Building brand or building a business has been a common controversy among business owners. To some, they believe that if a business survives the brand thrives while another believe that branding is the best defence to a commodity as consumers are loyal to brands and build a relationship around it to the businesses or corporation.
Build a Big Business and Build a Bigger Brand
Building business requires organizing efforts and resources from managements, employees and stakeholders to create a product and or service to make profit. Some people say brand cannot exist without the business and the business is the brand (This doesn’t go with brand like Versace when Michael Kors holding bought all outstanding shares in Gianni Versace S.r.l, in 2018, the brand name did not change but the company changed ownership).
Building brand is aimed at creating awareness about a particular product or brand in a way that it differentiates the product from other similar product by using advertising campaigns and promotional strategies.
According to some business people, customers tend to move with branding than the company. A lot of consumers do not know Montres Tudor SA or Hans Wilsdorf foundation, but they know Rolex which is the brand for a watch produced by the company. Also, they further say that consumers do not care if the products are the same or not, they go after the brand.
Like a consumers will say they like Coke and do not like Pepsi and do not care if Pepsi becomes cheaper or coke becomes higher, they already have their brands and they love it and do not care to know any other thing.
Unlike businesses, brands do not have identity crises or face any type of crises. When General motors was facing bankruptcy, people never mentioned the brand (Chevrolet, GMC) but rather they mentioned the business.
To back branding further, business owners say branding brings consistency to business sales and gives the business an edge in the market among other same products. Also brand is what a customer is loyal to not the business.
Creating a business is starting a fashion shop with a few sewing machines and workers creating a brand is creating a fashion store with a logo, a cloth with your signature logo on them, giving customers a sense of belonging. The different between Louis Vuitton and the regular fashion designer in your environment is branding.
Your Branding Needs a Unique Selling Proposition
The reason why Ferrari is classed as luxury while Toyota is known for reliability is what the company have built that brand around and that is Unique Selling Proposition. A company’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is the anchor to the brand. It is what people know the brand for and why they keep staying with the brand. Domino’s use “delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less-or it's free” as its unique selling proposition because the company based its brand on fast delivery of pizza an that has been working for the company.
In Conclusion
You can have a business without a brand but loyalty of customers and market presence lies with branding. Your company creates the brand but the brand is what keeps your company alive.