Marketing Makes Awareness As Recall Requires Branding

Although communications is a discipline where clarity is currency, conflation of marketing and branding is one misnomer that plagues business models. Yet, their mandate in an ideal setting is clear-cut. Some executives even misconstrue branding as miniaturised marketing (probably because the latter is an academic field of study). How wrong they are! Branding is the being, while marketing is the doing!

The misconception shouldn’t be, given the difference between how people see you (branding) and how they find you (marketing). Perhaps fitting both critical concepts into Top-of-Mind Awareness and Top-of-Mind Recall will provide the needed clarity. Marketing pursues TOMA, while TOMR is the outcome of branding. Awareness and consideration are foundational stages of the customer journey, but buyers generally need to know a brand and recognise its relevance before they convert – this is what branding guarantees.

This is why marketing is how the right people get to know you, whereas branding is what they know about you. Both are intertwined but not synonymous. Great campaigns get noticed. Winning brands get remembered. After marketing makes you go viral, branding keeps you in the consciousness of the audience. They’ve got to work hand in glove because as marketing ensures the customers come, branding gets them to keep coming back. They equally intersect via this question: “What will people remember my brand after the marketing tactic secures their attention?”

Branding is Upstream; Marketing is Downstream

Like the upstream sector of the petroleum industry, where exploration and production happen, branding sits at that level, working out the narrative arc, thought leadership, and reputational foundation that feed product demand. Marketing, as the downstream (distribution), ensures demand generation through ICP…