Your brand position is in the minds of your customers and other target audiences you wish to influence. Your position is relative to other competitive brands and offerings that compete for that position. The first step in any brand positioning exercise is to determine where the brand is now. What space does it occupy and how does it compare with other choices.
Asking a brand to occupy a totally unique position in its category is both naïve and worthy. Naïve, because so many brands in any given category want to occupy the ideal brand position. Worthy, because a brand can never achieve top brand status if doesn’t push itself to do so. One approach to sorting out the branding challenges is to focus on the development of a Sweet Spot. This can be found at the intersection of Customer Needs, Market Dynamics and Client Realities.
Client Realities are those financial, cultural, structural and technological parameters that define your organizations capacity to compete at any given point in time.
Customer Needs reflect what your target audience is looking for in the way of a product or service solution. The ideal solution needs to be something valuable and important to the target
Market Dynamics include competitive forces and other industry driving trends, technologies and industry standards that define the terrain in which your brand participates.
Once the naming objectives and strategy are approved, the process begins by developing a list of important name attributes from client input and category research. In some cases, interviews or focus groups among the target audience are beneficial as a starting point.
Brainstorm tracks are created and a process of “structured brainstorming” develops a wide range of candidates to be considered. Word combinations and refinements yield candidate names for client review and a short list upon which preliminary trademark and web URL searching is performed. Word roots and phonemes are explored, contrived names built and common names examined, depending on naming strategy and project budget.
Final candidate names, which must serve as global brands, can be assessed for multi-cultural acceptability and screened for cross-lingual vulgarity. Upon final selection of a name, consideration is also given to tagline and slogan generation, as seen appropriate.
Brand Marketing is a consultancy that specializes in the creation, building and management of brands. We are experienced in everything from brand positioning, brand strategy, and customer journey mapping to naming, brand architecture and internal learning and development.