OK, so I was a little confused when I did my previous post for Week 2. I had it in my head that BRANDING was Week 3. Oh well, I think I've got it straight now.
Being a country girl what branding means to me is marking cattle so we can identify which ones belong to us if they wander off into a neighbor's pasture. More and more I see lots of chatter about "branding" as a marketing ploy, both for business and libraries.
It seems to me that public libraries have a perfectly good brand...."FREE." As in free information, free books, magazines, movies, etc., free computer/Internet access, along with a multitude of other things depending on the library.
As for me, what should I "brand." The Wife/Mom/Grandma me? The librarian me? The quilter me? The genealogy researcher me? The computer fixer me? Do I even need or want a "brand"? When I did my blog I knew I only wanted to maintain one blog so I rolled it all up into one ball of wax......all the parts of me.
As an online retailer I can see the importance of branding for the big guys who are in competition with each other, i.e. WalMart vs KMart etc. It is a way to distinguish yourself from the competition and appeal to your customer demographic.
ReplyDeleteI will never be in competition with any of them so to me branding means my reputation for personal service, absolute truth in descriptions, my "If you don't like it it's not sold, send it back guarantee." but I am not sure that is 'branding'.
I think the whole thing is bizbuzzspeak, a concept designed to keep marketing experts gainfully employed.
As a library, or for that matter a librarian, what are you supposedly branding yourself against? People who go out and buy the very latest publications are not demographically the same as your patrons. Your patrons presumably have less money but a lot more sense.