Developing and establishing your brand is simultaneously one of the most difficult and incredibly simple tasks around. But potentially the most intricate part surrounding the conversation about branding is consumer perceptions. The conversation surrounding your brand is incredibly crucial. There is a reason why the phrase “all press is good press” exists. The simple reason is because when people are talking about your brand, that makes your brand successful by some metric. Now, considering the impact of consumer perception, let’s discuss the best way to utilize that knowledge to your brand’s advantage.
Know Your Audience
With any brand or business, the first step is knowing your audience. By knowing the audience, it allows your brand a level of credence, as you understand the best ways to motivate your audience and push them to action. Demographics are your best friend when it comes to starting that process. For example, a company like Gatorade is directing their product towards people who are physically active. According to a Statista report from 2018, the majority of Americans who responded and consumed Gatorade that year was between 30-49 years of age, ranking at 61.31% in that age range, with an overall age group of between 18-64 (Kunst, 2018). Although this is a company whose product is pretty mainstream, they know who their customers are, with a majority of their advertisements directed at that age demographic. They also target predominately athletic people in their ads. Therefore, their target market is predominately athletes or people who are interested in health & fitness, who are between 30-49 years of age. Obviously, that is only breaking the surface of the demographics, but the point of this exercise is to get you thinking about your brand’s demographics, interests, and values. When you start to understand those components, you will begin to understand what will garner their attention and cause it to diminish.
Study Similar Brands
Before even shooting a single shot, one thing that will help is understanding what your competition is doing. I have a few friends who are musicians who are in bands. They study bands they love and artists who have come before. Not to replicate their look or musical style, but to pay some level of tribute and signal to their potential audience who they are and what they seek to do. It can be as simple as what kind of clothes they are wearing for their branding photo shoots to what companies and artists they decide to associate with as a brand. Country artists know what country fans like to see and hear. Metal bands know what metalheads like to see and hear. It’s all about the approach of that potential audience and whether you will respect their values and beliefs. But with that, they will study the bands who are only a level above them to see what the competition have done and what they can do to progress. As a brand, progress is a slow commodity to attain, but a vital one. It is up to you figure out what that next step is, although certain industries will make it easier than others. When you are working through your next steps, consider how this will affect your brand and your customers.
Experimenting
Although you should focus on things that are guaranteed to generate a positive customer perception, sometimes it’s worth the risk to experiment a bit. For example, everyone knows Lego. Lego has been a company since 1949. However, most people don’t know that Lego hit financial hardship in the early 2000s, with their brand declining exponentially. In a stroke of genius, they decided to utilize their audience to their advantage, promising those who suggested winning ideas one percent of their product’s profits. This revitalized the company over time and eventually allowed their profits to skyrocket and even surpass Apple’s profits momentarily (May, 2019). The biggest complaint I’ve ever heard about Lego was their prices, yet the same people would buy Lego’s products, clearly willing to give their hard-earned money towards a brand they loved and respected. Lego’s experimenting absolutely paid off in the long-run, becoming the most profitable toy company in the first half of 2015 (Kell, 2015). Innovation always comes from experimentation. Of course, I would recommend shying away from anything blatantly offensive or disrespectful. Depending on your brand, that may be easier said than done, but that’s for you to navigate.
In complete honesty, I had initially conceived this idea as a piece on branding photography, however, I decided the better choice would be a generalized branding conversation. Photography and videography are massive components of branding, so they are rather inherent to the conversation. Nevertheless, something that seems to be lost on a lot of companies these days is the customer and audience’s perception. Your brand will never appeal to everybody. But it’s vital to know the people your brand does appeal to. The most important thing is that you respect your audience’s interests, values, and beliefs if you want to establish and maintain a healthy brand. I hope to have added something to your day and I hope you have an excellent day.
Warmest regards,
Logan Clark
Works Cited
Kunst, Alexander. “Consumers of Gatorade in the U.S. by age 2018.” Statista, 23 February 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/228200/gatorade-consumption-usa/. Accessed 3 May 2024.
May, Tom. “5 times classic brands were revived successfully (and 2 when it was a disaster).” Creative Bloq, 12 November 2019, https://www.creativebloq.com/features/5-times-classic-brands-were-revived-successfully-and-2-when-it-was-a-disaster. Accessed 3 May 2024.
Kell, John. “Here’s why Mattel ousted its CEO Bryan Stockton.” Fortune, 26 January 2015, https://fortune.com/2015/01/26/heres-why-mattel-ousted-its-ceo-bryan-stockton/. Accessed 3 May 2024.