Unlike the product launch, the brand launch is, from the very beginning, a long-term program.
Such launch will modify the existing order, values and market shares of the category. It aims at establishing a new order and different values and at impacting on the market for a long time. This can only be achieved if people are convinced of the brand’s absolute necessity and are ready to give it all they have.
In order to keep staff, management, bankers, clients, opinion leaders and salespeople mobilised for the long term, the company must be driven by a real brand project and a true vision. The latter will indeed serve to justify, internally and externally, why the brand is being launched and what its essential purpose is.
Creating a brand implies first drafting the brand’s programme, which underlies the brand identity and positioning. Presenting the brand in a programmatic format (Table 1) is fruitful.
Table 1. Underlying the brand is its programme.
| 1. Why must this brand exist? What would customers be missing if the brand did not exist? |
| 2. Global vision. What is the brand’s vision of the product class? |
| 3. Ambition. What does the brand want to change in people’s lives? |
| 4. What are our values? What will the brand never compromise on? |
| 5. Know-how. What is the brand’s specific know-how? Its unique capabilities? |
| 6. Territory. Where can the brand legitimately provide its benefit, in which product categories? |
| 7. Typical products or actions. Which products and actions best embody, best exemplify the brand’s values and vision? |
| 8. Style and language. What are the brand’s stylistic idiosyncrasies? Its semiotic invariants? |
| 9. Reflection. Who are we addressing? What image do we want to render of the clients themselves? |
It indicates where the brand stems from, where it draws its energy, what big project lies behind the brand. This is useful as a step in the brand thinking process itself, before the brand identity prism and brand positioning are defined.
Many brands no longer know why they exist, so they would be quite unable to answer questions such as those in Table 1 defining the brand programme. Such questions reflect a philosophy at the opposite of niche tactics.
Only those who are driven by a grand project within can actually set out on the long trip of brand making.
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