Brand Building - More Than Brand Awareness

MORE THAN BRAND AWARENESS

Critics of large advertising expenditures for brand building point out that awareness is only one aspect of creating a strong brand. More significant to a brand's strength is the underlying business and how it relates to its customers. Brands simply cannot be invented overnight. A strong brand is the result of creating a promise to consumers—one that is clear and memorable—and then creating a history of fulfilling that promise. Once awareness is achieved, companies must focus their brand-building efforts on conveying what the company does rather than what it represents.

Before the dot-com shakeout of 2000, many dotcom brand managers mistakenly believed that brand awareness would of itself create enough momentum to lead to brand loyalty. As an example, the domain name Business.com was sold for $7.5 million, with the buyers reportedly believing that the name itself would constitute the bulk of the company's brand building. Other dot-coms, such as Computer.com, believed that an expensive one-shot Super Bowl ad would build its brand overnight. For the 2000 Super Bowl, some 17 dot-coms placed ads, compared to only three in 2001.

That thinking has been replaced by the realization that brand-building is a long-term process that needs to be established on a solid customer relationship based on service and community. The most successful online brands have created online communities; they include Yahoo!, America Online, and eBay.