In the last post, I referred to Brand Identity prism by Kapferer which could be used to determine the brand identity of a product. In this post, the model will be looked closely to understand the nuances and its application.
Before the application of any model, few obvious questions which come to our mind are:-
What is it?
When should it be used?
How to use it?
Now suppose if a product or a brand (taking the liberty of equating product with brand 
) was a person, how would he look like? What traits would he have? Would he be warm, cold, aggressive, approachable or smart?
Brand identity prism helps us provide answers to these questions.
Ok so the next logical question is when to use it?
I would say practically everywhere. Understanding of the identity would help design your web presence better, would decide the positioning and have an effect on all marketing collaterals.
The best way to understand the model is to call up a meeting of all department heads and ask questions, lot of questions.
The prism looks something like this:-
As is clearly visible, the model has 6 dimensions on which a brand is to be evaluated.
Physical Facet talks about what the product is, what does it do, how does it add value to customers, how does it fill up the gap in the market.
Brand personality is measured using those traits/features of consumer personality that are directly related to brands. Proper care should be taken not to confuse it with consumer’s reflection. Brand personality is closely linked with self image and image of the consumer. Questions to be asked are:
1) What are the features of consumer personality?
2) What are the features of brand if it was a person? This depends on the functional aspect of the product and the gap it would fill.
Brand Culture: As the name signifies, it talks about the culture of the brand. The values and the principles will follow from the culture and it is these values which will bind the customers. Remember HSBC’s “The World’s local bank”.
Questions which need to be asked:-
1) Is the brand’s culture global?
2) What are the values for which the brand stands for?
3) How would customers take the values of such a brand?
Brand Relationships: No prizes for guessing what would this be about! Yes, after all every brand has to maintain healthy relationships with customers. All marketing collaterals are intended to do just that. Therefore to gauge the identity, this had to feature. 
1) How would Sales describe the relationship attributes for their customer management process?
2) How would Customer support describe their approach to increasing customer satisfaction?
3) How does the brand want to be seen by customers in marketing communication?
Customer Reflection: Every product is designed to satisfy some need of the intended customer base. A consumer has to be reflected in a way, which would show how he or she could image himself consuming a particular good. For example, in India anyone consuming Pepsi Cola would imagine himself to be young and Thums up (another cola drink from Coke stable) to be adventurous. For this aspect, questions are to be put to customer experience team about What would the users imagine while using the product?
Customer Self Image: Consumers get attracted to those brands in which they see their own traits, for example, a man who is muscular and strong would smoke Marlboro. This goes hand in hand with brand personality.
All the dimensions on the left side are external factors whereas the right side represents internalization. I know it is a bit tedious but am sure if applied correctly it can reap huge benefits for corporate.
One of the things which Management teaches is to do proper planning for any activity. It is often said
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
So today charging up my management cells (if they exist ), I thought to myself about how to plan for blog marketing for a company, does there exist any “What to do list for blog marketing?”
I came up with the following list. I am sure that this list is not complete and there is lot which can be added to it.
1) The Objective: Before any marketing campaign, it is important to understand the objective behind it. Its knowledge would also help to determine the success criteria for the campaign. Same goes for blog marketing. One must gauge what is the objective behind blog marketing. Is it lead generation, Is it for brand building or is it a platform to share information with the customers (both internal and external). Since the success criterions for each of these objectives are different, the clear understanding of the objective would go a long way in making the campaign a success.
2) Internet Usage Pattern of Target Customers: Tons of literature has been written about customer centric marketing, about understanding customers’ behaviour before designing any product. So naturally this had to feature in the list. J On a serious note, for blog marketing to become a success, it is imperative that internet usage pattern of target customers is studied. This would include:
i. Studying what the target audience is looking for. What is the kind of information they search for, what are the web sites do they visit, what sort of social media do they visit.
ii. What kind of language is being used on those web sites to engage the users.
Understanding of internet usage pattern would help in 2 ways:
i. Identify the keywords which target customers are using to search the information. Help from tools like wordtracker or hitTail could be used.
ii. The kind of language which would engage them.
3) Identify the identity: For a corporate blog, it becomes very important to find out the identity who would be writing the blog. Identification of identity for the blog would drive the attitude and hence the language. Clues could be taken from Brand identity prism by Kapferer which helps an organisation to identify the brand identity. I will cover the model in next post in great details.
4) Style Guide for the blog: After putting the pieces of objective, internet usage pattern and identity in the Jigsaw puzzle, it is the time for style guide of the blog. This would include the format, the design and the color combinations. By format I mean would it be like a simple diary like or magazine style or something else. Many would say magazine style or simple diary format is just an aesthetic issue and does not matter. I agree to an extent to that argument but the difference comes in at the perspective level. The thought process has to be clear before taking up any kind of format since that would be reflected in the blog as well. Design and color combinations have to go hand in hand with the objective and the identity. Here again Brand identity prism could be referred for help.
5) User Experience: You would say how could one plan something intangible and then put it into tangible form? Well I also used to think the same way till sometime ago but now I am learning how to put rich user experience into your web presence. There are many ways by which user experience could be increased. I will share one simple method of navigation. It has been found out in a research that users like to read vertical than horizontal and eye moves from left to right.
Now those are facts. But what do they signify?
Following are some of the implications:
i. It is preferred to have vertical navigation bar rather than the horizontal one. Vertical bar would make it easier for users to glance at the information.
ii. If pictures are to be included in the post, then it would be better if those are included in the upper left corner of the post as it would attract the user.
iii. Try to include the kind of words which the user is likely to use in his daily parlance. This would make him feel at ease while reading the post.
These are just the planning steps which should go (according to me ) into any blog marketing campaign. If will be more than happy if you have anything to add to this list to make it much more comprehensive.
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