Branding

BRANDING

By: Ryan Peterson

I agree partially that a successful brand stems from a successful product. I feel that the most important part of branding is training a customer. A company uses advertising to train a customer to remember the product when they are at the shelf when the advertising isn’t there. That is why brand campaigns are so important. Slogans and jingles are some of the easiest ways to burn in the advertisement so that way a consumer remembers one brand over another. I look at the company Southwest airlines as a company that delivers the advertisement that promises nothing but has a brand that brings some of the highest customer service ratings when compared to other airline competitors. I feel this is the fact that they don’t promise anything in their marketing but over deliver. They have a great product and don’t really need to advertise much because the product has in a sense made the brand.

I also look at a pizza place called Pizza Hut. They continue to market $10 pizzas with any toppings. No other pizza place in my area can compete with this price but they can compete with quality of product. This would be an example of great branding but not quite a great product. Pizza hut is good but a local competitor that charges $20 for a one topping pizza has my loyalty because the product tastes better. I will keep buying pizza hut pizzas when I need to save some money but when I want quality great tasting pizza I am going to my local pizza chain because they taste so much better.

I also remember the coke vs pepsi challenge where coke was not very confident in their product after taste tests said pepsi “won” this led to coke trying to change a product that was in many areas superior. This was such a bad idea as the backlash from the public for the New Coke was tremendous. I feel that so many companies are fixated on branding because of my initial statement that the most important part of branding is training a...