Have Brand - will travel (Part 1)

The word "brand" is derived from the Old Norse brandr meaning "to burn." It refers to the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their products.

Taking a broad view, the hotel industry is fortunate in that we are seeing a rebound in travel over the past years. Arrivals to Sri Lanka since the end of the war in 2009 have grown remarkably. The country received over 2.3 million tourists in 2018 and is targeting 3 million visitors in 2019. Fuelled by this ambitious goal, and, to cater to the anticipated large influx of travelers, many hotel including International global brands such as Shangri-La, Marriot and Mövenpick as well as a host of other regional brands such as Avani and Ozo have begun operations in Sri Lanka. Not to be left behind many others are waiting to start up soon.

As these new trends emerge, Sri Lanka tourism’s competitive landscape will constantly change and shift. Hotels will compete, now, more than ever with competitors they never would have dreamed of just a few years back. Hence the frenzied dash to brand or re-brand!  Unfortunately, most companies are turning to branding as a ‘quick fix ‘to meet the challenges ahead, without fully understanding the true purpose of branding. No longer is it ‘build them and they will come’, now, the popular mantra is ‘build them, brand them and they will come’……..If only it was that simple! Spending money to upgrade the building, putting up a new sign board, re-packaging room amenities, etc. is not going to make one bit of difference. A glaring example is our petrol sheds where despite the new look (incidentally the staff still wear the same insipid outfits); the service standards have not changed from the usual lethargic surly attitude.

Branding - or ‘brand-building’ – has become the El Dorado (Lost City of Gold) of corporate marketing departments, advertising agencies, design firms, and consultants. However, branding goes beyond an attitude, or a logo, or a slogan, or an advertising campaign. Branding is a long-term holding in which your marketing communications are relatively short-term investments. Your brand is a corporate asset – an end towards which all your business efforts should work. The problem is, hotels are hurriedly embracing branding as a remedy for all difficulties. Equally problematic, are the self-proclaimed “branding experts” who are happy to sell this expensive cure-all elixir.  In inexpert hands, branding becomes a way to make relative sameness look confusing, instead of to communicate and deliver relevant uniqueness.

What is a Brand?

Too often even marketing professionals don’t have an answer, too many have their own answer and there are in any case, far too many answers.

• The Concise Oxford English Dictionary describes a Brand as: 1. “a type of product manufactured by a company under a particular name”. “An identifying mark burned on livestock with a branding iron”. This is a very narrow definition, which interestingly however, reveals the birth of Branding.
• Wikipedia provided a very simplistic explanation: “a brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer”.
• The Dictionary of Business and Management defines a brand as “ a  name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors.” Signs and symbols are part of what a brand is, but this is still a very incomplete definition.
• The American Marketing association (AMA) defines a brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors”. Technically speaking, then, whenever a marketer creates a new name, logo, or symbol for a new product, he or she has created a brand. Brands today however, represent much more than bearing a simple and clear function as identifiers.
• Interbrand (World’s largest Brand consultancy firm) has this definition: “A brand is a mixture of attributes, tangible and intangible, symbolised in a trademark, which, if managed properly, creates value and influence. ‘Value’ has different interpretations: from a marketing or consumer perspective it is ‘the promise and delivery of an experience’; from a business perspective it is ‘the security of future earnings’; from a legal perspective it is ‘a separable piece of intellectual property’. Brands offer customers a means to choose and enable recognition within cluttered markets”. This is an ‘all encompassing’ definition on what a brand is.

Another definition that captures the essence of what a brand truly represents, and one which I find most appropriate, is  Colin Bate’s succinct description : “ A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer “.This definition reminds us of some key points.

• It makes it clear that a brand is very different from a product or service.
• A brand is intangible and exists in the mind of the consumer.
• It helps understand the idea of brand loyalty and the ‘loyalty’ ladder – different people have different perceptions of a product or service, which places them at different points on the loyalty ladder.
• This definition makes it clear how to build a brand. A brand is not built just through effective communications or appealing logos. A brand is built through the total experience that it offers.

No doubt about it and it is worth repeating, ‘A brand is built through the total experience that it offers’. Hotels offer both products and services, and it can be a double-edged sword. Both must complement each other to perfection. Sadly, it does not happen that way. The majority of hotels (and Restaurants) rely on the Product alone to carry the brand promise, whilst the service element if not mediocre, is at best, average. Great food carefully prepared and presented by the chef when placed on the table by an indifferent waiter certainly does not make the total experience brand-worthy.

To be continued

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