Branding vs. Marketing in the Rum World
Luis Ayala, Editor of "Got Rum?" magazine, Rum Consultant and Founder of The Rum University.
I received a surprisingly-large number of comments and questions following my editorial piece last month titled Identity and Personality. Some of the comments were about loosening the requirements, “opening up the doors” to non-traditional fermentable sugars, all in the name of innovation and category growth. Some questions were about implementing a good marketing program that focuses accurately on a rum’s differentiators. It was this last line of thought that inspired me to write this month’s column.
Just like there are rum producers, distributors, marketers, servers and consumers who do not know the difference between a rum’s identity and its personality, there are also confused marketers (perhaps because they are new to the industry) who don’t quite know how to market a particular rum, focusing too much -for example- on what the rum has in common with ALL other rums, and not enough on what makes it different.
The opposite is also true: some companies (especially new ones) focus too much on what makes a rum different from its piers, that they end up describing something that comes across as “gimmicky” and that turns away traditionalists and true category advocates.
This is where it pays to know the difference between branding and marketing. Branding is a combination of a rum’s identity _and_ its personality: it highlights its raw materials, its production, aging, blending, etc., all within the accepted limits defined for the rum category. Branding also helps describe intangible things such as how consumers should perceive the rum or the distillery, the colors, shapes and themes that define it, etc.
Marketing, on the other hand, is about selectively promoting one or more aspects of the brand. Over time, marketing efforts will contribute to a brand’s image, but the brand should always be larger than any particular marketing campaign.
Companies whose marketing efforts ignore their brand (maybe because they haven’t taken the time to define it), are like rums that abandon their identity in order to focus solely on their personality. Such rums are more likely to suffer drastically (often catastrophically) from a single failed campaign.
My recommendation is to always try to build a brand that is solidly seated on the rum’s identity, judiciously adorned with only the most salient personality traits.
Cheers,
Luis Ayala, Editor and Publisher