What is the first thing you think of when somebody mentions Rolex?
You probably think about a high quality watch which isn’t exactly on the cheap side. Why do you think that is? It’s because Rolex has established a strong brand identity, and it has become very easily recognizable.
So you can conclude that brand identity is really important for a business. It is one of the most valuable things for the business, and it is basically the thing that represents it among the people.
Creating a great and recognizable brand is not that easy though. There are a lot of things that go into it. One of the most important things is to actually know how your own brand is doing. Think about it. Does your own business have an established brand identity?
If the answer to that question is no, you can learn a lot from this post. Although you may think establishing a brand is easy work, but it is really not.
What is exactly Brand Identity?
What a brand basically is is what represents the business or company in the public eye. The name of the business, the symbol, what represents it and defines it. Think of the bitten apple logo of the company Apple. It is a very strong symbol, and you immediately think of the company when you see it. That is great brand identity.
What is the Brand Identity Prism?
Experts in the field, more precisely an expert named Jean-Noel Kapferer, has created a model which is called the Brand Identity Prism. It basically gives six different aspects of the identity of a brand. They are: Culture, Relationship, Reflection, Self-Image, Personality, and Physique. All of these elements are important for the identity of a brand, and each of them needs to be developed for the brand to be powerful.
1. Culture is what defines the values and the principles in the foundation of the business. Some companies base their brand culture on sharing, some base it on love, some base it on something else.
2. The Relationship represents the relationship between the brand and the people. Companies often try to establish a friendly and loyal relationship between themselves and the people who use their services.
3. Reflection is basically the image of the perfect customer of the service or product. You could say it represents the target market. Some companies have perfect customers in the form of people over the age of 60, some have their perfect customers in the form of teens.
4. Self image is the ideal image a consumer sees themselves in. Experts in this field really now how to create a great self image for their consumers, which makes the brand identity powerful. Take Coca-Cola as an example. The self image of the customers may be a person who is communicative and social, outgoing and who has a lot of friends.
5. Personality is the character of the brand. It is basically what the brand communicates to the people and to the outside world. A lot of things go into this, and the personality of the brand can be manipulated in many different ways. The colors, the style of the design, the font, all of these things affect the personality of the brand.
6. The physique is basically what the name says, the physical part of the brand. The physique is all you can see with your eyes. It is the colors, the logo, all of the things that are solid and not abstract. Everything that represents the brand in the physical realm. And it is really important for the identity of the brand.
