"Let's not use the word 'branding' in the future."

This was actually a cry from a startup CEO to the marketing team. He thought it was like a mirage that puts a lot of resources into "branding" but can't measure its output. He approved "marketing activities" that induce customer behavior to earn sales, but not "branding activities" that build psychological motivation to trust and like the brand, leading to repeated repurchases. It was because it couldn't bring in sales right away, so it wasn't useful or reasonable at all. Is it really? I'll tell you a clear and effective branding strategy delivered by Harry Beckwith, a world-renowned marketing expert who won the top prize from the Marketing Association of America.

[Preview of the series]
① a sharpened marketing strategy
② a branding strategy that is completely unambiguous (→ we are here!)
③ the pinnacle of persuasion, the strategy of a well-selling website

Large and simple branding process

If you look at the whole, not part of it, you can understand the legitimacy of branding activities.

1️⃣ Popularization: Exposing to multiple channels makes our brand familiar to the public.
2️⃣ Impressions: After raising awareness, make a strong impression through campaigns.
3️⃣ Build a reputation: If you impress the public, build a good reputation based on it.
4️⃣ Repeat: Repeat the process 1️⃣ through 3️⃣ on a regular basis. This is branding.

Let's take a look at the Nike case. Nike released a rather radical toned ad for this year's 2024 Paris Olympics season. Using the main copy "Winning is not for everyone," the company emphasized its commitment to victory, almost like a lunatic. It was a pretty different atmosphere from what advertisements used to say about the sublime of the spirit of challenge. In the global sports event called the Olympics, people naturally yearn for victory. Nike emphasized the thrill and unrivaled athletic ability to win in order to impress potential customers.

Nike, which has been struggling due to its recent deterioration in performance, has enjoyed the special Olympics through such bold advertisements and official sponsorship of the Olympics. According to a survey by web traffic monitoring company SimilarWeb, it has gained high website traffic and purchase conversion effect, beating rivals such as Adidas. While Nike gained 2 million visitors and 80,000 buyers, Adidas only garnered 530,000 visitors and 3,000 buyers. The ad video, which was pinned as the main content on the official Instagram account, had more than 6,000 comments. "Nike is back!" gained sympathy with more than 1,000 "likes." Even after the Olympics, Nike's stock price was able to regain its longest winning streak of 12 consecutive trading days since 2007.

Nike is already a popular brand. Nevertheless, it is always in front of customers with new ad campaigns every year. It is about constantly producing brand images to put them on the lips of customers, to induce action, and to create a reputation. This periodization is the branding activity.

3 Ways To Add Branding To Marketing

Marketers are occasionally faced with the need to add branding elements to their marketing activities. Branding can seem a bit esoteric to marketers who have only followed KPIs of increasing the number of new customers and visitors. I'll teach you three ways to add depth and appeal to your marketing campaign by adding branding.

1) Thinking like a designer
Harry Beckwith says that by incorporating design principles into marketing campaigns, you can run them with branding elements. Design should appeal to everyone as much as possible and reflect the identity of the business. It seems easy, but it's the most difficult and difficult task. If marketers consider four design principles when planning a marketing campaign, the materials of the campaign can be further advanced.

✅ Beautiful?: Whether it's an advertisement or a thumbnail, check whether the campaign material is at a level that can earn at least five compliments. Build the principle that you don't use anything that's not beautiful as material.
✅ Are you sure? : If even one person asks, "What does this mean?" you should recreate it. You should utilize copies and images that all customers can understand right away.
✅ Simple?: Remove the clutter. If you look away because of the clutter, your campaign strategy won't succeed. All other unnecessary elements should be removed to reveal your strategy.
✅ Honest?: Designers only use the available works. Marketers must also double-check that they contain promises they cannot keep. If you use a rather exaggerated expression only to hook the customer, you will be disappointed at the customer who has verified the truth.

2) Leveraging 'Advanced' Images

There are marketers out there who want to see the result with a copy. But Harry Beckwith convinces us that with one example of how to turn this around: the person who sees the picture of the dog remembers the dog longer than the writing on the wall says "dog." Harry Beckwith stresses that images must be used in conjunction with the writing. Let's see what an effective image is.

✅ Definition of images: It means that if a customer has seen our image but cannot remember it, it is difficult to define it by what it is. Blue, square, and handwriting. There are many marks and images that can be used in groups like this. If you are unsure what to call the image we used, you cannot expect an imprint effect even if you used the image.
✅ Unusual Image: There is a building with three big pictures of Bichon Fries with round hair on Eonju-ro Street in Gangnam-gu. They are so cute dogs and the pictures are clear that they are quite impressive. I looked at the other walls of the building to see what they were doing, and it was a dog grooming academy. It was an attractive image that made even people without dogs curious. Many people are immersed in commercial images. That's why an image that is boring can't attract attention. It should be a unique image to induce behavior. An image with a storytelling element will exert more power.

3) the law of branding copy

Have you ever visited Apple's website? Apple makes the impression of being extremely reticent on most pages. It tries to express a lot with a line copy of a slogan. Harry Beckwith explains that Apple reveals innovation with this simplicity: maximize the appeal of a product with a time-saving copy of its customer. This global brand sticks to its special way of copying. How do you make good branding copies?

💡 Sentence Collection: You should habitually collect sentences that you think are well-written. Listing these copies can help you greatly when you need to write a branding copy. It is a good idea to monitor copywriting for brands in other industries or companies we model that have similar connections to our brand. New campaign advertising slogans are released annually by global companies. It becomes easier to determine the direction of our brand copy by analyzing the words and tones that brands need to be closely watched mainly adopt.
💡 Planting Expectations: The tone of the marketing copy can change constantly depending on the page and circumstances. A branding copy is a little different. It's a role that sits somewhere in the upward or direction, like a cloud in the air. So, you have to think about 'what kind of expectations you will give your customers' and copy that part. Harry Beckwith says, "If you give them a different expectation, the customer actually feels that way." It means that perception influences emotions. If a branding copy expects our service to be excellent, the satisfaction after the service experience will increase as much.

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