Elaine Whale Speaks to John Clements on Branding
By Paul Catiang

A company brand is what people—clients, customers, and even employees—identify with. “There are three important things that constitute a brand,” says Elaine Whale, former director for Marketing of Citibank. “These are the brand experience, The brand identity, and brand value.”

The Brand, Experienced

“Before you start marketing your company, you have to understand what it is that you’re offering the client. You have to have a clear understanding and knowledge of the brand, and underlying brand, which is the product,” Ms. Whale continues. Knowledge of a company’s services is a key element towards building a brand, and this includes knowing how clients perceive the company and the services it offers. That said, the company’s image—the clients’ experience of the company’s services—is a constantly changing picture.

Ms. Whale explains, “In terms of the current situation, I think it’s important to ask the customer, through some focus group discussions, to discuss what it is your company does best and what things need improvement. You will need an independent consultant who sits and facilitates a conversation amongst your clients. The consultant can then also ask the customers to look at other companies that they work with, and bring all of that together and help to understand what your product really is and what your product really should do.” It is here that a company can think about the brand messages it wants to attach to itself.

The importance of the brand experience lies in providing A consistently positive service to customers to reinforce the image the company wishes to project through its brand. To illustrate, Ms. Whale gives an example learned from her years at Citibank: “Something I’ve observed working in the financial services industry is that sometimes you walk into the bank and there’s a long queue. You’d be waiting in line, and it’s not what you want to do, and maybe you’re going to miss your lunch. If by the time you get up to the teller counter and the teller is not helpful, what you have is a very bad experience of the brand. Every time the customer has a bad experience of the brand, it devalues your brand.”

Knowing and understanding a brand is important for any company, as is staying one step ahead of its customers in terms of what they need. The prime objective of branding is ensuring that a company has a product that everybody respects. Marketing the brand allows it to grow until such time that viral marketing takes over as the brand spreads by word-of-mouth to yet more customers.

The Brand, Identified

Brand identity covers the sensory experience of the brand, usually through visual means such as logos, print ads and business cards, although multimedia allows companies to have signature tunes and audio-visual components. Hand-in-hand with brand identity is brand consistency—a very important aspect of ensuring that the public experiences the same brand every time they encounter it.

Maintaining brand consistency is facilitated by the development of a brand book. “Having a brand book is a really, really important stage in a company’s development. The brand book is like a company cookbook on how to manage your brand,” says Ms. Whale.

Contained within the brand book are items such as typography—one of the more crucial elements of a company brand. Ms. Whale advises the use of a primary typeface that will be used with headings of announcements, publications, and in the company logo, and a secondary typeface for body copy. The font is a useful tool with which to convey company values. A company that wishes to emphasize its conservative, traditional, long-standing, and established qualities would do well to use a font like Times New Roman—a font with serifs. Younger companies, generally hip, responsive and efficient would convey such values through lowercase sans serif fonts. “These generally say, ‘We’re not mysterious, and we’ll get the job done,’” explains Ms. Whale.

All such typefaces go into the brand book and should be used with all due consistency in company materials: business cards, stationery, forms, publications, websites, and signs.

Color is equally important. Ms. Whale recommends identifying the primary company colors, which should be used carefully, as these will be associated with the company brand. Secondary colors, no more than five or six, should also be defined, as these will be used in conjunction with the primary company colors. “If you start using different tones and shades of color, then you lose the sense of identity your company has,” Ms. Whale cautions. "By specifying those colors, a company can ensure that printers and other vendors know exactly what pantones of color to use when printing your company materials.”

Brand training should also be given a high priority in establishing a brand identity. Ms. Whale advises training the employees to know how to use the brand elements, how not to use the brand, and how to “never, ever, ever misuse the brand elements.” Marks & Spencer serves as a successful example of internal brand training. “[The company], for years and years, did no external marketing, but they spent a fortune on marketing the Marks & Spencer brand to their employees and providing training on the customer experience, which is why the company was able to grow,” Ms. Whale illustrates.

She also gives Starbucks as an example, as the famed chain of coffee shops has made sure that its customers receive the same consistent experience of product and service in all of its branches. When customers compare experiences, viral marketing kicks in.

Part of brand training is developing a product book. Aside from describing the products and services offered, the product book also serves as a reference tool for employees by describing every stage of the product sales cycle, giving guidelines for profiling prospective customers, attracting them, getting them on board, and maintaining a relationship with them. Again, consistency of the product supports the brand experience and brand identity is maintained.

Lastly, advertising provides another venue for the brand to attract more customers. Advertising in the right places—ads in prestigious major dailies, well-placed billboards and innovative multimedia campaigns, for example—would signify that a company is serious in its dealings, and will serve to encourage a potential customer to come on board. As always, consistency is needed, as everything—advertisements, interactions with company employees, even viral marketing—leads to an impact that results in a sale.

The Brand, Valued

“Brand consistency, how you understand your product, how you create the brand identity, and how you apply it consistently—always thinking about how your customer perceives your brand—all adds up to a bottom line,” Ms. Whale says.

An example of a brand identity’s value in a bottom line would be Coca-Cola’s brand identity: as the world’s number one brand, it’s valued at US$ 67.5 billion. “This amount goes into the positive side of the balance sheet,” says Ms. Whale, “and that is how much the brand is worth to the company.”

With all the effort needed to go into branding, the return on the investment isn’t readily apparent. Branding requires time to reinforce itself in a market’s consciousness and make itself more distinct. Moreover, it also needs a monumental effort in maintaining consistency, whether in the appearance of logos or advertising, or in what customers experience whenever dealing with the company. The return on the investment, however, is more than worth the time, money, and effort needed. A company need only answer one question: “How much do we value our brand?”