THE SCIENCE OF BRANDING 1-2
UNDERSTANDING HIGH-TECH BRANDING
Marketers operating in technologically intensive markets face a number of unique challenges. Ten guidelines that managers for high-tech companies can use to improve their company’s brand strategy:
- It is important to have a brand strategy that provides a roadmap for the future—Technology companies too often rely on the faulty assumption that the best product based on the best technology will sell itself.
- Understand your brand hierarchy and manage it appropriately over time—A strong corporate brand is vital in the technology industry to provide stability and help establish a presence. Since product innovations provide the growth drivers for technology companies, however, brand equity is sometimes built in the product name to the detriment of corporate brand equity.
- Know who your customer is and build an appropriate brand strategy—Many technology companies understand that when corporate customers purchase business-to-business products or services, they are typically committing to a long-term relationship. For this reason, it is advisable for technology companies to establish a strong corporate brand that will endure over time.
- Realize that building brand equity and selling products are two different exercises—Too often, the emphasis on developing products leads to an overemphasis on branding them. Rather than branding each new innovation separately, a better approach is to plan for future innovations by developing an extendable branding strategy.
- Brands are owned by customers, not engineers—Technology companies typically spend less on consumer research compared with other types of companies. As a result of these factors, tech companies often do not invest in building strong brands.
- Brand strategies need to account for the attributes of the CEO and adjust accordingly—Many of the world’s top technology companies have highly visible CEOs, especially compared with other industries. In most cases, the CEO’s identity and persona are inextricably woven into the fabric of the brand.
- Brand building on a small budget necessitates leveraging every possible positive association—Technology companies typically prioritize their marketing mix as: industry analyst relations, public relations, trade shows, seminars, direct mail, and advertising.
- Technology categories are created by customers and external forces, not by companies themselves—Only two groups can truly create categories: analysts and customers. For this reason, it is important for technology companies to manage their relationships with analysts in order to attract consumers.
- The rapidly changing environment demands that you stay in tune with your internal and external environment—The rapid pace of innovation in the technology sector dictates that marketers closely observe the market conditions in which their brands do business. Trends in brand strategy change almost as rapidly as the technology.