Building Brand Equity

Building Brand Equity
by Sheldon Baker

Branding a new product or ingredient is an important decision that should be taken seriously and with much forethought. Ultimately, B2B and consumer brand recognition can add significant value and greatly distinguish a company and its products. This concept, referred to as building brand equity, takes several essential marketing elements into account.

Product branding is a process that builds a conceptual identity that will reflect a key message. The objective is to develop a name that is strategically sound and makes sense to the company and target audiences over time. The process is structured in a way that allows the company to become active participants and help the name evolve through the efforts and guidance of its marketing team.

Brand equity by itself is an intangible asset. Its development depends on associations made by other companies and consumers as well as the media. There are several factors to consider when launching a brand.

First, invest time and money for the long-term—creating a brand takes time. Realize the creation and final selection of a name will not happen overnight. Competition in the global marketplace is tough; achieving a unique and competitive sales and marketing advantage by crafting that special name is imperative to successfully promote your product.

Next, think beyond the name. A brand name should be easy for your target markets to remember. Also take into account that the brand logo and identifier (tag line) should work together to strengthen the overall image.

Finally, build it up. The brand and its marketing elements should create a consistent image over time that develops a special relationship in the minds of your customers. This process includes advertising, publicity and all of your marketing communications elements. Often brand extensions can strengthen the brand, but such products or ingredients should be related.

Brand Development

Development of a brand name provides the company with a platform to distinguish itself and its product as unique, to increase awareness and generate sales. A strong corporate branding strategy also adds significant value in terms of helping the entire company to implement a long-term vision. There are several benefits to creating a branding strategy that a company can exploit.

Specific criteria must be met to successfully develop a brand name and the equity it will create for a company. These criteria include:

• develop a clearly stated outline of the creative theme for the name, usually based on the primary function or selling focus of the ingredient or product;
• establish a corresponding element to the function without necessarily utilizing the ingredient or product name;
• select a name that reflects the integrity of the ingredient or product;
• keep pronunciation simple and easy to remember by target audiences; and
• consider the eventual creation of an identifier (tagline) and product logo to provide an integrated, seamless eminence and identity.

Overall, building equity in a strong product brand should be part of a company’s overall business strategy. It should portray what the company aims to achieve and how it wants to be known in the industry and beyond. A compelling product brand encapsulates a vision, values, personality, position and image among many dimensions.

In the natural products and nutraceutical industries, building strong brand equity can provide several benefits. It can assist in generating a greater projected income, increase cash flow by increasing market share and allowing premium pricing, and create an asset that can be sold or marketed by B2B customers.

Launching a brand with a solid marketing campaign can often help to overcome potential pitfalls that may occur down the road. B2B or consumer market research can help determine the direction a company needs to take to move a product forward.

Brand Equity Partners

Building brand equity requires significant effort. Brand equity can be extended to a line of products in the same product category or even to other categories. There are a host of examples of successful brands within the nutritional products industry.

A new ingredient that exploded onto the scene about a year ago was Cognizin™ from Kyowa Hakko USA. Through the company’s aggressive marketing campaign, the ingredient quickly captured the attention of the supplement industry and received the NutrAward for best new ingredient.

Several years back, Technical Sourcing International (TSI) introduced the dietary supplement ingredient Ostivone™. The success of this product was initially due in large part to the marketing campaign that included celebrity endorsement, advertising and publicity that targeted both the supplement industry as well as consumers. Today, Ostivone continues to be a huge sales success for TSI. The Ostivone logo can be found on product labels as an ingredient in numerous finished products.

ChromeMate™, OptiZinc™ and CitriMax™ are three ingredients from InterHealth Nutraceuticals, which extended the brand to formulations created by other highly successful manufacturers. InterHealth actually created an entirely new product category when it introduced CitriMax. The ingredient, standardized hydroxycitric acid (HCA) from Garcinia cambogia, benefited from marketing research and development of hard hitting and targeted product promotional campaigns that mushroomed throughout the dietary supplement industry and onto retailers and consumers, creating a tremendous awareness that remains strong in the marketplace today.

Brand equity also can be bought by licensing or purchasing outright a strong brand already in existence or a new product. Activin™, a line of branded grape seed ingredients first introduced by InterHealth, was sold to San Joaquin Valley Concentrates (SJVC). SJVC, under the auspices of its parent company Gallo Wines, continued to generate a strong sales stream.

Brand Equity Protection

Very important to brand equity is brand protection. If the ingredient or product is positioned as a premium product, it should provide dependable quality and performance. Distribution and sales channels should mirror the expectations of a premium brand.

In addition, the promotional product campaign design should support the quality of the product. One of the keys to successfully promoting a brand is to be consistent. Make sure the company uses the same logo design and colors throughout marketing materials including letterhead, business cards, advertising, Web site, brochures and trade show booth. The strength of the brand is created through constant, repetitive and ongoing use. Keep your efforts focused and reliable, and your brand will be reinforced to your customers.

Companies can maintain corporate brand equity through the innovative development of products, and strategically plan to maintain and grow brand equity through an aggressive marketing campaign to continue revenue growth.

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