Branding: Making Our Mark
A fundamental element of marketing is branding, but there’s a lot more to it than just putting a logo on everything (although you do need to put the logo on everything!).
In Extension, we tend to believe what I call the Coca-Cola fallacy: marketing and branding are only for big business – we don’t have a brand and we don’t need one, because, after all, we’re not Coca-Cola!
But the reality is that we do have a brand and we do need marketing. Branding is a super-hot term in marketing circles these days, but what is called a brand can also be called reputation, and it can include organizational values, a mission, even a creed. A brand includes everything your name evokes in the minds of your customers.
It’s helpful to think of your brand as a promise you make to your customers – a promise that encourages them to enter into or to continue a relationship with
you.Before you can work on building your brand, you need to understand what it is and what you want it to be.
We think that is one of the best descriptions of branding. It really illustrates the difference between marketing, logo-police, and true branding.
Looking for more information? Here are a few more links:
- A library of brand management articles from marketingprofs.com
- Brand marketing info from Stamats (directed toward higher education institutions)
- What is Branding? (from About.com)
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