Essential Qualities of a World Class Brand

According to many brand surveys, more than 50 percent customers prefer to buy a product from a familiar brand, rather than a new brand, which makes the life hard for new small brands and their entrepreneurs as most of the customers stay devoted to their age-old brand. That’s why each and every brand has to be different, especially in order to change the consumer mindset. Already confused? Don’t worry, we are here with the list, so that you can differentiate your brand from others, which will eventually help you raise your brand value.
Awareness
The best brands in the world understand the market thoroughly; they know everything from the target market, to how they communicate and even what their interests are. Understanding the target market and audience is the key, as it helps to set the tone and the reach of a marketing campaign, with the overall identity of a brand. Finding the perfect target market always helps in creating the right branding approach.
Uniqueness
To create a great brand appeal, one must make the brand unique. For example, Tesla and Apple is renowned for their innovative products, which are minimalistic in design but when it comes to asthetics, then these two companies score much more than others. Domino is used to provide a 30 minutes guarantee for their pizza or else it would be free. Mobile phone brands such as Mi and OnePlus provides flagship phone experience at a cheaper price.
Innovation
Given today’s hyper competitive market one must be innovative to stay alive. The company should anticipate what their customers want, and it should surprise its customers with constant flow of innovation. For example, Apple launched its personal assistant named Siri, even before anyone anticipated. Apple also launched iPad, which was the first tablet in the industry that later changed the shape of mobile industry, Tesla’s self driving car was also a great innovation for its time. So, with constant stream of innovation, any company can be at the top of the priority list.
Reliable Products
To be a best brand, one must create such products that are reliable enough. If a product is innovative and unique but lacks reliability, then it can hurt the brand’s image to a great extent. As example one can easily look at Nokia 3310, the phone was so reliable that Nokia sold almost 130 million units of the phone, and even after a decade, some people are using the phone without any problem.
Leadership
There’s always an influential leader who stands tall behind every successful company. One has to step up and take the steering in order to coordinate the efforts of team members and guide a brand perfectly. A true leader always resolves complications and works as a bridge between different departments in order to maintain proper communication. For example, Steve Jobs always wanted to create great products at Apple and in order to maintain that, he wouldn’t care about psychological damage of his employees. On the other hand, Tim Cook has worked more for his employees which has helped him improve the work culture of Apple. However, it lacks the innovation, which has led to sales drop.
Adaptibility
Strong brands also have to be adaptable enough so that they can thrive even in the toughest time which can be anything from changes in competition to, economic conditions or market trends. A brand has to conquer all these and it has to stay relevant to consumer needs and interest. For example, we can look at Blackberry and Nokia; these two companies tried to stay in the competition with their own OS when the whole world was bending towards iOS and Android, and they failed to change themselves as per the changing market needs which resulted in massive sales drop. Eventually, Microsoft acquired Nokia and rebranded Nokia smartphones as Lumia.
Friendliness towards the society
Those brands who understand the importance of doing social work often gets a special place in its consumer’s heart. Additionally, brands that are involved with social causes are perceived as valuable as the customers understand that a certain percentage of their spending is going for a social cause. For example, recently Philips has introduced some of its new ‘green’ healthcare products to improve patient outcome and increase access to treatment, which has helped increase sales for the company. Another example is Toms Shoes, where the company has promised that they will donate a pair of shoes to a child in need for each pair purchased.
At the end, one can say that a brand has to be relevant to meet all its consumer demands. In the last few years, there’s been many hype about brands, many promises are made and broken about how a brand performed, how it’s positioned and about the real value of the brand. However, consumers are looking for something with long lasting life cycle, they always look for quality, not for quantity.