Of Brands and Branding, By Ademola Akinbola

“Everybody has a brand worthy of remark”. (Tom Peters)

Branding and rebranding are topics that have dominated both formal and informal discussions in Nigeria for quite some time.

People talk of being branded. Companies talk of rebranding. Cities and states are busy branding and rebranding. Just like any new topic or subject, our understanding of what branding means varies.

Even among brand managers and brand management professionals, there is a divergence of views and perspectives on brands and branding.
Our world is replete with perfect examples of quintessential successful personal or individual brands; individuals who have positively dominated the fields of politics, business, sports, evangelism, etc., and who have become role models for this and the coming generations. So, personal branding is neither as strange as some people think nor as complex as they are wont to believe.

Career Fulfilment

Personal branding is the key to ultimate career fulfillment for any discerning professional because it concentrates on your most valuable asset, that is YOU.

Personal branding is about standing for and being known for something tangible and unique. Your personal brand epitomises your beliefs, core values, and the qualities you cherish. When you have consciously and consistently built a strong personal brand, you don’t have to follow the crowd; It is the crowd that will do anything to follow you.

Focused discussions about individual brands and the need for professionals to discover their personal brands and consciously develop them have been happening more frequently in recent times than ever before.

However, there is that compelling need to have a structured and organised approach towards understanding what personal branding means and how we can all individually cultivate and nurture our brands to the Zenith of our careers, business, or vocation. You should be intentional about how you can build your personal brand and leverage your brand equity to succeed in your career or business.

Usually, when we talk about brands and branding, the attention is more on companies and their corporate brands or cities and their alluring tourism centre. But branding is not just for the products and services of big companies alone. In today’s digitised and highly competitive world, everything is a brand. Countries, cities, tourist spots, monumental places, and even individuals now take branding seriously. Branding has, therefore, become a positively pervasive phenomenon.

London is one of the world’s renowned cities. Dubai is a great destination brand. Silicon Valley in California, USA, is the pride of the United States; David Beckham is a great sports brand; so also are our own Austin Jay Jay Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo, Victor Oshimen, etc. Bill Gates and Richard Branson are successful individual brands; Zenith Bank, GT Bank, First Bank, Globacom, MTN, Airtel, Dangote Industries, Apple, Microsoft, etc., are all successful corporate brands. The list is endless.
Identify the “U” in YOU
The immense talents, skills, and resources that God has put at your disposal are all you need to take your brand to where you want it to be. I have made conscious efforts to address your fears and concerns about whether your brand can also rank among the top brands in the world. God did not create any useless human being. It is all up to you to identify your unique God-given skills and leverage them for career or business success.

Through purpose, focus, consistency, and determination, you can also get to the top of your career and become an authority figure.
Brands and Branding
Our understanding of what personal branding is will be greatly enhanced by a journey through the world of brands and branding. So, I will be telling you what branding is, what it is not, and what it will never be.

Personal branding is an aspect of the general concept of branding; hence, it cannot be discussed in isolation.

What is a Brand?

A brand is a named individual, product, service, organisation, or destination (city or country) that:
Has a distinct identity (in terms of name, logo, colour, and other physical characteristics) for easy recognition, recall, and differentiation.
Is designed and packaged to offer specific benefits, value, or promises to an identified target market.

In summary, a brand is an integrated promise and a bundle of benefits.

Types of Brands

A brand could be:
An individual (brand YOU)
An organisation or a company duly registered under the law and
appropriately named.
A destination (a town, city, or country).
A Product or Service

An organisation can also have product or service brands that are stand-alone entities that feed from the “mother” brand, that is, the organisation that birthed such a product or service. For instance, Coca-Cola Nigeria Limited is a mother brand for its range of soft drinks. Dangote Industries Limited (DIL) is the mother brand for Dangote Sugar, Dangote Flour, etc.
When an organisation has products or services that have been successfully branded, the organisation is said to have achieved brand extension.

A Brand is An Asset

When asked to list their assets, most people, organisations, and countries will usually not include their brand value. They will rather reel out the endless list of physical and tangible assets they own, such as cars, houses, etc. But, wait a minute, a brand is an asset. Oh yeah, you never realised it, but your brand is the most valuable asset you can ever own. Okay, a brand is an intangible asset (which means it cannot be easily felt or seen), but in its intangibility lies its enduring strength and the competitive advantage it offers.

A brand is an intangible asset that cannot be copied, replicated, or duplicated. All other physical assets can be copied or even surpassed. You buy a car today, and your friend buys a better one tomorrow. You introduce a product today, and before you settle down to commence the marketing of the product, another company goes public with the same product offering, with even better benefits. So, all your physical assets can be copied and even improved upon. It is only your brand that can stand the test of time when all else fails.

An organisation’s brand is a key asset because it creates possibilities and sets limits in terms of what employees, customers, and investors expect from it.

A brand is an integrated promise shaped by both the organisation’s claims and the experience of its stakeholders. So, a brand is the totality of an individual, organisation, or country. The worth of a brand is the degree to which it can deliver on its promise and provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Companies make promises on behalf of their brands. For instance, XYZ Company says in its advertisement or any other communication message that “this soap clears acne and other unwanted spots on the skin after three days of application”. That is a brand promise. A promise and its consistent delivery create a reputation for a brand. So, branding, as a marketing function, is not optional; it is an existential strategy that every purpose-driven organisation must adopt.

The consistent process of branding (packaging a product/service/function in a differentiated way to offer tangible and intangible benefits or promises) creates a strong brand.

How brands are built
Most people will eagerly admit that branding is a modern-day phenomenon, especially in this part of the world. But that is not true. Branding has been with us right from creation and through the decades. At creation, God, the almighty creator of the universe, was basically in the business of creating and naming for differentiation, the very essence of branding. The Bible recorded in Genesis 2 19-20, that after God created Adam, God mandated him to name his creatures. “… and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air …” Thai was branding at work.

Centuries ago, nomadic shepherds, who neither knew how to read nor write, practised branding by inscribing painted marks on their sheep to differentiate them from those of their co-shepherds. Have you noticed that yams are usually brought to the market with different colour shades to differentiate them? That is branding at the informal and rudimentary level.

Parents give their children different names to differentiate them; shop owners use different colours to paint their shops. We can go on and on with examples of how branding has always been an integral part of human existence, albeit informally and unrecognized.

Traditionally, brands and branding are terms that have been limited to discussions about companies and organisations, especially manufacturing companies that made waves with their consumer products. Product brands such as Omo, Coke, Blue Band, Uncle Bens Rice, etc., were and have been with us for decades, but most of us are latter-day converts to the concept of branding and brands. As a result of this flawed perception of brands to be an exclusive preserve of manufacturing companies, branding has also been erroneously considered to be solely a function of advertising.

This argument is no longer tenable because of the following reasons:
The perceptions of the public about an organisation are not shaped solely by what the company says about itself through its advertising and other communication messages. Customers’ experiences, service quality, the work environment, operating performance, employees’ perceptions, etc., affect how stakeholders view the organisation.
Therefore, there must be harmony among customers, employees, and investors’ perceptions of the company. If any of the three constituent units is dissatisfied, it will filter through to the others.

Branding cannot succeed if it stops at the point of making a promise or is narrowly viewed as advertising. If branding is not part of the day-to-day line management and decision-making at all levels of the organisation, it will dissipate or be sidelined by short-term operational and financial goals.
Branding starts from how visitors are received when they visit an organisation; branding reflects in how a company recruits and trains its staff, as well as how it implements employee performance management policies. Branding is in motion when an organisation decides to develop policies and practices that will enhance workflow. Branding is everything in an organisation that wants to be successful on a sustainable basis.

Branding is …
There are as many definitions of branding as there are brands. To simplify this concept, I will take the route of defining branding in the priority order of the key stages in the process of branding itself. So, I say branding is the strategic, consistent, and sustained process of:
a. Naming an individual, company, product, service, or city and choosing a logo (creating the brand and the brand identity). Branding starts with the creation of the brand itself. You cannot brand what does not exist.
b. Identifying the unique attributes of that brand (what makes it different from other existing brands) and communicating them;
c. Developing a set of benefits or promises that the brand will offer to its target market. People don’t buy the features of a brand; they buy the benefits. People will not accept you just because it is you; there must be something unique and valuable that you have to offer before they accept you as a friend or a partner, or patronise your products or services.
d. Developing the benefits and promises into specific products and services;
e. Packaging and differentiating the products or services in a uniquely distinct and attractive way;
f. Ensuring that the brand creates value and delivers on its promises;
g. Consistently communicating the brand attributes, benefits promise, and
h. Building a strong reputation for the brand.
This eight-step process is not exhaustive, but by the time you do these eight things as an individual or organisation, you will be on your way to building a strong brand. The processes are interwoven, and they can sometimes be implemented simultaneously.
In summary, branding means differentiation; it means setting somebody or something apart from the crowd to improve overall perception and patronage. Branding is also ensuring that a product or service delivers on a promise of value creation or addition. That explains why a brand is defined as a bundle of promises or benefits. There must be a direct relationship or connection between what people feel about your brand and what they experience.
Dimensions of Branding
In broad terms, there are three main levels of branding. Branding can and does take place at three different but interrelated levels. These are:
Personal Branding: This refers to the steps or strategies that you, as an individual, embark upon to identify, develop, and promote the unique essence of your being. It has to do with how you package, differentiate, position, and promote yourself.
Corporate Branding: This refers to the various activities an organisation or a commercial enterprise implements in order to differentiate its products or services, satisfy its customers through value creation, and ultimately achieve market dominance. This is the most common form or level of branding, as we all grew up thinking that branding is only for big organisations.
Nation or Destination Branding: Nigeria’s “Heart of Africa or “Good people, great nation” campaigns are examples of nation branding initiatives. Nation or destination branding is aimed at making a city or country a destination of choice. It is all about packaging and promoting a nation or destination to attract foreign investors and tourists.
We can readily recall branding campaign themes such as Croatia (the Mediterranean as it once was), Egypt (the Red Sea Riviera, where the sun always shines all through the year), Malaysia (truly Asia), and Uganda (gifted by nature), as some of the countries that have adopted a formal and consistent approach towards their nation brands. Nigeria has also attempted a rebranding campaign anchored on the theme “the heartbeat of Africa”, and later “good people, great nation”.

The “Jesus Festival” in Ile-Oluji, Ondo State is an example of destination branding, which aims to positively promote the town. Ojude Oba Festival in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, and the Argungu Fishing Festival in Kebbi State are other good examples of activities that can be used to brand a city or destination.
Did you notice the specific objectives of each level of branding? Let us recap.

Personal branding is about how individuals can differentiate and promote themselves for ultimate success in career or business.
Corporate branding focuses on how a company can package and promote its products and services to be the best-loved and most successful in its market category.

Nation or Destination Branding refers to the series of activities embarked upon by a nation or named destination to create a positive perception among its citizens, prospective foreign investors, or tourists.
Although the specific objectives of the three levels of branding discussed above vary, they all have a common general objective, which is to build strong and winning brands.

Branding is not…

Branding is often misunderstood and wrongly applied. It will be useful for us to note that branding is not an all-purpose or one-size-fits-all remedy for character deficiencies in an individual, sloppiness in a company’s product/service delivery, or rudderless leadership of a country.

Branding does not work in isolation from other important conditions that must be prevalent; it only complements whatever positive foundation is in place.

Branding is most effective where and when it is based on substance or added value.
Hear this: branding is not hype.

Hear more: branding is not propaganda; it is not loud, purposeless visibility.

For instance, an individual with integrity problems cannot be branded successfully if the integrity problems are not sorted out.

A company cannot successfully brand a product that offers little or no tangible value or a sloppy service that leaves the customer disenchanted. To do otherwise will be tantamount to frittering its resources away. That, unfortunately, is what most companies do in the name of branding or rebranding.

To be continued.

Ademola Akinbola is the Founder/CEO of Brand Stewards Limited (a brand and reputation management consultancy operating in Nigeria and the United Kingdom). He is the Convener of the Nigerian Brand Academy, and Publisher of The Podium International Magazine. He can be reached via ademolaakinbola@gmail.com.