Often we wonder what the fuss is all about. It only takes common sense to build an enduring brand. But common sense is not that common in today’s communication world.

Products have rationales, brands have ‘emotionales’. Products are built in factories while brands are developed in one’s mind. With this understanding, common sense helps identify the emotional need.

To create a strong brand, we need to answer the basic common sense questions:

1. What is the obvious emotional consumer insightful truth on which our brand has been developed?

2. What business are we really in?

3. Who is our target audience?

4. What is the brand personality that connects to this target mindset?

5. What is the big idea that captures the essence of our brand which users wish to buy?

Here’s an example of a leading brand who thought that they were in the business of films and cameras. They became very product — centric with no emotional connection.

Had they followed the simple process, they would have realised that they were in the business of memories:

1. Emotional truth? Taking pictures for memories.

2. What is the brand really in? Memories.

3. Target market? — Those who wish to preserve memories.

4. The brand persona? Always cheerful, bright, loves family and friends.

5. The BIG idea? Capture the ‘Moment’.

Even today, they (I am sure you have guessed it) are good for millions of dollars, as long as they provide products and services which help share memories. Products have life cycles, but brands are made to live forever. Brands diminish when the emotional satisfaction disappears for the consumer.

Some of us confuse brands with products and hence shatter the precious brand. The common sense jobs that a planner does helps rectify this impairment: staying in touch with the consumer to understand what they think, feel and do.

Having a chat with the ‘consumer’ in places like food courts, malls, before a movie or waiting for the bus helps develop the understanding. Affluence levels do count as well.

My favourite — the ‘Hot Chai Shop’. Indeed, fun to watch and comment on the world going by. Observers of human nature often have more to reveal about their target’s mindset than if they had a face-to-face conversation.

In understanding the consumer, we should try to do what they do. Questionnaires are a shoddy idea.

If they know about the research, lies and half-truths will fill in.

Another is to deduce by common sense. Consumers don’t speak in consumer insights. Thus, firstly, finding the emotionale which other brands have not yet satisfactorily met is pivotal.

Once done, we may proceed to the product, pricing, packaging, profit policy and the likes to entice the brand.

We have to ask ourselves, “What business am I really in?”

If the answer is a product or service, the brand is yet to be discovered.

The writer is Director at Venture Communications, part of Verse Group.