It’s no secret that one of the goals of a solid consumer brand strategy is to positively influence the brand awareness and connection with its intended customer base. We’ve all made purchasing decisions based on brands, and the best brand strategies have a goal to become one of those brands.
Connecting with your audience goes beyond logos and naming – it taps into creating a brand that has true, identifiable characteristics. (And, as we mentioned in a previous post, it is crucial that your employees positively reflect those characteristics.) People can’t tie their emotional purchasing to colors and words, but they can tie them to things that connect with who they are – or, who they’d like to be.
For instance, with luxury branding, these strategies are tapping into the lifestyle those brands represent – wealthy, comfortable, high quality, etc. It’s no coincidence that these same characteristics
are ones to which people aspire. These brands know that if they can become the living embodiment of wealth, for instance, their audience and potential consumer will connect an achievement of wealth with the acquisition of their product. That they can show those around them that they “made it” when they are in possession of a specific brand.
A one-time purchase because of a brand connection can be deemed a branding success, but brand loyalty is an entirely difference level of this concept.
These brands are truly the crème de la crème when it comes to establishing long-lasting, unwavering loyalty with their audience. They have created such a strong connection that their consumers have adopted the brand’s characteristics as their own. They have begun to “be” the brand – as much as someone can be. From getting the brand’s logo tattooed on their body, to only buying that one brand’s products when available, to their seeing themselves as unofficial brand ambassadors, they have become not just a consumer, but a fan.
And for brands, this transition is a big step in the direction of creating a long-lasting brand success.
So the question is, how do you create these connections and how to you develop a legion of “brand fans?”
The answer lies, again, with how your personalize your brand. Creating characteristics is a good start, but the work really begins by taking a look at the brand before looking forward. What emotional response does your brand create? What types of personality or lifestyle traits can be believably connected to your brand?
Once these are decided, the rest of the brand strategy can begin to come to fruition, and as it does, the various brand aspects should in some way tie back to the characteristics, driving forward the overall connection with the brand.
Addison Whitney is a global branding firm with a passion for building strong brands.
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