Your station is a strong, well-known, and respected brand. What are the basics of branding and marketing?

Question 1:  How do you Define a Brand?

Branding is a hazy term. “Brand” as a noun and “branding” as a verb have different meanings to different marketing people. Because every marketer has a different understanding of what a brand is and what a brand does, we’ve simplified the definition.

A brand is simply a company’s reputation. It’s how someone feels and what someone thinks about a company or radio station.  Everyone understands the word “reputation” and all its associated feelings. People, places, and things with solid reputations are admired, respected, and trusted… while those with tarnished reputations are viewed as lacking integrity and shunning responsibility.

The same goes for brands. Strong brands are associated with upstanding, character-rich words like “genuine,” “reliability,” “virtuous,” and “empathetic.” Weak brands are linked to disrespectful words such as “insincere,” “forgettable,” and “shallow.”  Your station’s positioning statement, like “today’s best music,” contains a character-rich description of your format.  It’s unique, credible, and beneficial.

Just like personal reputations must be earned, brand reputations must be earned daily through business actions and not fabricated through one-off programs.  You cannot create a brand before you create a business. The process is simultaneous.

As you build your station, you create your brand. Your brand never makes your business possible. It’s your station that makes your brand possible.  To improve your brand reputation, ask yourself, “How do you make your listeners happy so they come back to listen every day?”

A funny thing happens when a station makes customers happy; it makes a strong brand.  There is no magical branding dust to create an endearing and enduring brand. Instead, brands with the strongest reputations focus on building a business that makes the audience happy when they tune in.  The by-product of these everyday business actions is the development of a strong, reliable, and emotion-rich brand reputation.

Question 2:  What’s the Difference between Branding and Marketing?

Branding is about understanding how a person understands what a business believes in and why it exists. This brings us back to brand equals reputation. Marketing is different, and branding often states the format benefits.

Marketing is everything a company does that touches a customer.

And everything that communicates anything about a business to a customer is marketing.

Marketing communicates all the things your station is doing.  Branding helps a listener understand what a station believes in and why it exists.

Question 3:  Does Every Brand Need a Unique Selling Position?

A brand can exist without a unique selling position in the abyss of mediocrity. But who wants to sell a common, ordinary, everyday station?  More importantly, who wants to listen to it?

If a brand is to have long-lasting success, it must have a unique selling proposition, a point of difference, a competitive advantage, and a reason to listen to in.  So, what is your brand known for?  Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of GE, answered this question by saying, “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”

Pic from Adam121 for Envato Elements.

John Lund is President of the Lund Media Group, a radio programming consulting firm with specialists in all mainstream radio formats. Did you find this article useful?  You can leave a comment below or email John at John@Lundradio.com.