Brand Quest in Advertising: Unraveling the Essence of Brand Identity
Advertising, a timeless practice as old as the first superlative and the hawking of pottery in the bazaar, has always been a crucial element of marketing. However, achieving effective advertising is a challenging endeavor due to its inherent transparency.
All three aspects—business identity, brand, and branding—form the foundation of an entity, a refined personality. The business identity encapsulates the “who” and “what” of the brand, while the brand represents the noun, and branding serves as the gerund.
Marketing and advertising decisions significantly impact the brand, affecting it as much as services, outages, missteps, heroism, kindnesses, energy, timelines, optics, image, and value.
Adaptation is often associated with survival, but in reality, it is a continuous process. The notion that there is someone for everyone aligns seamlessly with brand adaptation. However, merely being able to pivot does not necessarily imply that it should be done. Sometimes, for a brand to thrive, it requires strengthening its resolve to uphold its core values and objectives.
Branding and Adaptation
Branding vs. Marketing vs. Advertising
Three very different things.
Branding begins with an identity. How a company, business, personality, or service identifies itself is a starting point and is then measured as it grows, matriculates, or evolves. This is a protean process. The thing that a brand starts out as rarely stays the same throughout time and capital. So when building a brand, it is imperative that an assessment of a brand’s journey is given latitude. The evolution and where a brand ends up is determined by behavior, choices, and imperatives.
Marketing is sales. It has all ranges of nuance, demographics, psychographics, and targeting, but is essentially most marketing strategies are vastly interchangeable, and my best advice is to tread cautiously with the panoply of schemes, promotions, placements, propaganda, clicks, or tricks. No one likes pushy sales. They may fall victim to it, but a good brand sells itself.
Is good the enemy of great? It’s a trick question: Good is a virtue. Great is a superlative. Advertising has far too long bent to the power of what it can do as opposed to what is beneficial. Because business is NOT war. War is war. As great as Alexander may be, I wouldn’t want to go back to that business model. Better or best to be good. Good has staying power, and because inherent in the word “good” is an ethos that connotes decency, honesty, and virtue. Good brands, good advertising, good strategy, and remarkable for its inherent value to the company, advertiser, and the customer.
Good is the word. I strive to make good advertising that is remarkable for its success.
Christian Matthews – The Best for your Brand