Brand Planning LLC: Brand Anatomy

Home

Our Approach

Services

About Us

Brand Stew

Clients

Case Studies

Brand Stew: In many respects, brands are like an experiential stew. They are a mixture of a lot of experiences - some complementary, some conflicting—that are continually reorganized as new experiences are added. Similar experiences reinforce each other in a kind of molecular linkage of memories, strengthening their contribution to the brand's overall flavor. More recent experiences generally have a stronger effect than older ones.

There are experiences in the Brand Stew that reinforce a desired, positive flavor, and there are those that counteract it. Ultimately, the optimum flavor of the Brand Stew is defined by the elements that maximize the Brand Value.

The goal of branding is to identify the elements, the experiences, in the Brand Stew that reinforce the optimum flavor and emphasize them in marketing and operational efforts, while minimizing the experiences that counteract or dilute the optimum flavor.

Brand Experience: Brands are experiences—nothing more and nothing less. To be more precise, brands are symbols for experiences. Strong brands are icons for experiences. And as we all know, experiences are perceptions, not objective assessments or reality.

Brand Value: Great brands, successful brands, create "fulfilling" experiences—experiences that fulfill an individual's psychosocial wants and needs. And because these experiences are fulfilling, the brand is perceived to have value.

Brand Positioning: Simply stated, brand positioning is the act of maximizing brand value. But brand positioning must capitalize on the unique experience that the brand delivers. Thus, everyone who influences the brand experience (all employees) must have a singular, passionate vision of what that experience should be.

Retail vs. Brand Advertising: Consumers and business customers do not make a distinction between "retail" messages vs. "branding" messages. These are artifacts of marketing and advertising parlance. To the target audience, all messages associated with a brand are components of the brand. Experientially speaking, "retail" messaging, for the most part, is cognitively processed as a rational brand experience, while a "branding" message is cognitively processed as an emotional brand experience. But they are both part of the overall Brand Experience.