The clear understanding of Branding, Marketing and Advertising

Apples. Oranges. Potatoes.
Yes! Those are three different things.
And so are branding, marketing, and advertising.
The only problem is that a lot of people use these words interchangeably.

Even the people in the business of branding, marketing, and advertising are not able to point out the subtle differences. And we can’t blame them since all the three concepts overlap and are used to ensure the presence of a company, a business or a product.

And if there are too many heavy words around trying to mislead you, Who you gonna call? Slangbusters!

So let us untangle all the three words one by one.

Marketing
The word marketing comes from the word ‘market’ and is the process of reaching the target customer. All the efforts made by an organization to initiate an exchange between itself and its clients( or customers) would be categorized under marketing.

To be fair, in the past, the word marketing literally stood for taking the goods to the market. Now, it is a word that sums up — studying the market, identifying the needs of the customer and satisfying the needs profitably.

Marketing defines the tactics that drive the sales, and it is the reason behind why someone thought of buying something in the very first place.

Advertising
Technically, advertising is just one of the components of marketing.

An advertisement is just a paid persuasive message about an organization, targeted to no one in particular, that is published through various media. Advertising is one of the ways through which companies communicate to the people about their products or the services.

Advertising helps in building awareness around an organization since it continually hammers the people with the same or similar persuasive message.



Branding
A brand is the perception of a company, business, product or service in people’s minds and branding is the way through which you build that perception. This perception is shaped by managing all the interactions happening inside or outside the organization and is done through something called the brand strategy.

Using colors, designs, symbols, and words, you can affect all these interactions, and the branding agency defines these for each brand.

Simply put, a brand is what others say about that brand and, branding is a way of shaping the perception of the organization and ensuring it stays the same in the long-term.

Now, let’s take an example.

Suppose a person has a business where they sell a product called X, then here is how they should go about branding, marketing, and advertising. First, the product X goes through branding. The branding agency creates a brand strategy, gives a name to the product, creates the design of the product as well as the packaging, defines what the product X stands for and figure out why would someone buy the product X.

Now, this brand brief of product X goes to the marketing team. The marketing team then determines various ways of reaching the target customers but by following the brief prepared by the branding agency.

The marketing team might create an advertisement themselves or hire an advertising agency to create the ads to market the product X.

Here, it is okay if an advertisement for product X fails. But it is not okay if the whole marketing approach fails.

And it is definitely not okay if the branding of product X is not done correctly since marketing and advertising is based on it.


We hope this blog has cleared some misconceptions of branding, advertising, and marketing. If you have any other questions or you need us to bust any other slangs, contact us. If you are looking for a branding partner for your business or if you are eager to work in a real branding studio, drop us the name of your favorite coffee place and let’s hangout.