Branding is everything

So why did I choose cars as a topic while looking into the impact of branding. Because it is a perfect example on how branding truly effects our choice when buying a car. Lets face it cars are there to bring us from point A to B. Yes some cars are better then others when it comes to fuel consumption, safety, and speed, but these characteristics are not usually what drives people to spend lots of money on cars. The main factor is not the functional one as mentioned above but the emotional one. Functional and comparative are statistics and facts that can be measured and proven. Still the emotional factor, which is so important, is the hard one to calculate. For example how can a company like Mercedes determine what feelings runs through a persons head when he/she sees the clip shown at my previous post? Each person can interpret the image in a different way because it is hard to measure the emotion involved does not mean that it does not exists. Why would companies bother to bombard us with advertisements, PR campaigns, branding. A big company like Mercedes sends out messages that ‘yes a car can bring you form A to B, but you will feel much more successful, cool, and luxuries if you drive there product’. Renault might want the costumer to associate sitting in there car with the speed and technology of a Formula 1 car, while others might invest in making their image greener to satisfy a consumers conscience.
In Davies Gray’s book one can find a simple exercise to further understand how branding can be evaluated.

The most commonly used metaphor in branding is that of a brad as a person. We
pretend that the company is a person and draw parallels from our better
understanding of people, including here that an organization, like a person, can
have a personality. (Gray Davies)

A good example on how aware a company is of Image and Branding is Ford automobiles. Over the years Ford has bought and took over other car manufacturers such as Volvo, Lincoln, Mercury, Jaguar, and Land Rover. The heads at Ford realize that the Jaguar customer is looking for a different product then that sought by a Ford customer. A Jaguar customer is also expecting a different experience and service then a Ford customer. That is why Ford has separated the companies in order to convey different messages and emotion, rather then uniting all there products under one umbrella image.

With this i conclude my trip to Paris and my short insight into automobile branding, hope you enjoyed it and see you next posting.

Regards & Shalom YD.