‘Sunshine lifestyle’ – What’s your brand quality and does it drive sales?

Finding out what your brand represents is a key ingredient to defining your brand personality and also supporting your sales process.

Recently I was in Melbourne at a sales conference. A somewhat different arena for a creative and one that I’ve often considered somewhat ‘scary’ as the stereotypical image of the ‘pushy’ sales person sits in the back of my mind. However the reality couldn’t be farther from the truth.

While sales can be driven by quantity and being able to measure growth by numbers, an equally important driver of sales success is quality.

The brand halo

From a branding point of view this quality is the feeling your customer emotionally connects to and wants to experience.

While it’s obviously important for the product or service you offer to be of good quality, what is more important is the perceived emotional benefit the customer gets when they purchase your brand. It’s like a halo that represents a certain quality or value.

A great example of this, is a case study I came across from a well known consumer brand from Hawaii – Dole. An excerpt from the article follows:

It was a well known fact that the consumer equated Dole with pineapples. The objective of the company was to move beyond commodity items and pineapple specifically to launch more profitable value-added foods and beverages. A study was conducted by Brand Extension Research* that revealed that Dole (not unexpectedly) had a strong connection to pineapple. However, the associations with pineapple were fresh, clean, bright, sunny, and the imagery of a wholesome outdoor lifestyle. It was seen as the best of Hawaii – the fun, the food and sunshine in the most exotic and romantic of settings. Dole represented a “Sunshine Lifestyle,” which translated to sunshine fruits and products that would contain these.

In 1986 the Dole logo was redesigned by Landor. The bright yellow sunburst signifying freshness, quality, wholesomeness and good-tasting products.