Your Product Is Your Brand

Your product is your brand. Its value to customers
should be at the very core of how, when, and what you
communicate to the world. Apple, Coca-Cola, BMW,
Disney, and Intel have powerful brands because they are
leaders in their respective industries, not the other way
around.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get creative about
it.
Faced with a dilemma of how to gain awareness as “The
Computer Inside” with lower-priced competitors
chomping at the bit for market share, Intel took a page
from consumer marketing. More specifically, ingredient
branding like NutraSweet on Diet Coke cans, Teflon
stickers on pots and pans, and Gore-Tex labels on
clothing.
That’s how they came up with the groundbreaking Intel
Inside branding and co-op advertising program which
paid PC makers to use the now-familiar Intel Inside swirl
in ads and on computers. The year after the campaign
launched, Intel became the world’s biggest
semiconductor company, a position it hasn’t relinquished
since.
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Today, Intel is one of the most recognized and powerful
brands in the world. And while that’s a great story about
the power of branding as a strategic-marketing tool, the
truth is Intel would not enjoy the reputation and market
share it has today if not for the fact that it designs and
manufactures industry-leading microprocessors.
Contrary to popular belief, branding is not about names,
logos, or advertising. It’s about reputation. It’s the sum
total of customer perception through experience with
your company, its products, and its services. But make
no mistake: It’s mostly about their experience with your
products and services.
Many predicted the Internet age would kill branding.
While ecommerce and social media did sort of level the
playing field, I would argue that brand reputation is more
important than ever. Consumers are so overloaded with
information and overwhelmed with competitive offerings,
they have little time or patience to deal with crappy
products and customer service anymore.
Luckily, they don’t have to. They can opt for trusted
brands instead.
Bob Pittman, now CEO of iHeartMedia, has run
everything from MTV and Nickelodeon to Century 21 and
Six Flags. When he was president and COO of AOL back
in its heyday, he said, "Coca-Cola does not win the taste
test. Microsoft does not have the best operating system.
Brands win." That’s still true. Big brands have never
been more powerful than they are today.
Still, there is not a company on the face of the Earth that
can maintain a powerful brand image with lousy or even
mediocre products and service. Just look at Sony,
BlackBerry, Radio Shack, and Yahoo. Their reputations
are a shadow of what they once were.
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Look at it this way. Your word is your promise. So is
your brand. It’s a promise you make to every customer
that, when they use your products and engage with your
company, they can expect a certain level of
performance, a certain type of experience, a certain
customer service attitude, a certain level of quality.
It’s your job to make sure you – not your competitors or
the media – define and control that promise. It’s even
more important to ensure that your brand promise is
consistent with the value proposition customers can
expect to experience with your products. If you
overpromise and underdeliver, they’ll be disappointed.
In an era of communication overload where the
emphasis is on frequency and volume, it’s more
important than ever to control the message and the
delivery. The trick is to boil complex concepts down to
their simplest form and communicate your product’s
value in a way that’s meaningful to customers.
Until you come up with a kick-ass product or service,
you really don’t have much to talk about.