Unique Branding

1. Setting Your Brand Apart

So, what is it about the brand that should be unique to that particular company? Well, first of all, brand awareness is incredibly important for a company. People have to be able to recognize your brand. If they don't recognize your brand, they may not go out and look for it. This is very important to the health of the company as it relates to its financial aspects and its profitability in the future.

Now, there are generic products in the market, but those are mainly concerned with price as their primary focus. Store brands focus on trying to beat competitors on price; they are less concerned about promoting the brand.

Product placement can also impact brand awareness, referring to a product's literal placement versus staged placement.

• Literal placements refer to places on the shelf where you put your product or a particular store where you're going to sell it--even a particular part of town. You could also place the product in a commercial and it is clear that this product is used to advertise the product.
• Staged placements are placing a product in a television show or movie. The characters are not going to specifically say the product name, but you will see them using it.
  
  

  EXAMPLE

  You might see American Idol judges drinking Coke, or a "mini-mercial" for a Toyota Prius during a TV show.

2. Marketing Techniques

There are two basic marketing techniques we're going to discuss today.

Buzz marketing is a marketing process that generates a rapid and explosive word-of-mouth response via social media outlets. It involves creating excitement around a product or service, leading to organic conversations about it. Buzz marketing uses social media to create a buzz--almost like gossip, if you will, as in "Did you hear about what company A did (or didn't do)?" This is the type of buzz marketing that brings attention to your brand.

Viral marketing is another marketing program that uses social media and the internet. It focuses on using people's existing social networks to promote a product. It tends to build momentum more slowly than buzz marketing, but much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another, consumers spread information about a product with other people. Buzz marketing is more about creating a hype or excitement around a product or service, while viral marketing is about creating a message that spreads organically because people choose to share it.

EXAMPLE

Viral marketing might include viral videos or emails used to get people to spread the word for a particular product. In contrast, an example of buzz marketing might be the Dove Real Beauty Sketches, which use sketches to illustrate the beauty and benefits of Dove soap. Both of these are techniques that can be used for the marketing of a brand.

terms to know

Buzz Marketing

Marketing processes that generate a strong word of mouth response via social media outlets.

Viral Marketing

A marketing program that focuses on unpaid people utilizing social media outlets to generate sales, awareness or general positive regard for the brand.

3. Public Relations and Brand Identity

Public relations, or PR, also plays a significant role in supporting brand identity. You see, PR can develop a favorable brand ID and help make that brand memorable. It can generate an association with positive news so that people continue to associate your brand or your product with positive ideas or emotions.

EXAMPLE

Milk has a PR campaign currently running called "Got Milk?" Its goal is to get milk into the schools as a brand, helping to spread the word about the health benefits of milk and how it's a healthy part of school lunches, and also dispelling some of the myths that might exist.

However, PR can also be negative. There can be a negative association based on uncontrolled or unexpected occurrences.

EXAMPLE

Tylenol suffered some seriously negative PR in the 1980s when their products were poisoned. Now obviously, Tylenol didn't poison the product, but the simple fact that some of the bottles had poison in them had a devastating PR impact on Tylenol as a brand. However, Tylenol was ultimately able to ramp up their PR and turn that negative into a strong and thriving brand that it is today. It was only through PR that they were able to accomplish this huge turnaround, which goes to show the importance of PR.