COM 655 1-4 Short Paper
The experts—namely Steve Jobs (Jobs, 2013) and Harry Mylonadis (Mylonadis, 2013)—seem to agree: the transcendent branding concept that fundamentally defines a brand is not a brand’s product’s individual characteristics. Rather, it is a statement that reflects the brand’s core values; that is, the values that do not change or progress as the brand changes or as sales go up. Core values are those that begin with the brand, that are the reason the brand was created in the first place: these are the values that do not change as the brand evolves.
Jobs makes this point well when describing Nike’s marketing strategy: rather than espousing the wonders of Nike’s various technologies, or indeed even its shoes, Nike instead bases its advertising campaigns on the celebration of great athletes and athletics (Jobs, 2013). Nike’s product line, therefore, becomes almost an afterthought, the support to greatness in athletics, and Nike’s core value becomes what its target consumer remembers about the brand.
Jobs admonishes his audience to make clear what it is about the brand that the brand wants and needs its audience to remember (2013). With regard to a brand’s values, it is the essence of the brand, namely its core employees, who decide on and reflect (though not necessarily in that order) the brand’s values (Mylonadis, 2013); hardly surprising when one considers that authenticity and transparency are keynotes for any branding exercise (Kaputa, 2012). The people who make up the brand—either as employees or the audience, both of whom represent the brand, albeit in different ways—should reflect the brand’s core values (Mylonadis, 2013).
Mylonadis (2013) defines brand identity as “who you say you are” (paragraph 3), as opposed to who the audience thinks “you” are. Again, the principles of transparency and authenticity in branding (Kaputa, 2012) come into play, as, short of attempting to present a falsified or inaccurate persona, the only way to solidify a brand’s identity is to actually represent it accurately (Mylonadis, 2013). The brand identity’s purpose is not simply to represent the brand’s products; it may even be argued that a brand identity’s purpose is not to represent products or product characteristics at all, but rather to communicate the brand’s vision, values, and mission to the target consumer.
When using category membership to build a brand’s concept (Tybout & Calkins, 2011), it is reasonable to assume that the target consumer will apply common category features to the member. The concept must go beyond said membership and focus on points of differentiation instead; in closely knit categories such as computer hardware, as Jobs (2013) points out, the nuts and bolts of the products (metaphorically speaking, at any rate) no longer distinguishes one brand from the next, though of course these differences are important in supporting the brand identity once it has been created. Rather, the points of differentiation build on emotional cues and connections to craft the brand identity.
So, why is the brand identity component of vision, for example, so crucial to the future of the brand? A vision is not a vague idea of where the brand creators want the brand to go: it is a roadmap of how and why the brand was conceived, which in turn informs the path of sustaining the brand as well as defining the brand’s future (Mylonadis, 2013).
A common theme in this discussion appears to be the humanizing of brands and therefore its products; therefore, it is not unreasonable to wonder if brands that are among the most successful are so because these brands created identities that resonate with the human qualities and needs in its target audience. Even someone who is not a natural athlete—like this paper’s author—would still celebrate a brand that goes above and beyond to celebrate the humanity in athletes and athletics, and celebrate the person rather than a pair of shoes. Why else Jobs’s (2013) description of his own brand’s value as that which “touches the soul” of his company?
References
Jobs, S. (2013, August 15). Steve Jobs introduces Think Different—Apple Special Event excerpt 1997 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dP63IZaymE
Kaputa, C. (2012). You are a brand! In persona and online, how smart people brand themselves for business success (2nd ed.). Nicholas Brealey Publishing: Boston, MA.
Mylonadis, H. (2013, February 14). You are who you say you are – Building a brand identity Part I [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/17/you-are-who-you-say-you-are-building-a-brand-identity-part-i/?fromcat=all
Tybout, A. M., & Calkins, T. (2011). Kellogg on Branding: The Marketing Faculty of The Kellogg School of Management [Kindle Version].