Brand & Brand Safety

Strong brands are not interchangeable

Well-positioned and well-managed brands thrive on their unique identity. According to the dictionary, the term “brand” used in marketing represents the totality of all ideas that brand names or logos evoke in consumers and enable them to distinguish the company’s products or services from competing companies. The focus of successful branding is to create the clearest possible distinction from other competitors on the market. It prevents brands from becoming arbitrary and thus interchangeable from the customers’ point of view.

Brand safety through targeted marketing

When marketing budgets shrink and measures are restricted, companies should be able to fall back on a strong and established brand. Therefore, it is essential to build your brand with a well-thought-out plan and pay attention to brand safety – to protect it from damage.

Social media offers companies unprecedented opportunities to build a unique presence with a recognition factor. With a clear message, targeted communication, and a specifically tailored content management plan, a brand can be established at comparatively low cost. Due to the great importance of brands in today’s business landscape, it’s particularly important to avoid rookie mistakes and build a resilient social media marketing strategy. 

Aside from the new opportunities, social media also poses some risks to brand safety. If companies do not communicate honestly and engage in pinkwashing, for example, their brand can suffer serious damage. Well-thought-out media planning with precise tracking ensures that advertising only appears on platforms that align with the brand. This is important because brand safety depends on honesty and consistency – and not only in the company’s marketing communication.

What are the characteristics of a strong and stable brand?

Brands are much more than just designations of origin, logos, or designs. Above all, they are concepts in our minds. Brands generate emotions and associations that lead customers to choose that specific product. However, consumers don’t just buy products themselves, they buy stories and experiences. This is exactly where successful brands come in, with:

• credible and unambiguous brand values that enable clear positioning,
• a long-term and consistent brand strategy,
• consistent implementation of the brand strategy based on clear brand rules,
• credible presentation of the uniqueness of the brand at all touchpoints and its tangibility.

Brand building is the creation and communication of brand values that, through daily experience, ensure the brand’s establishment on the market. Strong brands benefit from significant competitive advantages over their competitors. These include:

• high levels of attractiveness in the relevant target groups,
• better profitability due to lower customer price sensitivity,
• higher loyalty through established trust,
• orientation in increasingly complex market environments through recognizable differentiation,
• better chances on the labor market in the fight for talent,
• a motivating and connecting internal brand effect.

Customers’ needs are the focus of brand building.

But what do successful brand building, brand safety, and brand marketing look like in the context of rapidly changing purchasing and consumer behavior? Are those classic TV commercials and colorful packaging still enough to put your brand in a positive light? No, that won’t cut it. Especially in view of many new digital players, for example in online retail, the market is changing, and the power of brands seems to be dwindling. But appearances are deceiving. Because purchasing decisions today are usually influenced less by big-name brands than by personal relationships with them.

In a world in which consumers are becoming more skeptical and pickier due to a wide variety of offers and round-the-clock availability, direct interaction with customers is moving into the focus of branding. Customer needs become the basis for designing personal user experiences that create trust and build a direct, intimate relationship. This personal brand experience is ultimately the key to successful differentiation, which no longer focuses on the product but on the customer’s experience.