For a long time, the average business owner has grappled with brand and brand positioning. This is mostly due to the fact that these are difficult topics with significant ramifications for businesses.
As an owner, you must know that the consequences of your company’s operations may either create and improve your brand’s image or ruin it.
Your brand’s image is the identity that your firm portrays through its name, style, logo, and other attributes.
Branding is the act of creating this identity so that your customers can instantly recognize your products and services. Brand positioning, on the other hand, is the significance users place on your firm that separates it from competitors.
Your company’s brand and positioning lay the groundwork for interactions with customers and other businesses.
And, since brands aren’t literal constructs—like buildings—but solely dwell in the minds of your target audience, there is a great need for your brand to be well-positioned.
So, to assist you, we evaluated numerous brand positioning strategies to discover how consumers react to firms that take classic positions against those that take modern positions.
What was the Goal of This Research?
The goal of this research was to discover which businesses people are willing to get involved with and how this ranges by demographics.
The facts we gathered will aid business owners who are developing or restructuring their small, mid, or large firms in making rapid, knowledgeable changes that will guide them in positioning their brand and show them how to come up with a business name.
To help us reach the survey’s objectives, we asked Americans if they liked doing business with a popular and respected company or a fresh and innovative one.
Why Did We Feel Obligated to ask?
It’s important to remember that one of the most significant choices you’ll make when creating or rebranding your company is to establish a tone.
The right tone is critical for businesses, management executives, and advertising managers, because it helps them to build their business identity as well as how others perceive them.
Consider how the world would have been different if:
- Caleb Bradham had stuck with ‘Brad’s drink’ instead of Pepsi.
- Phil Knight had not changed his company’s name from Blue Ribbon Sports to Nike.
- Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was not renamed Sony.
- And if instead of Google, Larry and Sergey had stuck with Backrub.
Your brand tone influences both the total image of your firm and client expectations. Your tone is important for branding, and you can’t risk overlooking it when launching your company.
And the purpose of our study was to determine which customers favored modern businesses over traditional ones. We selected this approach because deciding whether to depict one’s brand as classic or modern is one of the most critical decisions a founder must make.
What the Research Taught Us About Positioning
Regardless of the fact that our findings weren’t extraordinary, the feedback we obtained was intriguing. Here’s a summary of what we discovered from the 301 participants:
- Customers in their 20s and 30s were more likely to choose new and emerging firms than popular and long standing ones.
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- Consumers between 35 to 45 choose new brands over traditional ones. This age group, on the other hand, was pretty evenly split between the two options.
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- Consumers aged 45–54 are drawn to traditional and established businesses.
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- Traditional businesses are appealing to those aged 55 to 65.
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- According to the data we gathered, men had no inclination for either modern or traditional brands.
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- Unlike men, women prefer trusted and respected brands over new ones.
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- Of the 301 respondents, 153 selected well-known and trustworthy firms, while 148 favored new businesses. According to the survey, your firm can adopt any approach it wishes, given it’s appropriate for its core market.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
What Does It All Imply?
According to the data, millennials love fresh, trendy, innovative, and bold brands, whereas Boomers and Gen Xers favor classical brands.
Hence, if you want to attract a younger audience, make sure your firm has a strong, fresh, and bold brand identity and if you’re trying to reach out to an older demographic, make sure your firm has a solid classic identity.
About the Author
Grant Polachek is the head of branding for Squadhelp.com, 3X Inc 5000 startup and disruptive naming agency. Squadhelp has reviewed more than 1 million names and curated a collection of the best available names on the web today. We are also the world’s leading crowdsource naming platform, supporting clients such as Nestle, Dell, Nuskin, and AutoNation.
