WE ARE A PRODUCT. HOW DO I BRAND AND HELP HOW I PROMOTING IT? THIS IS THE CHALLENGE WHICH MEETS THE MOST MULTIPLE ENTERPRISES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING, BUT ALSO WITH THE VIEW TO CREATE LONG TERM.

by Dochița Zenoveiov

“The products are made in the factory, and the brands in the mind of the consumer, “said Walter Landor, the innovator in branding, the INOVEO branding agencies mark in brand. By extrapolating, not every product becomes brand. And this is the entrepreneur’s decision. A newly launched product becomes a brand when it coagulates around its promise a constant customer community that grows over time. And a customer prefers a brand when he has more options and chooses one, sometimes even at a higher price. A brand is the one that passes the “lowest price” test and is chosen for another reasoning: the most relevant to me, the best today, the fastest, the cleanest, who speaks on my tongue, who convinced me examples can continue. Any real entrepreneur should want to become a brand detonator and not just a manufacturer. Hence the desire of textile manufacturers to leave the lohn area or FMCG manufacturers to go out of the “IKEA brand” suppliers and to see their brand on the shelf.

There are no mistakes, just tests

There are no mistakes in business, there are only attempts by the entrepreneur to find the shortest route from his brand to the customer. In most cases, the entrepreneur is trying to constrain himself with the resources he has at his disposal, which at first is reduced. The secret is to use all the resources at its disposal: knowledge, friends and family, financial resources and, last but not least, the dose of optimism that is a must-have of the entrepreneur’s DNA.

BRANDING, IN TIME

Branding you know when it starts, but you do not know when it’s over or better said it’s not good to end, because that would mean the finish. No branding project is similar to another. That’s why the timing of a branding process at INOVEO varies depending on a few aspects related to the project’s specificity:
Analysis and audit: how many competitors are in the category where the brand is launched; whether the contractor comes with a research or must be done; how many people in the client’s project team are involved in the process – one is interviewing a person, another is to interview 10 people, this influences the time it spends on the project and automatically the budget.
Naming: if the customer has the name or needs to develop the name of the brand. Visual identity or visual identity and packaging: if the client has a very clear brief or not.
Offline implementation: how many materials are to be deployed according to brand audience, the breadth of the product portfolio.
Online implementation: the site’s specificity, its size, if the client knows what he or she wants or needs, and a consultant.
Communication or Innovation Strategy: the number of the competitors in the category; there is a brief or it must be developed with the client; what are the goals your brand proposes over time.

These variables are just some of the elements that define the time and budget of a project. We did the projects in two months, but some have been running for years. Just as at the budget level, we did pro bono projects, but also projects that jumped hundreds of thousands of euros. Besides this budget allocated to the branding agency, the client must also allocate an implementation budget: production, communication, brand activation.

BRAND LAUNCH

Every entrepreneur goes through an ideological process at the start of business launch. It defines its product / service, the promise it brings to the market, defines the client profile it wishes to serve and the resources it needs. Practically, he should know the mission and the vision and values he will take into account during business development. If he does not have this theme made and written in the notebook / iPad, he can not know what performance means, how and when he succeeds. This articulation will later bring success or, on the contrary, know where it has to work.

PROMOTING

When you buy a new outfit, you come out to see the world, don’t you? This is also the case with the newly launched brand – it has to be launched and then communicated constantly in the environments where its target audience is. Pay attention, do not talk about opportunistic communication, which is often harmful to the brand. A brand must communicate constantly offline and online to all of its audiences on the language of the audience. And he has to do it day by day or month to month or season to season depending on his domain and category. Any stopping of communication will also entail oblivion, which occurs naturally in the mind of the client, as “the eyes that are not seen”. Hence, the postural steps: coherent and consistent communication both offline and online with the potential client. Communication. Communication. Communication. And careful, as honest as possible.

BRANDING MADE IN ROMANIA

Emulation around the consumption of Romanian brands is beneficial for local entrepreneurs, for Romanians in general, but also for the GDP of the country, but it is far from what happens in countries like Germany, France, Austria, Turkey, to name just a few . When we launch or relaunch a product, we work with a research agency (GfK Romania) that supports us in identifying the most appropriate archetype / archetype mix that responds to brand positioning. There is no generalization because that would sabotage the definition of branding: be relevant to your audience and be differentiated from your competitors, preferably. I prefer it because it is not a mistake to come and with the same promise, since the public often prefers to have the freedom to choose between two similar brands as a promise, it wants to “have control” in the decision.

INSTEAD OF CONCLUSIONS

What’s glamorous lately is that INOVEO is seeing more and more entrepreneurs who have been branding since launch, since the start-up phase. Not everyone has the resources, but it’s wise thinking as the foundation of a building (branding) is the one that supports its floors (the goals you propose with your brand). And we believe that brand-minded entrepreneurs are only investing in the health of their brand in the effort they will make in the sales process, because:

It’s much easier to sell a well-crafted brand since launch, giving it more chances to compete with the existing brands in the market.
It’s less expensive to work with a branding agency than to do with a freelancer; the agency allocates a whole team and not just a designer who, not for lack of knowledge, but often for lack of resources, can not handle a head-branding project in the given terms. Also, being the creator, he can block the project because he plays multiple roles (creative, project manager, customer service, accountant), wasting his creative energy on aspects that are not always made with pleasure and need; and for the entrepreneur this affects the following relationships he / she will have with branding service providers.
He feels more confident in him, being well worked from the beginning of the project and with almost equal opportunities with an existing brand in the market, as the new always attracts the audience; the new idea is one of the elements that stimulates dopamine levels in the brain and enhances pleasure.
He is more likely to go out for export faster because he feels more confident: he knows he has a very good product, which is the majority of the producers, but he also has the “packaging” to measure and can convince the external client from the packaging stage, an equal footing with any other external competitor.