Who owns your brand?

Build brands and sales will follow.

Posted on April 11, 2007 | Permalink

By Lane Casteix

Most of you who have built brands would answer that question in the headline, "I do!" I submit then, that the wrong person owns your brand. If the consumer doesn't own your brand, then no one owns it.

Unfortunately, too many brands are built on unique selling points (USP) and/or price points. That approach appeals to the logical side of the brain and can be successful at building sales. But, it only builds sales and rarely ever builds brands.

"Wait a minute!" you say, "Sales are what I am after!"

If so, you are aiming for the wrong target. You may successfully build sales, but what you build is a house of cards. All it will take to blow your house down is a savvy competitor with a better USP and/or a lower price, and you can start kissing those sales goodbye.

For a brand to be successful it must make an emotional connection with its consumer. It must become an emotional extension of what they believe about themselves and their brand. That translates into ownership and once they own their brand, changing to another is unthinkable. To do so would invalidate everything they stand for.

The objective is not to build sales but to build brands; sales are a byproduct of the successful execution of that process.