Invest in your Brand or pay the price?

We seek out clients who recognise that brands are an asset and not an expense. Businesses that are willing to make investments in building their brands over time. We are not talking about huge outlays here but progressive spending that is cash flow friendly.  

Build your brand to build your business

Building your brand helps to grow your business. And, it begins from Day One. When start-ups think about venture capital, they consider investment in a variety of resources – products, services, people, channels, processes, etc. But the one asset that keeps appreciating in value, their brand, is often ignored. Only because brands are less tangible and viewed merely as a cost rather than an investment.  

Intellectual Property and reputation are capital items that are integral to every venture and must feature in any business case for Venture Capital. Even for established businesses, tax incentives provided for asset acquisition should ideally extend to brand building efforts that provide longer term benefits beyond any accounting period (Messrs Turnbull and Morrison, please note).  

The Brand belongs to the business 

By Brand, we don’t mean the obvious physical aspects such as name, logo, tagline, colour scheme. While these are valuable, they are merely visual and verbal expressions of who you are, what you stand for and how you behave. What defines your Brand is the customer experience you deliver. When we talk of brand building, we mean not only the expression but also the experience at every consumer touch point.

So our work goes beyond design solutions to understanding the business and its context and evolving a strategy that cuts across every aspect of a client’s business. In our view, the brand experience is shaped by everyone in the business not just the marketing folk, the creative agency, the P.R. company or the chief executive.  

Align expression with experience, promise with delivery

We work closely with clients in making sure that they are able to fine-tune their product experience, people selection, promotional elements, place (distribution) decisions, even their pricing strategy to reflect the core brand idea that we develop based on an analysis of internal capabilities and external opportunities.  

This helps us to align your brand experience with your brand expression. In other words, deliver exactly what you promise. Such brands are able to attract more sales without lowering price. They are also able to command a premium price contributing to increased sales and more importantly, increased profit. A brand that fails to achieve either of these objectives offers little value and merits no ongoing investment. 

The Bubblefish difference

In practical terms, this is how Bubblefish creates value for clients through brand building that delivers sustainable and profitable growth. Our clients experience this value at every step of the way as we take them through our Bubblefish Ladder® methodology inspiring them to swim against the tide. And, like with our clients, our promise “Scaling up your business” matches our delivery.

By Mahesh Enjeti, Advisor, Bubblefish