Did Ontario get a deal on the new brand?

What is the worth of a brand? An important question for any organization that came to the surface in the recent Ontario Provincial budget which included the re-design of the Ontario brand.

In 2006 the re-design cost for the Ontario brand was $219,000. And now in 2019 the re-design was completed for $89,000. Does this mean the current Conservative government is more cost effective? Or has the value of design been degraded by 60% over 13 years?

We say neither.

The value of brand design is not the cost of the creative… this has always been a variable based on project scope and the art of sales. That is the initial investment in a brand tool. The real value of a brand is how you consistently use these tools to demonstrate how you’re different. Brands don’t just happen overnight. They are built over time. We all know that a brand is not a logo… it’s everything about an organization and is either positively affected or negatively affected with every contact it has. A brand is your culture. The brands we know and love get it. But how did they get there?

 

Launching a new company is easy. Surviving is another story…

According to the Small Business Association, there are about 627,000 companies launched and 595,000 companies closed in Canada every year. Out of all of those startups, only about half of those companies will be in business in five years. The importance of a well planned branding program should be a key element in every marketing plan.

Understanding how to make your brand connect and stick to your target market is essential to your success. The secret rules of branding are simple and they hold true across all industries, medias and technologies:

1 – consistency

2 – management

3 – time

In Ted Mathew’s and Andrei Pone’s best selling book “brand, it ain’t the logo”, they identify the philosophy of a “brand foundation”. This is a deep dive that every brand should do to identify their seven key elements to create a brand manifesto. This doctrine is a living mission statement, not some old philosophy written and forgotten in the marketing plan hung on a wall, but a true guiding road map to brand success. To make it happen is the role of management. After all, brands are built from the top of an organization and Ted and Andrei recommend the appointment of a key C-suite individual to become the CBO, the Chief Brand Officer. This is a critical role in an organization to protect and instill the essence of the brand throughout the company.

 

What is Brand equity?

Brand is equity and is a line on the balance sheet of companies that get it. The jury is still out on how to truly calculate the worth of a brand, but according to 2018 valuations by Interbrands, the world’s most valuable brand is Apple with a brand value of $214.5 billion and revenues of $228.6 billion.

To give insight into the discrepancies on calculating brand value, look at Coca-Cola in 2017. The iconic Coke brand, with revenues of $35.4 billion was evaluated to have brand worth of $66.3 billion by Interbrands or $56.4 billion by Forbes or a measly $34.2 billion by Branddirectly. (Ryan Erskine’s forbes article explores this in-depth  https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanerskine/2017/08/12/what-is-a-brand-really-worth/#7da72a922991)

When we think how a swoosh or a fruit or bottle shape can make us feel and spend, it’s easy to understand the power of branding, that’s brandLove.

We are proud to say that say what! continues to beat the odds and is still creating and developing brand marketing programs based on our brandLove philosophy of “owning a difference” since we started over 25 years ago.

Let’s talk on how we can help get your brand some brandLove.

cheers, grant ivens, rgd
brand surgeon |  rocket scientist  |  educator
say what! communications corp. ivens@saywhat.com