Rapid Branding is an agile process for abbreviating the development phase of a brand and accelerate the processes. It is becoming more and more significant in the brand world, but is still in its early stages.
What does rapid branding do?
The approach grew out of rapid prototyping, an agile method of product development: Prototypes are conceived quickly, and immediately tested and optimized. This "test, learn, adapt" cycle was transferred to branding, and rapid branding was born.
Classic brand work clearly separates strategic brand development from the subsequent implementation phase. Rapid branding, by contrast, joins the two. The result is a fluid process in which strategy and implementation occur parallel to one another and stimulate one another.
That means for instance: The brand core values are integrated in a website prototype. This is shown to test persons, then to the end customer. They asses how well the brand identity can be recognized on the web site. Its resonance is then used to further develop the strategy.
With rapid branding, the brand strategy is optimized specifically for the desired target group. It also reveals optimization opportunities by providing valuable ideas for developing the brand.
Users of rapid branding use primarily design thinking methods: for example, they model target groups on personas, or they use micro-storytelling to examine initial strategic elements in the test groups.
A well-managed real estate brand shapes the development, supply, management, and marketing of buildings of all types. With its performances, the brand underpins the entire spectrum of the real estate business: From development and purchase, leasing and rental, all the way to brokerage and management.
Why is brand management important in the real estate sector?
The German real estate market has been booming since 2010. This is largely due to the demographic development, affordable loans, a healthy economy and the impact of globalization and digitalization. The GEWOS Property Market Analysis (Institute for urban, regional and housing research) revealed: For the first time, the German real estate sector reached record sales of a quarter of a trillion Euros. Many sellers and investment options made the market rather confusing for new investors and potential tenants.
The solution to make real estate companies stand out from the mass of services in the property sector: establish a strong brand. Because strong brands give stakeholders fast and easy orientation, impart trust and provide security. They bring simplicity and clarity to a bewildering time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
What is unique about real estate brands?
Buildings are homes of people and stages for community life. Like people, they embody unique values. These values are what makes them attractive to particular target groups.
We have to differentiate between new construction and existing properties. While existing buildings already express a certain history and specific values, the values of new buildings must be carefully defined. This is done in accordance with the chosen style of architecture, the building's functionality, intended utilization and price.
Real estate is characteristically marked by long development and utilization periods, location, heterogeneity and high transaction costs. Those are just a few of the many features of real estate that make it obvious: real estate brands differ significantly from consumer goods brands due to a high level of complexity of influencing factors. They require a special approach to brand strategy development and brand management.
Another difference is portfolio management:
How should real estate brands be managed?
Despite all differences – in some respects, real estate brands are just like any other brand: They have to become aware of their brand DNA in order to be credible, attractive and differentiated in the long term. Only brands with a unique brand core, a clear brand positioning and a coherent brand strategy will be able to prevail in the real estate market over the long haul.
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The term rebranding describes the radical renaming and redesigning of a brand.
What to be aware of before doing a rebranding
In 90% of cases, the costs and time needed for an effective rebranding project are underestimated. They are usually driven by the hope that they will make everything better.
Very few stop to think: What could we get out of the old, existing brand with the same effort?
Reasons for such considerations are, for example: Revenue earned with the brand is declining, or a national market believes that the difficult-to-pronounce brand name or its foreign character are responsible for weak sales.
However, those are only symptoms that indicate an underlying cause. If the brand seems to be too old, it has been neglected for too long, and the company has stuck with the same positioning for too long. Decreasing revenue is often due to a low innovation rate – or the price was considered more important than the value of the brand.
The brand name must be handled with extreme care
Brand Trust is very sensitive when it comes to rebranding intentions, because the brand name is not just a name but an energy storage device. With a well-managed brand, the name accumulates performance energy over the course of decades. This energy creates the attraction that turns brands into superior business systems.
That means: Changing the brand name cuts your access to this field of energy – and you have to start from zero.
But there certainly are reasons in favor of a rebranding:
• The brand name no longer matches the performance.
• A repositioning would take more effort than a rebranding.
• The future is more important than the origins (as when a new business model is introduced).
• A business needs to develop a new corporate culture.
• A scandal has done irreparable damage to the name.
• The brand rights cannot be adequately protected.
• There is permanent potential of being mistaken for a competitor.
• New unintended, strategically significant associations have developed
This article may also interest you:
Pros and Cons: Does Your Brand Really Need a New Name?
A repositioning is like a restart of a brand. It gives the brand a new strategic orientation with the aim of gaining new target groups, fresh associations and a changed meaning.
The aim of a repositioning
During a repositioning – also called a brand relaunch – the brand is charged with fresh energy by means of a revised or completely new brand strategy. These changes are made to gear the brand positioning more directly toward a certain goal or a specific target group. One important requirement: Even a new positioning must always be based on the peak performances a company delivers.
When is a repositioning necessary?
If brand attractiveness is declining consistently or if the current positioning is not sustainable, the consequences can be dire: examples are crumbling sales and dwindling competitiveness. A restart is unavoidable. In this situation, the question is whether the brand might even need a rebranding rather than a brand relaunch.
What to be aware of before doing a brand relaunch
The strategically redeveloped positioning plays an important part because it helps to extend the life cycle of a brand. It must be credible, attractive, superior to the competition and therefore sustainable.
It provides new opportunities, but also harbors risks, and the impact of those risks must be considered. Hence, it is extremely important from a brand strategic point of view that the brand core, which is what gives a brand its unmistakable identity, is a central point of focus during the entire relaunch.
Probably one of the most famous success stories is the brand Jägermeister. The herb liquor was known as a traditional brand that was often consumed in bourgeois circles. But because the brand was not continuously updated, Jägermeister was steadily losing attractiveness, the brand was about to become outdated. After a successful rejuvenating repositioning, Jägermeister has become established as a cult drink in the event scene.
The return on marketing investment (ROMI) describes whether marketing investments, for example the costs of an advertising campaign, have paid off.
What exactly is ROMI used to calculate?
ROMI is a classic financial indicator for marketing controlling. It is a further development of the traditional return on investment (ROI), which comes from the financial sector. It is used to calculate how profitable the marketing department has been within a defined period of time.
How does the ROMI calculation work?
ROMI is calculated by determining the ratio of invested capital to profit:
The ROMI is expressed as a percentage or as a fraction. The formula for the calculation is:
ROMI = (profit - marketing costs) / marketing costs
A ROMI of more than 1 (or more than 100%) means that marketing has operated profitably. A ROMI of less than 1 (less than 100 %) indicates losses. This means that the higher the ROMI, the more efficiently the marketing budget was used.
What are the problems with calculating ROMI?
ROMI is typically used in companies to justify marketing expenditure. The problem here is that although the costs of marketing measures can be easily determined, it is difficult to measure their direct influence on profit.
This is because the effects of marketing measures can be manifold and it is difficult to attribute their success in concrete terms. For example, it is often not possible to directly attribute an out-of-home subject to the purchase of a product.
For this reason, we at BrandTrust prefer to measure and quantify brand success using the AI method Performance Branding. This avoids the difficulty of having to allocate marketing costs directly to sales growth.
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