In the year 2003, the Pepsi challenge was revamped by Baylor College of Medicine. They concluded that similar to the late 1970s and early 1980s, participants chose Pepsi over coke in the blind taste tests. But, the difference was in the fact that that ‘blind’ part of the test was taken off later by Baylor and when shown both brands, almost all chose Coke. So, what changed? Not the taste of course! Since the early 1980s, there has been a serious effort on rebranding by coke. They lagged Pepsi in profits but later, won! Today, Coca – Cola has control over 42% of the market of soft drinks while Pepsi has its share of only 30%.
The answer to the question – It’s the brand. Your brand fuels business through the bad as well as good times. Just because they reached the top, Coca – Cola did not rest their efforts. Their branding continues to be one of the strongest and it definitely pays well. Yet, it is not an easy task. A lot of effort goes in for branding a business and that is why you might need professional branding agencies. But, before you consult or hire one, you must consider the following.
Branding is a vast term but in a nutshell, it is simply about associating the existing as well as prospective customers with your product. This includes a lot of elements, like the image of your company, what is the experience of doing business with you, communication, and follow – up, customer service and most importantly the product and its quality. It is the complete experience of business engagement which goes into building and further maintaining the brand. You need to conduct a survey for your brand identity before you step out and outsource for branding.
You definitely need to consider your current brand strategy.
Resources – How much time is consumed for the branding if you are doing it yourself. The marketing, testing as well as designing require a serious time investment. You need to know if it is hampering other tasks and if yes, you must outsource.
Perspective – You need to assess whether the internal brand builder is effectively able to get a healthy external view on the brand attributes and assets.
Conduct a market research survey to know the effect of your existing brand strategy. If it is not efficient and effective, then you definitely need to outsource. After all, the efforts and resources being put in must not go to waste!
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