What Is Brand Image?
The character of the company, its values, beliefs, and status reflect the brand image. In other words, the brand image is the emotional and psychological response of the consumer to the brand or company. By creating your brand, you create a unique “portrait” of your business. The perception of the brand is expressed in specific images and associations that can be related to the functional characteristics of the product or can only convey emotions and be abstract.
Strong and long-lasting associations make it possible to permanently fix the desired brand image in the mind of the consumer and reduce the likelihood of forgetting or losing associations when in contact with competing products. Unique associations are strongly connected with brand positioning, which reflects the competitive advantages of the product. Uniqueness is emphasized through the superiority of the brand in a certain area over other brands.
Brand attributes, which also make up the brand image, are the elements that create connections between the consumer and the company. The main attributes of the brand image are a unique logo that reflects the image of the branded item, a slogan, and a brand identifier that supports key values.
Companies should explore how visual elements like the brand logo, company fonts, and packaging can draw attention to their value proposition. For instance, if they are offering cutting-edge technology, they may want a logo that implies motion and a futuristic sans serif font to imply progress. Recently, many companies, designers, and web creators transitioned to WebP format for visuals.
The WebP format has many advantages. Not all browsers and platforms support this format yet, so we recommend that you have several options for images and configure the web server to present images to users in WebP if there is support. For other cases, you can use an online WebP to PNG converter to have an alternative option.
Why Work on Brand Image?
Some of the goals companies try to achieve with brand image formation include:
- Decreasing advertising costs
Brand awareness helps to achieve a stable number of sales, as well as sales growth without spending much on advertising.
- Bringing new products to market
If a brand is already popular, it is much easier and cheaper for it to bring new products of the same brand to the market. To optimize the process, it is advisable to engage in overall company branding, and not individual product groups.
- Increasing consumer loyalty
A company’s loyal customer community is created through the emotional connections that the right brand image provides. At the same time, even the price dumping of competitors ceases to play a primary role.
- Motivation of company employees
For many people, belonging to a well-known company is of great importance. For the employer, this also turns out to be an advantage as there is no need to deal with the issue of staff turnover and additional monetary motivation of employees.
A few tips for creating a brand image
Branding is the development of a set of activities that help identify your brand, distinguish it from the mass of competing products, and most importantly, form a memorable image of your brand among consumers, which will lead to a long-term preference for a particular brand. For example, Volvo is associated with safety, and Toyota is associated with reliability, primarily due to years of advertising and promotion of these images.
In the past nine years, the logo of the Honda brand was seen in the list of Best Overall Brand for 2022 six times. Honda is also associated with great value for 8 years in a row and has won several other awards. How can your brand make such achievements? We offer you some tips for creating a sustainable long-term image of the product.
- Be Consistent
Creating an image is not a 5-minute matter. Be consistent in your messages to the consumer. What is the most important thing you want to tell the consumer? Is it low prices, the widest selection, or the fastest delivery? You need to define one clear idea, which you will surround with various reinforcing associations using new images, but conveying a single meaning.
- Keep your promises
One of the most common mistakes is creating a false ideal image. Of course, you can promise the consumer an ideal product, but if your product does not meet the stated promises, the built image will quickly fall apart.
- Constantly analyze results
Reputation and brand image management is a complex sequential process. After a certain time, analyze the results of the work: understand how the target audience perceives you. Adjust your message by strengthening image characteristics that are expressed the least in the perception of the product.
Conclusion
A positive image stimulates sales and reduces the cost of promotion and advertising. The brand becomes recognizable, customer loyalty increases due to emotional attachment. The success of the brand is no less significant for employees. They are motivated to perform better just because they work for a well-known company with a good reputation.
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