Large companies across the world pay millions every year on branding and marketing. They do this to increase their brand name and to advertise the products that they sell. But just because they have the money to ‘splash’ on their products doesn’t necessarily mean they have the best products available – or do they?
If company branding and marketing is successful the ultimate gain of the marketers is to not only garner the attention of the viewing audience but also to make them ‘want to have’ one of their items. Some companies do this very well and have the products and the marketing to be a huge success. The easy to use example here is Apple. The US company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on brand marketing. And they have the stylish and usable products to back up their claims. But what about the companies who don’t have the Apple’s budget but still have products which work really well?
Brand vs Product
If you are a marketer you’ll have one of the below scenarios to contend with:
o Excellent product – well-known brand
o Excellent product – unknown brand
o Bad product – well-known brand
o Bad product – unknown brand
You might think that the last of the above examples would see a company go out of business but this isn’t always the case. If you have a big enough pot of money even bad products and unknown brands can see some success.
It’s the ‘excellent product – unknown brand’ however which deserves the most attention. Some companies simply haven’t got the money to throw at advertising or at marketing but do have excellent products and in fact sometimes much better products than the brand leaders. Many of these products will be manufactured to the same standards, if not higher standards, than the well-known brands and will do exactly the same thing as the well-known brands. And they will have a distinct advantage over their branded counterparts – their price.
Price dictates just about everything we buy, but just because something is cheap doesn’t necessarily mean it’s poor quality or that it will not performs to the same standards as a more expensive substitute. The hard thing here is determining what these items are and how they can be used to your advantage.
One of the best things you can do with any product is to try before you buy. You wouldn’t buy a car before a test drive and you wouldn’t buy a house before you had a survey. You shouldn’t be deceived because of the thousands spent on marketing or what someone may tell you, the proof is in using the product yourself.
Damian Rose wrote this article about branding vs. cloned on behalf of www.nordicagolf.co.uk.