surly the equation is far more complicated, but the core idea stands – strong brands command premiums.
Brand is a decision filter for you and your customer. In a world of 12,000 SKUs or more in average supermarket, brands serve as fast filters for customers to seek, locate, and buy brands that they know, trust and align with their needs and wants. Similarly, for internal employees, a clear brand allows everyone to engage deeply in the business and make informed decisions that enrich the promise to customers and enhance the brand’s value. Lacking this clarity, a brand will begin to fragment and dilute its value over time.
Brand enables market growth and expansion strategy. With the consumer market and business sitting front and center in brand, brand is the platform to assess alternative paths to growth. Brand and business strategy operate together as one unified unit.
There are many essential questions in assessing growth strategy, such as: Can we grow sales and market share by better differentiating with the current target audience and addressable market? Are there additional, underserved consumer segments in our current market that we can provide a logical solution to? Can we grow if we penetrate new, adjacent markets with new or existing solutions? What are the costs and chances of success in these new markets? Do we need a new brand?
Brand is an aspirational, evolving organism. Brand is a vision. As such, it evolves in tandem with the business and its evolving relationships with customers. Brand is also a conversation in many forms, and the consumer is an active voice in shaping perception. This is how brand becomes a living, active being that constantly evolves.
The elements of a -defined brand positioning
Now for a formal definition.
Brand positioning is what you want a consumer to perceive, think and feel about you relative to competitor and other available solutions such that you create consumer preference, purchase and loyalty.
Simple in concept and form, brand positioning takes a few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master creating it. Its elements include:
- Target consumer, need and need mindset
- Frame of reference
- Promise
- Core benefits (tangible, intangible)
- Reasons to believe
- Brand character
- Brand personality
Want to make brand your business driver?
There are numerous steps to begin to define and strengthen your brand and its positioning. You can take these steps today.
Your first step is to dive into the market.
Understanding your competition and core customer is the first step in identifying your sweet spot position. This doesn’t mean expensive market research like brand perceptual mapping studies – though it can mean this. It can begin with a series of well-designed, in-depth interviews and discussions with core customers. They usually have the answer – or the start to it.
You can easily audit your competitors from your desktop and gather a significant amount of information. Shop them in stores and learn about their promise first-hand. Experience how they are delivering value and communicating it in the selling moment. With this, you can start to see the spaces where you deliver value relative to your competition.
Study your company in relation to them and dig for those capabilities and offerings that represent your deepest and most unique value to your loyal customers. In the space where you have advantageous offerings, the customer loves you, and competition cannot replicate you, which puts you in a position.
The Chester Cheetah debate at Frito-Lay wasn’t about animation or marketing flair. It was a symptom of a misunderstood brand strategy. While teams obsessed over 2D versus 3D, the real question was hiding in plain sight: What does this brand stand for, and who cares? The tactics drowned out the strategy. Only when someone forced the room to answer for the brand’s promise did the confusion start to clear.
That lesson outlives any mascot redesign, logo refresh, or packaging tweak. Brand isn’t a mascot, a logo, or a campaign slogan. It’s the reason a customer picks you out of a crowded aisle and comes back again. The moment a business stops chasing every shiny tactic and starts defending the value only it can deliver, the brand grows a spine. Not everyone will notice the shift immediately, but those who matter will.
Chester’s real legacy isn’t a cartoon. It’s proof that clarity, focus, and strategy win when the brand is the hero.
