What is branding?
The original meaning of branding is “the action of marking with a branding iron”
It is the act of showing where this cattle came from. It was particularly important when cattle would mix together and you needed identify the real owner of the cattle.
“the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.”
One of the most important aspects of branding is that it is distinctive. The brand identifies what makes a product, service, company, or university different to another.
Why is a brand valuable?
Brands are everything. It influences how people think about your product, service or company or yourself.
Every person, company and product already has a brand. It’s just a matter of how much control you choose to take over it.
In a way, branding is like a magnet. It is invisible, but it is powerful, and it can attracts things towards you (or it can repel things).
A brand is important for signalling quality, and attracting talented workers and students and becoming better, building trust, it inspires students and workers. It also helps to rise up the league tables, it helps conversion rates when students have got two offers from competing institutions.
There are fierce branding battles among top institutions about who is the best, but every university has huge opportunities to develop their own distinctive international brand which may be based on location, certain subject specialities or certain stories.
The problem of building a brand in China
A few years ago people thought of Chinese products as lower cost (and therefore quality), and were questioning if China can develop global brands?
Since opening up, China has grown the economy very quickly by being the world’s factory. Chinese factories have been specialising in making low cost products very cheaply at large scale.
However now as China develops faster.
As Chinese universities are seeking to attract higher quality students, they will need to compete with the global universities and it is important to develop the high quality branding. This is the same for all Chinese companies.
China is Developing Great Brands
China is changing fast, I write this article in a time where China is shifting and has already largely shifted from a low cost manufacturing economy to a higher value service oriented economy.
There are now 17 Chinese brands (mostly technology) that are in the Global Top 100 Brands List in 2021 as according to the Kantar Brandz (I recommend reading the report to learn more about the value of branding:
- Tencent: 5th
- Alibaba: 7th
- Moutai: 11th
- Meituan: 34th
- JD: 44th
- Douyin/TikTok: 45th
- Ping An (Insurance): 49th
- Huawei: 50th
- ICBC (Bank): 51st
- Haier (IoT): 65th
- China Mobile: 68th
- Xiaomi: 70th
- Baidu: 77th
- Pinduoduo: 81st
- AIA: 87th
- Didi Chuxing: 93rd
- CCB (Bank): 94th
- Didi: 64th
- BEKE: 96th
While things are changing fast in China, there still exists some hangover from the low cost manufacturing model of before. The problem of building a brand is that you can’t build it with the same manufacturing mentality that still does exist in China. It needs to adopt the new mindset.
Building a Great Brand is Hard
Another problem is that developing a strong brand is a long term investment. Brands take years to build. It is also very hard to measure the impact of branding.
With the manufacturing mindset you would pay something (preferably for a low price) and get some product back straight away.
In the new mindset, you will invest in something and you can’t see the return on investment straight away, maybe for months or years.
What is the return of investment on investing in branding? It is hard to measure because it exists in peoples minds, it is necessary to 1) value the brand, and 2) have a new tool or framework for measuring the value of it.
Building a great brand could be one of the best return on investments you can make.
The beauty of building a brand
Great brands are beautiful. They leave a powerful emotional impact on peoples minds. It deeply involves psychology and understanding people.
It is also valuable. By building a brand, you can create immense value with the power of thought and sharing that thought. It is intangible and invisible. It is nowhere but it is everywhere.
The journey of building a brand and creating a lot of value is also a lot of fun and it makes the world a better place.
What are your favourite brands?
It is interesting to think about what your favourite brands are and why? What do they stand for and how do you feel with that brand? Which brands do you feel most associated with? Some brands might attract you, some might repel you. Why is that?
Apple has one of the world’s strongest brands.
It is also interesting to think about brands in education. Which university brands do you like? We can learn a lot from these top brands.
How do you build a brand?
Building a strong brand is not easy, it takes a long time and it is hard to measure. You will probably not see the effects in the first few months or even the first year of building a brand. Over time, consistent brand building can yield enormous results and benefits.
The first step is to deeply understand your customer. What are their needs? Who are they exactly? Building personas is an important part of branding.
You then need to understand yourself deeply. What makes you unique or different from others? And what do you stand for? It is important to have that understanding of a brand. It is important to have strong brand values and to be specific, and keep it simple.
Stories are an extremely valuable way of branding. You can highlight key points and values in a story and it is engaging.
One of the most fundamental rules of branding is consistency. You know that something with your logo on it will be a certain quality. To build a strong brand, you need to have the same logo, the same voice.
Here are some of the values of China Admissions which are important to us.
This is just a part of our brand. There are many other parts that we think about.
We have a lot of experience in building the China Admissions brand and helping Chinese universities to develop their brand.
We can help you with consumer research, ideation and then to implement branding and marketing initiatives through our online platform. We currently have over 1 million international students per year using China Admissions platform and have many ways we can help to develop the brand. You can find out more about us here.
