CORPORATE AND PERSONAL BRANDING AND WHY YOU NEED THEM

Have you ever wondered how you can make your brand stand out from the crowd in an ecosystem that appears to be overcrowded, with new entrants trooping in every day and offering similar products and services as you? Welcome to the world of branding! If you want to stand out from the crowd and be the star of your industry, you definitely need to have a brand.

The beautiful thing about branding is that you can have one for your business and one for yourself. Keep reading and I’ll tell you why you need both. Your corporate brand is how you present your company to the world. This requires a creative combination of logos, slogans, and a strong promise that connects your target audience to your brand and puts a stamp of integrity on your product or service. Think about how you feel when you see a slightly eaten apple symbol on a tech product? What message does that symbol speak of? I’m sure words are already running through your mind. It speaks of quality, it speaks of premium pricing and innovation. All of these are the brand promise of the Apple company. So wherever you see their logo, you are assured of getting that promise. That is essentially what corporate branding is all about. For corporate branding to be successful, the business needs to adopt a broad and strategic approach that does not just focus on the logo, the look and feel of the brand alone. At the heart of successful corporate branding is a commitment to delivering the expected brand promise over the value chain of the interaction with your target audience and consumers.

Just imagine you walk into an Apple store and it looks torn down and neglected. Then a day after you purchased a new phone, the charging point stops working. You call the Customer Service department but a very brash and rude person responds to you and you leave that call without having the charging point issue resolved. Let’s say you go online to rant and you find hundreds of people with the same experience. Definitely, over time the slightly eaten apple symbol will not mean much to you.

Your corporate brand must, therefore, speak of value and everything you promise your target audience at all times. The same applies to your personal brand. While corporate branding is focused on your business, personal branding is focused on you. One great advantage of personal branding is that it allows you to shape the narrative about yourself. Have you Googled yourself recently? Did you like the results? If you didn’t or you didn’t find anything about yourself, that shows you need to work on your personal brand.

Continue reading at...https://www.sme360.ng/2020/05/29/latest-magazine-edition-out-now-brand-communications/