These are names which provoke images to consumers. “Branding Your Business” by James Hammond, examines how brands are essential to the business of anyone who wants to gain a sthrong market share. It explores how brands make a grand mark in people’s minds and how to use those emotions to sell one’s product. James Hammond has based his book on the theory that a brand is the total perception a customer has about a company, its products, and its services. He often repeats the statement that people, in most cases, buy on emotion and Justify with ogic.
He stresses the importance of understanding the realm of psychology in order to create a powerful brand. He declares a critical factor in building a brand today i. e. we need to acknowledge that all brand purchases are emotional, because all brands are emotional. Emotions need to be generated in two particular areas. The first being about the specific product/service and the second being the customer experience of the entire operation (thus taking into account both the emotional as well as the logical aspect of being the user of that brand).
What really appealed to me in this book was the fact that it could be used by anyone as it hardly has any technical Jargons, and consists mainly of plain and lucid explanations of what we need to do to have a notable brand for our business. From simple advice on telephone etiquette to branding strategies that cater to the five human senses, this book demonstrates – with the help of quotes, images, and real-life case studies – how and why branding can work for everyone who is honest with themselves, their employees, and their customers.
One particular aspect that really caught my eye was that this book places a particular emphasis on building an impressive Brand Halo, which, according to the author, is deemed to be pretty vital. When we make certain decisions, certain bias plays a major role, one such bias is known as the ‘halo effect’, which is defined as the tendency to assume overall positive or negative characteristics in a person as a result of observing Just one or two positive or negative characteristics. In other words, if we experience one or two positive things about a certain brand, we tend to form a positively biased opinion on the whole brand.
Even famous celebs like Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey etc don’t get everything right and neither does Nike, 18M, Mercedes- Benz etc. The way we think has an overwhelming effect on our actions, especially when it comes to purchasing and branding decisions, and many of these processes work at tne suDconsclous level. I nereTore, It Is essential Tor a Drano to put Tortn sumclent plus points in their operation to generate a positive vibe about them. And that could be the key to the success of the brand.
For instance, for a budding business firm that s planning to make it big, providing a remarkable customer experience and then relying on the halo effect could seriously end up giving an all-round positive impression of that brand. It is therefore suffice to say that emotions, with regards to branding, are a set of psychological arrangements that are formed and shaped in the mind and are triggered by certain experiences. Thus, the key requirement for building a powerful brand is to identify and influence emotional triggers in the purchasing process that create positive feelings about the product or service.
