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Brand strategy is trending. According to Gartner, as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic and other market uncertainty this year, CMOs (33 per cent) now rank brand strategy as one of the top three strategic priorities. It’s the first time brand (in terms of awareness, relevance, actions that are authentically connected to strategy and value proposition) has surpassed other capabilities like analytics, personalization, and marketing technology. For owners of health and wellness brands, this underscores the importance of harnessing the full power of branding and brand assets as a catalyst for growth. Without a strong strategic branding foundation, all the marketing in the world won’t build success.

Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2020

Brand Assets Management

Among many cross-functional executive leaders, there’s still a lack of understanding (and appreciation) about the full potential to be realized of building a brand-led business. Many see brand from a single tactical dimension, e.g. as a logo, slogan or ad campaign, instead of its entirety. They don’t understand the strategic power and subsequent financial rewards of brand asset management when it is deployed across all areas of the business.

Standing Out In A Crowd

In many ways, brands are like people. Some stand apart because they’re intriguing, make an impression, have a distinguishing point-of-view and merit our respect and attention. Based on how they behave, the way they look, the way they communicate and the value they deliver. So in the same way we form opinions about people, we form opinions about brands. Based on the sum of our experiences and interactions with it. Which means everything a brand does matters.

Five Brand Assets To Build Business

In a health and wellness industry that continues to see a vast number of brands vying for a share of the “everything wellness” modern consumer, the brands that will win will pay attention to these five building blocks.

1. Brand Strategy Foundation

A strong foundation is required for brand to become a true organizational blueprint for value creation. This starts with brand strategy guiding and informing everything the brand does, the actions it takes and how it engages, educates and entertains. And given ever-expanding and co-creating media channels and tactics, the real challenge becomes delivering consistently against brand promises.

To truly lead the business, brand strategy (coming to life through purpose, story, values, positioning, personality, promises, key messages, brand architecture) needs to influence all day-to-day activities across the organization.

2. Brand Beyond The Marketing Department

The full potential of branding to drive growth is only realized when your brand is clearly defined, understood and embraced by the entire organization. Just as culture isn’t the sole responsibility of HR, brand management is not the sole responsibility of marketing.

It is imperative to have complete alignment on your brand platform with your entire executive team, as your brand is one of the most powerful drivers for engagement and performance across all areas of your business.

Brand-led business requires the whole organization to be led from the very top to deliver consistently – through words, actions and behaviors – against brand promises.

3. The Power of Highly Distinctive Assets

Multiple studies reinforce the power of sustained and consistent use of highly distinctive brand assets. What’s so powerful about this is that the building of brand assets is accessible to all marketing teams and all companies regardless of size. It’s a matter of deliberately and carefully managing over time, while ensuring optimization to work seamlessly across the digital landscape.

Symbolism triggers emotion and decisions by our fast, intuitive brain. Strong brands understand the symbolic meaning in everything: product design, packaging, logos, fonts, tone of voice and music. All of these elements use instinctively understood colors, shapes and images to evoke particular emotions. Together, this symbolism constitutes a brand mnemonic – and a secret language for talking directly to consumers’ decision-drivers.

Recognize the symbols below? Even without the brand names, they evoke powerful associations.

4. Coherence Across Touch Points

Aligning look, message and emotion across every different touchpoint is a significant challenge for brands that live across increasing offline and online channels. However, achieving and maintaining alignment delivers returns not only in enhanced attraction, but in maximized value for all marketing budgets. Particularly when budgets are being pared back, you want to ensure coherence across every aspect of your brand identity.

5. Building Brand Muscle

How fit is your organizational health and wellness brand? Are you at least annually ensuring it’s health and well-being – from the inside-out and the outside-in? If you believe in the power of a brand-led business as a catalyst for growth, then your brand needs to be fit enough to drive. We’re not necessarily talking big quantitative study expenditures here either, as there are many cost effective ways to audit brand health. The results of this audit should then help guide and inspire the development of an exercise program for the year to develop strengths and address weaknesses.

Since 1999, specialist New Jersey marketing agency Trajectory has worked with health and wellness organizations across the United States to grow better brand-led businesses. Reach out for a no-obligation consultation.