Why do I say that marketers are not good at branding?

The importance of a brand is generally only seen in publicity, but in actual operation, brand is not the first concern of a company. With the changes in communication channels and users, it is unrealistic to build a brand solely through marketing.

For most companies, the word "brand" is a very abstract thing. They often pay more attention to it verbally, but in reality they can put it aside and often ignore it for the sake of sales targets. Therefore, brand building is always classified as an “important but not urgent” task.

Personally, I started working in brand marketing- related jobs quite early. As we all know, Coca-Cola has a famous saying, "If a factory burns down overnight, you can build a Coca-Cola the next day." This sentence is considered to be an excellent description of brand power, and I once agreed with it. But now, this description may be very misleading to everyone.

In recent years, my view on the concept of "brand" has changed a bit, mainly due to a strange phenomenon I accidentally discovered.

I have found that many very successful CEOs and founders, both at home and abroad, often do not attribute their company's core competitiveness to brand when interviewed by the media, and they rarely even mention the word "brand". If you don't believe it, you can take a look at some interviews with well-known founders.

When I was writing an article about a leading domestic company, I looked through some speech materials of the company’s founder. He divided the company’s development into three stages. The first stage was product-centric, the second stage was brand-centric, and what did the third stage center around? Guess what? (We will give the answer later)

All in all, this statement is quite shocking to people like us who are in the brand marketing industry. Brand building is never-ending, how can he put it only in the second stage? Even Coca-Cola said it would pay attention to its brand, so why doesn’t he do that anymore?

Later, I intentionally observed the remarks of some founders/CEOs on the "core competitiveness of their own enterprises" and found that this was not an isolated case.

Of course, if you ask these bosses directly, is brand important? Is word of mouth important? Without exception, they will tell you that it is important.

So where is the problem?

The problem actually lies in the vision of marketers themselves. Marketing (rather than sales) personnel often understand "brand" as awareness, reputation, and loyalty, and take these "three dimensions of brand" as the ultimate goal when conducting marketing actions. But for the top leaders of companies, "brand" is often just a by-product of the company's competitiveness and does not need to be deliberately built, so it is not as important as you think.

You may even discover that well-known CEOs/founders have very different interpretations of “brand.” If you find a founder who can tell you the “three degrees of brand,” you’ve really hit the jackpot. What bosses care about are things like core competitiveness and moats, and their manifestation on the user side is brand power. (Pause, here is a recommendation of our old article: "Break Out of Party B Thinking")

Of course, if you think about it carefully, you may find that this explanation is weak because it does not really get to the heart of the matter.

The real key is, what builds brand power?

In fact, it is not difficult to find that the main factors that form brand power today are very different from previous periods.

Our mature brand system may have originated from Procter & Gamble many years ago. At that time, products were highly homogenized and channels were very limited. Therefore, the so-called method of building a brand was actually mainly based on marketing. You can understand that, at that time, everyone was similar in other aspects, so the only way to create a big gap was in marketing, and how to advertise became the key to the company's development.

Therefore, for a long time, we have almost equated "marketing" and "branding".

But this is a misunderstanding based on the "brand perspective", because for users, brand perception is multi-faceted and comprehensive, and is not limited to marketing actions.

We can also say that the "brand power" in the eyes of users is the sum of all factors that make them "choose you instead of competitors."

Of course, the current situation is completely different from that in the P&G era. As we all know, not only are communication channels fragmented and user interests diverse, but business also shows a trend of integrated competition (refer to our previous article "The Internet Enters an Era of Melee"). Therefore, building "brand power" is far more than just doing marketing. The focus of "brand power" is not even on marketing.

So what is important now?

At least we preliminarily believe that there are three points: first, the ability to integrate the supply chain/industrial chain; second, the ability to develop and apply technology (which can also be understood indirectly as product capability); and third, strategic/tactical capability.

Compared with the above three points, marketing is just the icing on the cake and will not affect the final market structure. In recent years, we have hardly heard of any brand that has succeeded solely through clever marketing, but there have been many such cases in the past.

• The integration capability of the supply chain/industry chain not only determines the price of the final product (for example, lower cost and lower price of mobile phones), but also provides users with a better product experience (for example, faster online shopping logistics), which can be directly perceived by users on the product side;
• Needless to say, the ability of technology research and development and application is actually the product capability. Whether new technologies can more efficiently meet user needs, and whether other needs can be met at the same time after a certain need is met, this often depends on the support of technology research and development and application.
• Strategic/tactical capabilities mainly refer to forward-looking judgments on market/user needs. For example, where is the next wave of dividends, whether to quickly grab market share first and then make profits, or to develop steadily, etc. It includes a lot of market judgments, but the focus is no longer on advertising presentation like in the P&G era, but is based on judgments and planning on the fundamentals of the entire market/industry.

Of course, brands of different categories and in different periods have different focuses. The above is just the general framework we provide.

By the way, the founder of the leading domestic company mentioned in the previous article believes that the most important thing after they enter the "third stage" is technological research and development. Although technology is developing relatively slowly in the industry in which this company operates (the food industry).

In fact, building a brand solely through marketing is unrealistic and also a manifestation of disregarding the "brand". Today's brands have entered an era of all-dimensional competition. Every shortcoming of an enterprise will limit the development of the brand. Marketing may help you win now, but it cannot help you win the future.

Let me summarize the views of this article:

1. Branding is not equal to marketing. In the past, everything could be done through marketing, but today, the focus of brand building is not even on marketing;
2. "Brand" is a byproduct of corporate competitiveness. Brand is more of a reflection of the company's back-end capabilities. The competition of brand power is a competition of the overall strength of the entire enterprise.
3. Among these back-end capabilities, we believe that supply chain/industry chain integration capabilities, technology research and development/application capabilities, and strategic/tactical capabilities are very critical;
4. A truly excellent marketer should not be just a “marketer”. He or she should think about brand development issues from a higher dimension (corporate dimension/industry dimension/historical dimension) and not be limited by marketing itself.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran

Source: Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)