Building brand loyalty is the holy grail of marketing. Here's what you need to know to build a successful high tech brand. 

Most dictionaries – and many companies and consumers - equate branding with the development of trademarks, graphic identities and distinctive names that identify a product or service with particular corporations. Envision items like corporate logos, wordmarks, typefaces and colors.
 
To create a graphic identity, a company typically invests time pondering what makes it distinctive. It thinks about values, missions, corporate objectives and marketplace differentiators. Then it assesses the opinions and perceptions of multiple stakeholders, both inside and outside the company. All of this insight is considered, prioritized and reflected in the final graphic identity that attempts to capture the corporation's essence in a visual way.
 
In the world of high tech, there are many successful examples of graphical branding whereby clean (and sometimes even memorable) identities are established and consistently deployed.  

But remember this: while graphic identities are a great place to start a branding effort, they are only the beginning of the branding journey.
 

PR dominates the art of branding in the technology industry.
 
As Al & Laura Ries pointed out (perhaps a little too insistently) in their 2002 book "The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR," the high tech industry has been built on successful public relations. They argue PR is most effective at building brands while advertising is particularly adept at maintaining already-built brands.
 
High tech companies like Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, Google, Microsoft, Intel and BlackBerry are illustrative of high tech companies that built their initial identities via PR. Other tech giants like SAP, Cisco and Oracle also built pervasive, gorilla positions via public relations before spending big bucks on ad campaigns. There are countless others.
 
The reason PR is so effective in brand building is because it delivers credibility. Ries expressed it emotionally when he said, "Suppose you were offered a choice. You can run an advertisement in our newspaper or magazine or we'll run your story as an article. How many companies would prefer an ad to an article? No one. Advertising has no credibility. A typical newspaper is 30 percent editorial and 70 percent advertising. What do you spend most of your time reading? To the average person, the editorial stories are islands of objectivity in a sea of prejudice."
 
It's typical for early-stage venture-backed high tech companies to put all of their marketing dollars in PR, with zero investment in advertising and other forms of marketing. They understand that with limited resources, public relations delivers the most bang for the buck while also delivering the highest level of credibility.
 
PR builds brands by building positive, pervasive word of mouth. PR gets people talking and it gets people believing. It primes the sales pump. That's why public relations nearly always precedes advertising campaigns.
 
Public relations creates belief by getting the media (perceived as an objective truth filter) to tell the tale and by relying on truly objective sources like customers to validate the truthfulness.
 

While I agree with the authors that the majority of today's advertising has lost its way, I reject the notion that it is a dead discipline. Advertising can – and should - play a role in brand building… but it should be used for the right reasons: reinforcing the brand foundation.
 
Advertising is a Catch-22: its greatest strength is the fact that it can always be deployed to remind and reaffirm… just pay the price and a company can say whatever it wants whenever and wherever it wants. But its greatest drawback is the fact that smart people know the message is a biased form of communication.  
 
The key with advertising is to create synchronicity with PR. Public relations is most effective at building and sustaining buzz (using credibility to create belief). Advertising is particularly adept at keeping the brand in the mind and eye of the customer, especially during the peaks and valleys when buzz isn't dominant.
 
Effective advertising – like PR – is message based.  A lot of ad agencies might disagree with this statement: they might argue that effective advertising is about getting attention at all costs. But we can all think of hundreds of ad campaigns that got our attention but didn't stimulate brand awareness or sales.
 
Successful ad campaigns are not uncommon in the high tech industry. Many companies – both large and small – have created effective advertising campaigns that embodied customer benefit messaging within a creative framework that captured the right level of attention.  It's not uncommon to see high tech ad campaigns (and consumer ads for that matter) built around the credibility of public relations programs, leveraging third-party quotes from influencers and media to establish credibility.
 

One of the most common mistakes corporations make with branding is believing it's something they "own." This is misguided. A brand isn't what a corporation wants it to be… it's the relationship it has with the folks who buy and experience their product/service.
 
If corporate executives insist their software product is easy to use, but the customer thinks otherwise, the brand reality is defined by the customer view… the software is not easy to use. Case closed.  

Branding isn't what your company wants to articulate, express and "drive home."  It's what the customer thinks about you, your product and service. The best graphic identity, PR and advertising will ultimately fail - and fail miserably - if the brand isn't fundamentally rooted in a consistently great product and service.
 
We instinctively sense our experiences with products and services and are smart enough to know when a brand promise isn't being lived.
 
The corporation that regularly seeks out the views of its customers and then modifies its own actions, behavior, programs, processes, services and products to better meet their needs, builds a loyal following.  
 
Great brands are built when products and services consistently meet and occasionally exceed customer expectations. The lesson for high tech? Worry most about your product and service because this will ultimately dictate branding success. Never take your eye off the ball or your brand will pay the price.
 

Technology companies reach different levels of branding success. Some succeed famously and develop "must have" brand positions. Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and IBM are examples of these types of companies. They became standardized and embedded as "correct choice" solutions.
 
Companies typically buy Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and IBM because these products are proven winners. As such... they represent a safe and expedient choice… a selection that will keep the companies that buy and use these products viably competitive. And the people who recommend these products as safe and secure as they can be in a world of constant change.
 
There are many other examples of "correct choice" brand positions in high tech. PeopleSoft. Oracle. Dell. SAP. These are deemed smart corporate choices because these products and services are proven and most companies have standardized around them.
 

Peter Montoya's definition of a brand gets us to an important new place:
 
"A brand is a personal identity that stimulates precise, meaningful perceptions in its audience about the values and qualities that person stands for."
 
This is a profound thought: to become an ultimate brand, your service & product becomes a deeply personal thing… an individual experience. Something that feeds a person's own self identity.  
 
It's interesting to draw a distinction between correct choice branding and personal affinity branding. The former is all about people within companies being brand loyal because it yields IT competitiveness for their companies. The latter branding is all about people being brand loyal because they have a personal connection with the products and services they buy and use. The greatest brands build a deeply personal connection with people.  

In the consumer world, there are many examples: Starbucks; Nike, Disney, Abercrombie and so many more. Vehicles dominate the list because they are so inherently personal. Just look at the generational alignment with Volkswagen… Gen-Xs see a part of themselves in VW cars. Adventurous people often like Jeep or Harley Davidson. Safety conscious folks relate to Volvo. Status seekers are attracted to the prestige of the Mercedes Benz brand.
 
In the world of high tech, Apple arguably understands branding best. People buy Apple products because they relate to what these brands represent. They see a part of themselves in their iMACs, G5s, iTunes and iPods.
 
There are other examples of deep branding in high tech beyond Apple. A growing number of people love their BlackBerry hand helds. There's a deep psychological affinity for Linux, but in this instance it isn't one company or set of products, but more of a way of thinking… a reaction to monopolistic gorillas. Many people swear by their HP printers.
 
But great high tech brands are not only at the mass market level. There are many other hardware and software products that aren't perceptible at a consumer level, but nevertheless have carved out deep connections. One such company is SolidWorks (www.solidworks.com), the leader in 3D CAD software. Their customers are zealous in their loyalty to and affinity for this particular software solution. We've observed them clapping enthusiastically at press conferences when new software features are unveiled, much like Apple's customers.