- A PR agency can help strengthen the essence of a brand
- Defining a brand’s personal traits will lead to better public relations strategies
Used to marketing terms —and their metrics— PR agencies have the big challenge of planning, implementing and executing their clients’ communication plan, which consolidates the company’s efforts to work on positioning, recall and awareness organically.
There are intangible brand values that, from the perspective of various branding scholars, underpin a successful communication, marketing and, of course, public relations strategy in a company. In this article, we share five basic concepts that a communication strategist must identify as a brand’s “personal traits” so that, when implementing a PR campaign, they achieve the expected success:
1. Brand identity or personality. Like all individuals, projects have personality, according to Ignacio Jaén, marketing expert: “However much we want to build a personality for our project, it will not be effective if it is not consistent with those who lead the project. Personality will shape our mission and our business vision”.
2. Corporate culture. It is structured by the organization’s beliefs or basic ideas, the values made up of principles, and the behavior guidelines or behavior models that express the beliefs and values already mentioned. According to Jaén himself: “Corporate culture is the soul of a brand”.
3. Corporate philosophy. Corporate philosophy represents what the organization wants to be. It links the company’s present with its future through the mission, which defines the company’s business or activity, and the vision, which dictates the organization’s outlook for the future, and can be considered the mind of the company.
4. Corporate image. What we recognize as a brand in our brain is the corporate image. According to Capriotti, author of Strategic Planning of Corporate Image: “Corporate image is the image that audiences have of an organization as an entity. It is the overall idea they have about its products, its activities and its conduct”.
5. Reputation. The consumer’s feelings after interacting with a company’s product or service make up brand perception or reputation.
According to a Bain and Company study, 80% of brands believe they are delivering a “superior experience” to their customers. However, the consumers interviewed indicated that only 8% actually deliver a differentiated value offering. This research is an example of what brand reputation is.
If we consider these five concepts as a brand’s “personal traits”, they are easy to understand and make it possible to improve a PR strategy, considering that:
- They are related terms that refer to different phases of the brand creation process. Therefore, knowing their differences and knowing at which stage of the process an organization is will make it possible to develop the tactics that lead to meeting its objectives.
- Defining these intangible brand values will make it easier to build a solid brand, as well as to reach and win over customers.
- Associated with Brand Awareness, these basic concepts of branding make it possible to know how much and how a brand is recognized by consumers.
Body, mind, soul and spirit are necessary aspects for achieving personal well-being. If you want your client’s brand to be successful, strengthen its identity, culture, philosophy, image and reputation, thereby improving its communication strategy in public relations.
