Brand Essence

The brand essence of your firm has the potential to be a very powerful tool in attracting customers and retaining them. For this reason, it needs plenty of development work and subsequent attention.

The brand essence of a firm can be defined as the thing that comes into the minds of people when they hear or see the company’s name. It includes not just what the company does, but its values and approach to the work it does, ideally something that truly stands out.

It is not the same thing as the logo or symbols of a brand, but rather it is the response that is generated in the minds of those who encounter the logo or marketing messages.

What matters most about your brand essence?

For every company, two things matter about the brand essence;

  • Firstly, it needs to be sufficiently well established
  • Secondly, it must be positive. This is where the essence becomes a central element of your wider marketing strategy 
  • In the first instance, knowledge of your brand essence fits with the awareness stage of the buyer journey for potential customers
Before anyone is going to buy your services, they need to know you exist.

  • They need to know what you do
  • They need to know why
  • The brand essence provides a simple, but powerful way of doing all this
Of course, it is not realistic to create a brand that tries to convey an image unrelated to what you actually do. The brand essence must be a greater part of the whole. But, most importantly:

  • It must be the part of the marketing message that not just tells people what you are about
  • It must be sufficiently memorable that it is embedded in the minds of those who encounter it anywhere from mobile websites to printed literature.  

By doing this successfully, you will ensure that every time someone who has become familiar with your essence once encounters it again, they will remember exactly what you stand for and can offer.

Why might you need to manage your brand reputation?

The need for a positive essence should be obvious; reputation management can be very important if something goes wrong for a brand and business history is full of the names of companies that declined because their brand essence became negative and conjured up the wrong kind of image.  

 

Therefore, while developing a powerful brand essence to begin with is important, it also needs to be nurtured and managed over time.

How we can help

At BeUniqueness, we have lots of experience of helping firms develop distinctive and positive brands. With our help, you can develop an essence that communicates clearly what you stand for, while offering consumers a compelling reason to be interested in what you have to offer.