The “Johari Window” of branding

How many people know about your brand and actually uses your brand? Yes, there are many definitions and gurus out there explaining what is branding all about and how it can help businesses grow.

There are many seminars to attend and books to read for any business owner to understand about branding but still, there are many business owners out there who have little clue on how it can actually translate to business success.

In order to justify how branding actually help businesses to grow and profit, we have derived a simple analogy using a simple graph as follows.

The Y-axis indicates the "know" level of individuals in the market which is mapped according to their knowledge of your brand / product. The X-axis indicates the "use" level of individuals in the market and which is mapped according to the frequency of using your brand / product.

For example, "A" within the graph indicates an individual who has never knew or heard about your brand at all. What this means is that the individual has probably never used your product at all.

"B" indicates an individual who know or has heard about your brand but has never used your product before.

"C" indicates an individual who actually used your product but, because your product does not come in a brand identity (e.g. OEM), they have no idea that the product actually comes from your company. Usually, individuals falling under this category do not have brand loyalty and they tend to sway their choices easily from one company to another.

"D" indicates individuals who not only know about your brand but also used it frequently. This is a region by which every company should strive to keep their clients at.

Apple does this very well as they are able to dominate majority of the market share in the computer and smartphone markets. To demonstrate its popularity, people actually queue up many hours before the launch of a new product.

With that said, if a company develops a unique selling proposition and brand identity, it'll make sure that client in the "C" region moves up to the "D" region and make sure that these clients remains loyal to the brand.

Having a properly strategized marketing and advertising effort, the brand identity will be communicated to the mass market and targeted audience will be reached.

The idea is to move them from "A" to "B" and more importantly, from "B" to "D". Without a properly crafted brand identity, most clients would just land themselves within the "C" region. If nothing is done to elevate the brand’s exposure, it might remain in the "A" region eternally.

Which of those four quadrants do you hope to see your brand in? The answer is obvious, isn’t it?