A branding expert is a professional who has exceptional analytical marketing knowledge and ample background information to successfully strategize and streamline a brand’s persona into its overall outlook.
One popular example of how a branding expert can turn your brand personification into a whole new dimensional propaganda is the smartphone company Apple. Steve Jobs very smartly outperformed its competitors by using simple branding strategies suggested by a branding expert. The main idea was to convert Apple’s brand image into a variation wherein the sole vision of the brand and its offerings are highlighted through to its customers. This resulted in Apple dominating the smartphone market with a 40% market share overall.
Key Responsibilities of a Branding Expert
Branding experts usually possess deep marketing expertise that helps them resolve brand identity crises for companies by suggesting rebranding tricks and tactics for easy adoption. Some key job responsibilities of a branding expert who is either hired by a company or is part of a group of experts of a marketing agency, include the following:
In-depth External Analysis
Market research is one prime exercise that allows firms to actively evaluate their current position in their respective industry while pondering on the competitor’s performance indicators to see where the gap lies. For a branding expert, the requirement is to dig deeper into the market research tools and present an in-depth analysis to the company. This is important to further narrow down the possible fixtures required in the company’s brand image, both visual and storyline, to connect directly with the customers.
Problem Detection
Another important responsibility of a branding expert is to use the relevant data gathered through in-depth analysis to further narrow down the possible attributional archetype concerns within the brand at present. This deep discovery will help them come up with an improved brand strategy to devise the brand story and mission as one singular projection of your brand altogether, targeting the right pain points of the potential customers.
Streamline Brand Strategies
There are times when companies reach out to branding experts and seek their help to create new brand strategies for them instead of innovating changes into their existing ones. This can range from a completely new logo design, fresh packaging options, marketing to new target market, etc. Overall, for a branding expert, the key performance indicator would be how well brand goals and strategies are aligned together successfully. Saudi Aramco, one of the most profitable oil companies in the world, at one point in the past, needed to reassure its target audience about brand quality. A branding expert suggested revamping the brand values and incorporating them into the brand promotions and this, in turn, increased their base audience by a great percent.
Redefine Brand Identity
Majority of the big companies believe branding experts to be the same as marketing managers. However, the job roles for both deferred to a great extent. Branding experts do not focus on publicizing your brand’s visual representation alone. A Branding expert also combines the customer’s requirements and expectations with the company strategies to come together with a brand outlook that helps create a personalized relation with the clients. The strategies offered by this expert can range from changing brand positioning to suit customer needs, re-organizing or designing the company logo after market research, technology adoption, etc. All tactics to successfully redefine the existing brand identity with a whole new face value altogether.
Suggest Possible Solutions
The company’s goals can range from building brand architecture regarding specific packaging design, redefining brand identity, changing the overall visual brand persona for the target audience, an entire brand revamp, etc. Amira Nature Foods in Dubai, though highly popular, had to reinstate its brand goals and vision mission statement through improved marketing strategies to attract back the lost customers and new potentials. This was possible with the additional support of a branding expert to help them streamline their new goal into their brand strategy.
Essential Skills
- Communication skills – This skill is highly important for a branding expert as their main job responsibility requires them to interact with the clients as the first point of contact. So, for the client to openly talk about their queries they need to feel comfortable and confident in the branding expert.
- Creative thinking – Another necessary skill for a branding expert is an unquenched thirst for creativity. For any brand to trust a self-claimed branding expert, they need to be sure that you have the necessary knowledge and capability to come up with creative solutions to target their brand goals.
- Critical thinking- This is necessary to conduct deep analysis and then present a list of potential changes and shifts required in the brand persona for them to perform better.
Conclusion
To conclude, given the job responsibilities and the amount of additional support that a branding expert offers, it can be assumed that the cost for the same will be very high. However, if Apple can turn around its market dominance with a few twists and turns in its brand image, then why not test it out? If you want to be sure in the first go itself, you can consult brand experts at Vowels as they have a group of experts with strong marketing knowledge and professional experience. Whether it be little tweaks to your brand image or a whole new brand story to publish, the team of experts will take care of each of your requirements.
