Major brands have more than just a specific or dominating position in the market: they hold certain positions within the product category. This position and conception both energize the brand and feed the transformations that are implemented for matching the brand´s products, with its deals. It is the conception that justifies the brand´s existence, its reason for being on the market, and provides it with a guideline for its life cycle.
How many brands are capable today of answering the following crucial question: “What would the market lack if we did not exist?. The company´s ultimate goal is undoubtedly to generate profit and jobs. But brand purpose is something else. Brand strategy is too often mistaken for company strategy.
The latter most often results in truisms such ase “increase customer satisfaction”. Specifyinig brand purpose consists in (re)defining its raison deter, its absolute necessity. The notion of brand purpose is missing in most marketing textbooks. It is a recent idea and conveys the emerging conception of the brand, seen as exerting a creative and powerful influence on a given market. If there is power, there is energy. Naturally, a brand draws its strength from the company’s financial and human means, but it derives its energy from its specific niche, vision and ideals. If it does not feel driven by an intense internal necessity, it will not carry the potential for leadership.
The analytical notion of brand image does not clearly capture this dynamic dimension, which is demanded by modern brand management. Thus, many banks put forward the following image of themselves: close to their clients, moderns, offering high-performing products and customer service. These features are, of course, useful to market researchers in charge of measuring the perceptions sent back by the market and the level of consumer satisfaction.
More than most, multi segment brands need to redetermine their own purpose. Cars are a typical example. A multi-segment brand (also called a generalist brand) wants to cover all market segments. The problem is that by having to constantly satisfy the key criteria of each semen tie to churn out many different versions and to avoid over-typifying a model in order to please everyone, companies tend to create chameleon brands. Thus, competitors fight their battles either over the price or the options offered for that price. No longer brands, they become mere names on a hood or on a dealer´s office walls. In conclusion what unifies the products of a brand is not their marque or common external signs, it is their religion: what common spirit, vision and ideals are embodied in them
