What Defines Your Brand?

If you find developing the new media marketing strategy for your company frustrating and difficult, you aren’t alone! Many times, the information at your disposal is imperfect and not fully complete. This is where defining your brand, and whether or not your brand promise is actually appropriate for your company become very important.

First, of course, you need to think about what a brand really is. You need to think about not only the company focused perspective of the brand (the things that are trademarked and can be legally protected), but also the more important side, the customer focused perspective.

In today’s market, your brand is in essence a collection of meanings based on how the consumer perceives your brand. It is a collection of the consumer’s associations of everything from overall quality level of the stay experience and service to the kinds of amenities offered in the hotel bathroom to their takeaway experience after a stay, to the other kind of customers typically associated with that brand. These associations form a more complete picture of what that brand experience would be.

It’s the brand strategists’ job to try to then communicate those meanings through various marketing channels so that the potential customers understand exactly what brand experience they can expect. The basis of that is the brand promise: the articulation of what that experiential take away for the brand will be.