How Important is Brand to Selling?

The answer is "very important". That doesn't mean that you should be spending lots of money on branding. In fact, most money spent on traditional branding (logo design, brand advertising, brand re-design, etc.) is wasted. However, if you don't understand your brand, and how it plays in your target market, you'll be fighting an uphill battle whenever you go out to sell.

Let's start with a reasonable definition of brand. There are half-a-dozen to choose from, because there are dozens of brand gurus all trying to get money from your CMO in order to establish better brand. And they, of course, come up with a definition that leads towards purchasing their branding products and programs.

Since I have no interest in selling you anything, I'm free to come up with a definition that's generally useful and makes sense. Here it is:

Brand consists of the emotions that prospects feel when they think about your company or product.
By defining brand as something that belongs to the customer (i.e. emotions) we completely differentiate it from the company and its product, and all the other elements that might actually create those emotions. The definition also allows us to evaluate "branding activity" based upon whether it actually generates emotion.

Brands go through two stages: pre-release and post-release. When a brand in its pre-release phase, there is not yet a product, so the emotions surrounding the brand are all based upon anticipation and expectation.

A brand enters the "post release" phase, once customers have received a real product. At that point, the brand reflects their opinion of that product, combined with the anticipation of future products. That anticipation is highly colored by the assumption that future products will be similar to the released one.

In the pre-release phase, it's possible, through advertising and public relations, to create a certain amount of anticipation and thus create positive emotions which can make it easier to sell the product -- even before its actually released.

Once a brand reaches its post-release phase, however, the die is cast, and the prospects' and customers' emotions will be determined almost exclusively by their experience with the product. There are three possibilities here:

• The product is wonderful. If this is the case, the brand will create positive emotions, and will continue to do so as long as the product (and follow-on products) remain wonderful. Example: the emotions created by the idea of a new James Cameron movie. Since Titanic was so huge (no pun intended), the "James Cameron" brand made people assume (rightly) that Avatar would be huge.
• The product is mediocre. If this is the case, the brand will essentially disappear into the woodwork. Nobody will care about it one way or another, until such time as a wonderful product is released. Then the brand will gradually improve. Example: The author John Jakes published a series of forgettable novels about the exploits of "Brak the Barbarian" and then wrote a trilogy about the U.S. Civil War which sold 10 million copies.
• The product is awful. If this is the case, the brand will create negative emotions, and will continue to do for a long time, even if subsequent products are wonderful. Example: In the 70s and 80s, General Motors kept releasing cars that didn't run well, looked horrible, and broke down easily. The company's brands became synonymous with low quality and, even though GM cars are now as good as anything coming out of Japan, the company's brands still generate negative emotions. (Chevy dealer quoted on NPR: "People feel they have to justify to their friends and family why they bought a Chevy.")

First, it tells you what you probably already knew, which is that most "corporate branding" exercises are a complete waste of money. The brand ALWAYS reflects the product (including service, package, support, sales process, etc.) because that's what creates the emotion -- not the logo, not the tag, not the celebrity spokesperson, not the ad copy, not the billboard, etc., etc.

Second, and more importantly, brand determines how much groundwork you need to lay before you get deeply into a selling cycle. If your brand is wonderful (i.e. you, your firm and your products are known to be of the highest quality), you can hit the ground running and move quickly into the sales cycle

On the other hand, if your brand creates negative emotions, you'll need to work harder to lay the groundwork to overcome those emotions. You'll need to prove -- many times, to many decision-makers -- that your new products don't suck like the old ones did, and that you can be trusted to make sure they don't get shafted like the customers who bought the crap your company used to sell.

Understand your brand is thus similar to understanding yourself and your own strengths and weaknesses. Without that self-awareness, you're flying blind.