Why Your Brand Is Confusing People

It slightly baffles me that when I studied marketing at the university level, there was very little talk about how to build a strong brand.

Then in my work in medium and large organizations, branding was often taken for granted. When the company wanted to grow a larger market share, they hired more sales people. Rarely did they do a brand analysis for what gaps they could fill in.

Branding Counts Where It Matters Most

The Hero And The Outlaw (M. Mark & C. Pearson, 2001) presented a 6-year study based on a sample size of 13,000 brands and 12,000 consumers. The authors found that companies with tightly aligned brands grew in market value added by 97 percent more than that of confused brands. What is more, the economic value added of companies with tightly aligned brands grew by 66 percent more than that of confused brands.

This means that there is strong evidence that a company grows real financial terms when the brand is clearly delineated and aligned across all marketing and sales materials.

Though, given my formal education and work with businesses of all sizes, I find that most brands are confused. This means that as a result, they loose out on potential financial growth.