The Color on Brand

I recently mentioned to a cynically-minded lawyer friend, “oh, we’re refreshing our brand at Liquidnet!” With a suspicious stare and a sarcastic tone, she quipped back, “I’m not sure what that means… but it sounds important to marketing people.” Ultimately she is right—branding is important to marketers. But that importance is more than just colors, fonts, and PR stunts. Brand is a vital connection with (and promise to) our customers, employees, and the rest of the world—and it’s a potentially powerful source of company growth and value.

Brands essentially tap into this human need we all have to connect with others, which is why brands are often characterized as people. The more clearly defined the personality, the easier it is to determine if it’s someone (or something) you’re drawn to. That’s why the best brands have the most definable sense of self.

WPP’s Brandz annually tracks the value of brands around the world. They estimate that the total value of the top 100 most valuable global brands (just the brand not the company) in 2018 is $4.4 trillion. Brandz even tracks the stock market performance of valuable brands versus the market average. Over the last 12 years, valuable brands have outperformed the S&P 500 by a whopping 70%, which represents huge shareholder value.

But for an intangible asset like brand, which depends so much on reputation and perception, value can turn on a dime—just ask Blackberry, Uber, Kodak, and BP. For the companies that truly ‘get’ brand, they understand that it isn’t just the domain of marketing—brand has to be applied consistently and pervasively throughout a company’s culture, strategy development, and customer service. It also has to evolve as the company and its customers evolve.

This week, Liquidnet begins evolving our brand as we are playing a bigger role in delivering innovation and solutions to our expanding customer community. Liquidnet’s brand has always been about embracing disruptive technology and creativity to solve challenges, with a consistent goal to accelerate global growth and prosperity. Our refreshed branding is a double down on that promise.

Damian Kington, Global Head of Marketing, Liquidnet