Brand Strategy

A brand is the sum of effective information that a company or product conveys to consumers. It may be easier to understand by adding the word "individual" to the subject. In other words, a brand is the sum of effective information that a company, product, or individual conveys to consumers (the target audience).

For example, you can think of yourself as a brand. Everything you do in your work and life is, in a sense, planning for your own personal brand.

What we call brand planning is essentially using marketing methods to shape a brand image. Good brand planning means an outstanding brand image. To be rigorous, building a brand image involves three basic approaches: introducing a "Brand Identity System," a "Brand Promotion and Operations System," and a "Brand Management and Control System." As long as operations follow this model, the brand image is bound to be established successfully.

Alright, let's return to our earlier topic: if you treat yourself as a brand and market yourself, how should you go about doing it?

1.What positioning do you currently have?

For example, if you want to pursue a girl (or a girl pursuing a boy), what's the very first question you should ask? It should be understanding clearly the impression (that is, the positioning) you have in the other person's mind. This information can be obtained by talking with her and observing her words and behavior, or by coaxing the truth out of her close friends through some form of incentive. Only by knowing the impression you leave in the other person's mind can you formulate a targeted pursuit plan.

In terms of brand planning, this means determining the brand's status in the minds of potential customers. At this stage, you need to set aside corporate pride and find out from the market what your positioning actually is. This may require spending money or finding professional help to conduct market research. The research may include, but is not limited to, the target consumers' education level, income, age group, consumption habits, gender differences, and so on.

2.Who must you surpass?

This requires us to consider our situation not only from our own perspective, but also from the perspective of our competitors. Continuing with the example above, if we want to pursue a girl, shouldn't we find out how many suitors are already in front of her? What traits do those suitors each possess? Are they handsome? Wealthy? Skilled in romantic pursuits? What actions have they taken to pursue their target?

From a brand planning perspective, this involves competitor analysis and a SWOT analysis of the company itself. After studying the strengths of competitors, you can fully leverage your existing resources, exploit their weaknesses, and strike where they are unprepared. This embodies the essence of Mao Zedong's strategy of "concentrating superior forces to annihilate the enemy one by one." One thing to note here: do not launch a frontal attack on the market leader. Remember, going around an obstacle is far better than trying to break through it. This saves energy and timing that are critical for an early-stage company.

3.What kind of image should I build?

After achieving self-awareness and understanding of others, the next step is to figure out what impression you should establish in the other person's mind, one that effectively distinguishes you from your rivals. To realize this grand vision, what should you do? Your clothing taste, your appearance and demeanor, and even the image you project in the eyes of others will all affect your score in their mind.

For an enterprise, this part falls within the scope of CI (Corporate Identity System). Specifically, it may include the company's Mind Identity——MI, Behavior Identity——BI, and Visual Identity——VI systems. Among these, the one most often talked about and most easily recognized by consumers is the VI (Visual Identity) system. Brand visuals generally refer to elements such as the LOGO, VI, and SI. The LOGO is the brand mark. VI refers to the application standards for the LOGO, typically divided into the LOGO's application colors, application combinations, and the standards governing how the LOGO is used across office supplies, promotional materials, outdoor advertising, and other scenarios. For a product, there is also packaging design, which must also adhere to the VI standards.

SI is the part needed only by physical stores, referring to interior design standards. Generally, chain stores will have a complete set of SI guidelines to ensure consistency in their decor and image.

4.How do I get the other person to notice me?

When you feel everything is in place, there is still one issue that urgently needs to be addressed: how do you get the other person to notice you? Of course, no matter how great your efforts are, if you remain unnoticed, they will all be in vain. In this regard, Uncle Wei recalls that in recent idol dramas, this scenario appears time and again — the male and female leads, in order to win each other's attention, deploy every trick imaginable to bring the plot to a climax.

A company's brand should be a certain way; for the brand to be accepted by people, the company needs to know how to communicate it. Only after understanding a series of such relationships can the company deliver the core benefits of its brand to customers in an appropriate way, using graphics or graphic symbols to convey these benefits to everyone clearly and unambiguously.

5.Flexible Strategies and Building Core Competitiveness

Make a brand promise. A company's brand promise is the principle and spiritual banner of brand building — that is, the guarantee the brand makes to consumers. A brand promise includes product promises but goes beyond them. Consumers' expected emotional and functional benefits from a company's product or service, that is, the response the company hopes consumers will have, should be considered from the customer's perspective. A brand promise addresses the problem from the customer's point of view, better defining the functional and emotional effects they should experience after enjoying the product or service.

Brand planning does not end with establishing a brand image. The goal is to create a strong brand with distinct core values and personality, rich brand associations, high brand awareness, strong premium pricing power, high brand loyalty, and a high-value perception — accumulating substantial brand equity.

First, you must fully understand the composition of brand equity and thoroughly grasp the meaning of metrics such as brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations, premium pricing ability, and brand loyalty, as well as the relationships among them. Based on this, combined with the actual situation of the company, set clear brand equity targets for brand building, giving the company's brand creation efforts a clear direction, ensuring every action is purposeful and avoiding unnecessary waste.

Second, under the principles of the "brand constitution," focus on brand equity targets and creatively design low-cost marketing communication strategies to enhance brand equity.

At the same time, continually review progress against brand equity enhancement targets and adjust the goals and strategies for the next phase of brand equity building.

Brand Core Competitiveness

What is core competitiveness? In simple terms, it is the most impressive aspect of your project or product — be it your technology, service, or resources. There is no comparison without pain; the key is the word "competition."

Without comparison, it is difficult to determine whether your competitiveness is truly core or truly impressive. This is why market research is necessary before brand planning — in a sense, any brand planning that skips market research is nothing short of hooliganism.

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning is the image you hope your product will have in the consumer's mind — the most X? The only one? The first? Unfortunately, China's advertising law now prohibits most of these superlative terms. Finding the right brand positioning is a mentally taxing task, because most of the time positioning involves subtraction: you have to give up many things you originally wanted. All of this is in service of being more precise and making it easier to deepen the consumer's impression of the brand — which is essentially what Trout's "Positioning" describes as capturing the mind.

Beyond brand positioning, market segmentation also involves market positioning and audience positioning. Simply put, this addresses the question: to whom is your product being sold?

For example, the innovative and user-friendly touchscreen of Apple phones was once genuinely a unique brand advantage. Volvo's competitive advantage in automobiles is safety — even though, in safety tests, Volvo's performance was not actually the best. Yet the impression of Volvo as safe has long been deeply rooted in people's minds! In the early stages of WeChat, 3G phones were not yet widespread; internet speeds were slow and data was expensive. So WeChat promoted its voice messaging feature — "lower network demands and minimal data consumption" — as part of its brand communication, immediately winning over users like me who were still on 2G phones and extremely frugal about expenses.

Brand Slogan

A brand slogan, in more fashionable terms, is a "slogan" — that is, the brand tagline. In many cases, the brand slogan will directly reflect the brand positioning, but slogans often change depending on context or stage-specific needs, whereas brand positioning doesn't shift arbitrarily. Xiaomi's original brand slogan was "Born for发烧 (born for enthusiasts)," and now the Xiaomi 6 uses "拍人更美 (Makes people look more beautiful)." We won't pass judgment on the merits of these slogans — beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.

So, what are the techniques for crafting a slogan? There are none. We should avoid wordplay as much as possible, aiming for simplicity, accessibility, and instant understanding — and adding a touch of controversy might make it even better. For example, the slogan we created for Xiaoyu Smart Wellness: "Xiaoyu Smart Wellness, putting your health 'within reach'" — fully took into account the client's broad target audience with varying education levels. The slogan is as colloquial as possible and embodies two extensions of the brand: the special therapeutic approach combining bioelectricity and hands-on massage to restore health to users; and the business model combining community stores with directly-operated stores, allowing users to enjoy services right at their doorstep.

Brand Story

A brand story can be considered a supplement to the brand's MI (Mind Identity system), using a complete narrative to express brand culture. Sometimes it is the founder's story, sometimes the product's story, sometimes the company's development journey — there is no single right approach.

That said, the brand story is meant to add value to the brand. Take Jack Ma's story of founding Alibaba — surely many people have heard of it: the "Eighteen Arhats," the "Forty Thieves"... This not only elevated Alibaba's brand image and recognition but also became a topic of conversation for many. From this perspective, the brand story is itself a form of brand marketing.

Brand Visual Planning

Brand visuals generally refer to elements such as the LOGO, VI, and SI. The LOGO is the brand mark. VI refers to the application standards for the LOGO, typically divided into the LOGO's application colors, application combinations, and the standards governing how the LOGO is used across office supplies, promotional materials, outdoor advertising, and other scenarios. For a product, there is also packaging design, which must also adhere to the VI standards.

SI is the part needed only by physical stores, referring to interior design standards. Generally, chain stores will have a complete set of SI guidelines to ensure consistency in their decor and image.