BRANDING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

17BBA1905 Eakmpreet Kaur Sahni

17BBA1857 Armaandeep Kaur
University School of Business
Chandigarh University

Introduction

In the era of Social media, brand building has become a challenge. This is not how things were supposed to
be. A decade ago many companies were waiting for the arrival of a new era of branding. They hired many
creative agencies and groups of technologists to insert brands throughout the digital universe.

As a central feature of their digital strategy, companies made huge bets on branded content. The thinking was
that Social media would allow the company to leapfrog traditional media and forge relationships directly with
the customers. Telling customers great stories and connecting with them in real time will make the brand a
hub for a community of consumers. Businesses have invested billions pursuing this vision. Yet very few
brands have been able to generate meaningful consumer interest online. In fact, social media seems to have
made brands less significant.

Objectives: What went wrong?

To answer that question, we need to understand branding’s basic premise- breaking through culture. With the
rise of various social media platforms, there is a digital culture in practice and a proportional rise in digital
crowd, more popularly known as ‘crowdculture’. They have their own set of branding rules, they do not follow
the book, and completely own the fate of any technique or campaign. If we understand them, we can figure
out alternatives to create better strategies that work on social media

Bibliography
https://dreamscape.co.in/blog/branding-in-the-age-of-social-media/
https://hbr.org/2016/03/branding-in-the-age-of-social-media
 Review of Literature
I. DOUGLAS HOLT
Harvard business review, 2016
Social media was supposed to usher in a golden age of branding. But things didn’t turn out that way.
Marketers originally thought that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would let them bypass mainstream media
and connect directly with customers. Hoping to attract huge audiences to their brands, they spent billions
producing their own creative content. But consumers never showed up. In fact, social media seems to have
made brands less significant. What happened? The issue is, social media has transformed how culture works,
in a way that weakens certain branding techniques. It has united once-isolated communities into influential
crowd cultures. Crowd cultures are very prolific cultural innovators. Their members produce their own
content—so well that companies simply can’t compete. Consider that people making videos in their living
rooms top the charts on YouTube, which few companies have managed to crack. While they diminish the
impact of branded content, crowd cultures grease the wheels for an alternative approach, cultural branding. In
it, a brand sets itself apart by promoting a new ideology that springs from the crowd.

II. DAVID C. EDELMAN

Harvard business review, 2010

The internet has upended how consumers engage with brands. It is transforming the economics of marketing
and making obsolete many of the function’s traditional strategies and structures. For marketers, the old way
of doing business is unsustainable. Consumers still want a clear brand promise and offerings they value. What
has changed is when—at what touch points—they are most open to influence, and how you can interact with
them at those points. In the past, marketing strategies that put the lion’s share of resources into building brand
awareness and then opening wallets at the point of purchase worked pretty well. But touch points have changed
in both number and nature, requiring a major adjustment to realign marketers’ strategy and budgets with where
consumers are actually spending their time.

III. HEINI SISKO MAARIT LIPIAINEN, HEIKKI KARJALUOTO

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing,6 July 2015

In the digital age, firms seem to benefit from having a strong market orientation and a holistic branding
approach with robust integration of their different functions. Branding in the digital age not only requires
strong internal communication and consistent external communication, but also positioning of the brand in
topical conversations. For an industrial organization, becoming an opinion leader is a strategy well-suited to
branding and can be supported by creating relevant content subsequently delivered through various social
media channels.

IV. ALICE E MARWICK

Yale University Press, 26 November 2013

Social media technologies such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook promised a new participatory online
culture. Yet, technology insider Alice Marwick contends in this insightful book, “Web 2.0” only encouraged
a preoccupation with status and attention. Her original research—which includes conversations with
entrepreneurs, Internet celebrities, and Silicon Valley journalists—explores the culture and ideology of San
Francisco’s tech community in the period between the dot com boom and the App store, when the city was
the world’s center of social media development. Marwick argues that early revolutionary goals have failed to
materialize: while many continue to view social media as democratic, these technologies instead turn users
into marketers and self-promoters, and leave technology companies poised to violate privacy and to prioritize
profits over participation. Marwick analyzes status-building techniques—such as self-branding, micro-
 celebrity, and life-streaming—to show that Web 2.0 did not provide a cultural revolution, but only furthered
inequality and reinforced traditional social stratification, demarcated by race, class, and gender.

V. CHIRANJEEV KOHLI, RAJNEESH SONI, ANUJ KAPOOR

Business Horizons , January–February 2015

The traditional branding paradigm involved heavy upfront investment and tightly managing the image via
controlled communications in hopes of creating dominant brands that could be leveraged to cultivate loyalty
and a long-term, steady stream of profits. However, social media can drastically alter consumers’ behavior
and their brand preferences. This rapidly evolving landscape has left managers at a loss, and what they are
experiencing is likely the beginning of a tectonic shift in the way brands are managed. In this article, we take
a close look at the building blocks of branding and also examine the core of social media. After careful analysis
of the two, we discuss the likely impact social media will have on the practice of brand management. We
conclude that it will extend beyond the narrow confines of the use of social media as a message platform, to
the core of how markets are targeted and products are delivered. We make recommendations regarding how
companies can manage various facets of branding in this new marketplace.

VI. CHRIST ASHLEY, TRACY TUTEN

Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and
Consumer Engagement. This study employed a content analysis of the creative strategies present in the social
media content shared by a sample of top brands. The results reveal which social media channels are being
used, which creative strategies/appeals are being used, and how these channels and strategies relate to
consumer engagement in branded social media. Past research has suggested that brands should focus on
maintaining a social presence across social channels with content that is fresh and frequent and includes
incentives for consumer participation (Ling et al., 2004). This study confirmed the importance of frequent
updates and incentives for participation. In addition, several creative strategies were associated with customer
engagement, specifically experiential, image, and exclusivity messages. Despite the value of these creative
approaches, most branded social content can be categorized as functional.

VII. JARO SALO

October 2017

Social media research in the industrial marketing field: Review of literature and future research directions
Since the emergence of social media, industrial marketing academics and marketers have also been intrigued
by the influence of such media on the discipline. As, social media research in the field of industrial marketing
has been of increasing interest, this research attempts to review and assess the advances in social media
research in the industrial marketing field. From the literature review conducted, it can be identified that some
of the research areas have witnessed steady theory development increases, e.g., sales and marketing
communications, while others are clearly lagging behind, e.g., pricing and ethics. Also methodological
pluralism is called for instead of more traditional methods (conceptual analysis, qualitative and survey) to
establish and solve more nuanced research problems. This research provides a review of the current state of
research in the field and suggests directions for future development.

VIII. LEUNG, DANIEL

Social Media in Tourism and Hospitality: A Literature Review
 Being one of the “mega trends” that has significantly impacted the tourism system, the role and use of social
media in travelers' decision making and in tourism operations and management have been widely discussed
in tourism and hospitality research. This study reviews and analyzes all extant social media-related research
articles published in academic journals during 2007 to 2011, mainly in tourism and hospitality fields. Based
on a content analysis on the analyzed articles from both the consumers' and the suppliers' perspectives, this
article found that consumer-centric studies generally focused on the use and impact of social media in the
research phase of the travelers' travel planning process. Supplier-related studies have concentrated closely on
promotion, management, and research functions, but few discussed product distribution. Research findings
thoroughly demonstrate the strategic importance of social media for tourism competitiveness. This study also
contributes to the academia and industry by identifying some research voids in extant research and providing
an agenda for future research.

IX. DON E. SCHULYZ, JAMES(JIMMY) PELTIER

Social media's slippery slope: challenges, opportunities and future research directions

Academics and the business community are interested in learning how social media can benefit (or harm)
consumer‐brand engagement. As more branding activity goes social, marketers are not always welcome in all
social media spaces. In this invited commentary, the authors aim to lay out the challenges that social media
faces for enhancing consumer‐brand engagement. In doing so, they seek to turn social media challenges into
future research directions.

X. MANFRED BRUHN,VERENA SCHOENMUELLER, DANIELA B. SCHAFER

Are social media replacing traditional media in terms of brand equity creation?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative impact of brand communication on brand equity through
social media as compared to traditional media. In a juxtaposition of different industries it aims at: investigating
whether both communication instruments have an impact on consumer‐based brand equity; comparing the
effect sizes of these two communication instruments; and separating the effects of firm‐created and user‐
generated social media communication.
BRANDING METHODOLOGY
Already in the late 90’s we identified how branding developed from a product/service focus, a Transaction
Branding, (introduced as an extension of the industrialism), into today’s prevailing Relation Branding,
(introduced by the Internet), in which the Customer Experience is in focus, and the relationship developed
between the brand and customer has become the essence of a modern brand. Branding for us is defined as
“managing the perception in people’s minds”. Branding is one of the key management systems in a modern
business. The significant difference between todays branding is the importance of involvement of key
stakeholders, including the customers, in the branding process, in everything from product development,
distribution, sales, reviewing and recommending, etc. The strategy creation (or “decoding” if a brand already
exists) of a brand is always done as top management team in a 1-1,5 day workshop, which, apart from
providing a true distributed ownership of the setting up of the brand among the key people in the organisation,
is also committing and strengthening the executive team. Thomas Gad created hands-on tools and models to
develop this new type of brands for the new (digital) age, including the 4-Dimensional Brand Mind Space
(BMS) and Brand Code (BC), Brand Activity Generator (BAG) and the Customer Experience Touch-Points
(CXTP). In his practice he and his team have a vast and successful experience of working with his modern
branding techniques across businesses of various size, in different business areas, and in different business
situations like: launching, re-branding, mergers & acquisitions, entering new markets, start-ups etc.. Also with
places: cities, regions & countries, public institutions and with people – personal branding. Here below are
the 4 basic steps of the 4D Branding.

Brand Strategy
The Brand Strategy is created following a very precise structured process starts with the expected outcome of
the Brand in the minds of the stakeholders. The model we use for this is the 4-Dimensional Brand Mind Space
(BMS). The Brand Mind Space is how the Brand is taking its place in people’s minds, it’s a “stretching out”
process of the brand’s 4-dimensions, creating a successful, valuable and appreciated brand. The 4-dimensions
are: The Functional, The Social, The Mental (the individual) and The Spiritual (the purpose & meaning)
dimensions of the Brand. The second model we use is called The Brand Code (BC). It has six inputs: Product
(Service, Place, Benefit, etc), Positioning, Style, Values.
Internal Brand Activation
The Internal Brand Activation starts with setting the Brand Code in the centre of the 4-dimensional Brand
Mind Space (combining both of these models) and extending the strategy of the brands in terms of tangible,
hands-on activities in the 4-dimensions, Functional, Social, Mental and Spiritual Activities. We call this model
Brand Activity Generator (BAG). In addition we ask our clients to create 5 brand symbolic projects that are
demonstrating how the brand can be turned from a strategic idea into a tangible and visible outcome. Another
tool in activating the brand is creating a short Brand Story for everyone to tell when asked: what are you
doing? A Brand Book including a Brand Movie can be included as parts of the Internal Brand Activation.
Customer Brand Experience Touch-Points
The most important role of the Brand is to code and connect the different Touch Points with the customers
creating the final Customer Experience. In order to be able to manage each Touch-Points we help our
customers to code each touch point. With coding in this case we mean taking the decided Brand Code and
again setting it in the 4-Dimensional diagram and decided for each Touch-Point its most important criteria in
each of the 4 dimensions. There are three categories of touch-points: Static Touch Points (Ex: Promotion,
Advertising, Direct Mail, Products & Services themselves), Human Touch-Points (Sales, Service, Call
Centres, Management, Support, etc.) and Digital (Blogs, Mobile, Email, Social Media, Web, etc.).
External Brand Activation
We help our clients with various tailored ideas, programs and systems to continuously activate their brands
and see the strategy come alive in real customer and other stakeholder relations. We use our profound
experience of helping brands to launch and to maintain them over time. We have together with partners
developed a systematic approach and digital engines for social media including User Experience, the way
digital touch points are designed and perceived which should mirror the intentions in the brand strategy.
Branding Design:
Today competition between businesses is rather sharp. To stand out among the crowd, a company needs to be
unique and recognizable by customers. A strong brand is what stands behind each successful product.
Nielsen’s Global New Product Innovation Survey discovered that nearly 59% of people prefer to buy new
products from brands familiar to them, and 21% say they are ready to purchase a product if it comes from a
brand they like.
Some people got used to thinking that only marketing specialists do all the job in branding. However, if you
say it to professional designers, they’ll tell you how wrong you are. As an American graphic designer Paul
Rand said: «Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.» The article tells about the essence of branding as
well as the role of design in it. Also, we’ll define the key stages of effective brand creation.

SIX CREATIVE APPROACHES OF BRANDING DESIGN:

1) Business goals and brand personality

Of course, it’s not a designer who sets the goals of a company or defines its personality still it is a foundation
of all the branding process. To receive the expected results, the company has to set the priorities and values at
the start point so that the crew working on branding could see which way to go. They do not necessarily need
to be defined and used for all the cycle of brand existence. The goals can be modified later during a creative
process but it’s vital to have some directives in the beginning. Practice shows that not all the clients come to
designers prepared. They may not think of details and ask only for an attractive visual presentation that will
bring success to their business. There is nothing remarkable about it. Clients often see designers like artists
creating beautiful pictures and you can’t expect them to know all the peculiarities of designers. It can be quite
helpful on the way of understanding users’ behaviour and their possible reactions to the design. Moreover,
psychology principles can help designers establish effective communication with clients. There are many
customers who are not certain in their desires and preferences and that’s when psychology assists. If a designer
finds proper questions to ask, it will be easier to create a guide based on client’s wish.

2) Market and User Research

When the goals are set and a company’s personality seems clear, designers go to the research work. This step
is essential for all kinds of designer’s job, be it a logo or a mobile app. The research helps to immerse into the
environment of the future brand and comprehend the peculiarities which may influence its success. First goes
the market research. Designers dig out the information about the market and potential competitors. It’s good
to learn from someone’s experience be it good or bad. Having the necessary data experts can create a unique
and efficient logo and build a brand identity that will stand out the competition.
Designers and clients’ preferences should step aside to the needs of target audience. A brand needs to make a
good impression on its potential buyers or users to gain their trust. User research helps to get deeper into
preferences and psychological peculiarities of the target audience.
The design is not a pure art. If you rely exceptionally on the sense of beauty and talent, there is a risk of failing
the task. Research takes less time compared to doing the job over.
 3) Logo Design
Some people often mistake a logo for a brand but it is only one stage in the process of branding. However, it
would be wrong to underestimate the role of logo design. It is the basic mark of brand identity, the most
prominent symbol of brand image and the foundation of effective marketing strategy enabling its connection
with the target audience.

Essential stages of the creative process in logo design.

 Setting the task
 User research
 Marketing research
 Creative search
 Choice of style direction
 Choice of color palette
 Testing in different sizes and environments
 Creating a style guide setting right and wrong cases of logo use etc.

4) Visual Elements of Brand

Logo design is not the only visual representation of a brand. Certainly, the major focus will always be a logo
but there are some more elements deserving the attention such as mascots and typography.
Companies often look for the ways of personalizing a brand and designers have a solution. Mascots are the
custom design characters created to represent the brand in a quite symbolic way. They can be created as a part
of a logo or exist as an individual brand element. Such characters can establish the connection with users as
nothing else. A mascot serves as a tool for communication and interaction with users helping to transfer the
message in an unusual manner. People start to see a mascot as a major representative of a company introducing
them a product or a service. The efficient mascot guarantees recognizability and memorability to a brand and
easily draws users’ attention. Another visual element responsible for brand identity is typography. Many logos
are created via typography or contain fonts in it but typography doesn’t end here. Banners, business cards,
correspondence a company applies should involve brand identity signs as well. You can make fonts also speak
for your brand. Designers often create custom fonts for companies to be unique even in such small details.
However, it’s not the only option. Experts may choose a combination of regular fonts which will suit a certain
brand best. This way users will easier remember a brand because of its consistency in every detail.

5) Corporate Brand Style

When the logo is ready, the color palette is chosen, and other visual elements are prepared, it’s time to unite
them into harmonic corporate style. It is required when a designer works on branding for companies providing
services. Various attributes can become a branded item depending on a type of a company.
There are some common brand items which are used by different companies:
 Business card.
 Billboards and banners.
 Vehicle branding.
 T-shirt and hats.

6) A Style Guide
The work is done. The visual material is complete. The last task for the designer is to make sure clients will
use all the assets properly. A style guide is a document providing instructions about correct and wrong ways
to use the graphics created for the brand. Traditionally, a style guide includes the explanation of the idea
standing behind a logo as well as the presentation of a corporate color palette which can be used for different
purposes. It can be good to demonstrate the examples of incorrect usage in order to avoid poor visual
performance.
As you can see branding is a complex process. Each step should be well-thought, based on the needs of the
target audience and business goals.

Social Media Branding Techniques

Social media can be used for a variety of purposes. Whether it’s social selling, content marketing or customer
support, social media gives you the perfect opportunity to reach your target audience and build your brand.
However, with so many different platforms available and heavy competition on all of them, it can be difficult
to set your brand apart and carve out your place on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
1. Choose The Right Networks
If you’re not gaining any traction on some of the social media platforms you’re active on, it may not
entirely be your fault. With hundreds of social media apps out there, and new ones popping up every day,
it’s tempting to jump into all of them. However, every social network might not be the right fit for your
company. Your job is to find the networks that align with your brand’s image and goals. Otherwise, you’ll
struggle to make progress.
2. Don’t Overlook Visual Branding
Visuals play an important part in social media branding. If each of your profiles looks like they’re owned
by a different company, it creates disconnect for your users. You want your branding to be consistent
across all channels. This will help people immediately recognize your company no matter which site or
app they’re using. One brand that does this very well is Coca-Cola. When you look at the company’s
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles, you’ll notice the consistency in color and design:

3. Develop Your Voice

Your brand’s personality should be reflected in your social media posts. That means developing a social
media voice. This is the way your brand communicates in Tweets, Facebook posts and Snaps. Finding
your voice can take some time, but you’ll settle into it eventually. To find your social media voice, consider
these three main elements:
  Your company culture:
What is the culture like at your company? Your culture is what you stand for, what your company is about
and what makes you special. For example, Under Armour’s culture is all about performing to the highest level
and being innovative. The use of hashtags like #IWILL in social media posts shows that the company’s social
media voice is a direct reflection of its culture.

 Your audience:
Speaking in a way that your audience connects with is very important. That could include using certain lingo
and references that are popular in your target market. Taco Bell is constantly in tune with what’s popular with
its audience (a younger demographic) and crafts its social media posts to fit that voice.
 Authenticity:
Whatever your social media voice develops into, make sure it’s authentic to your brand. Trying to sound a
certain way just to fit in can backfire.
4. Be Consistent With Your Topics
Sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are very good for content curation. Curating is a great way to
help you build authority in your industry as well as provide a steady flow of social media posts that aren’t
self-promotional. Finding blog posts, videos and other content to share with your audience sounds simple
enough. However, many businesses go into it blindly without creating a strategy or guidelines for what
topics to share.
5. Post Regularly
Nothing will kill social media branding efforts more than irregular posting. If you only Tweet once every
few days or upload one new Instagram picture a month, you’re going to be forgotten. Shortened attention
spans combined with rapidly growing social networks have made publishing more important than ever.

How frequently you post is going to depend on your audience. It will take some trial and error to find out what
works best for your brand. One of the best ways to determine how often you should post is to use Sprout
Social’s social media publishing and analytics tools.