Most organisations understand that the brand is a source of sustainable competitive advantage, and increasingly consider it among their most valuable assets. It is our opinion that an effective brand strategy can help you improve others’ understanding for what you do, preserve integrity and retain goodwill & respect as well as influence choice and drive revenue.
As might be expected, we have plenty to say about the role of the brand in business. We have gathered a few articles here under the four key themes of how brands are manifested.
We enjoy sharing our knowledge and are very happy to meet for a coffee or a brief chat to discuss the challenges you might be facing.
Please feel free to call Mark on +44 (0)7867 800 608
Clarify your strategic vision as a brand promise
Use words and images to bring your brand/s to life
Plan and execute an effective brand experience
How can your brand help you motivate your staff
Clarify your strategic vision as a brand promise
Brand and business strategy are like the left and right hand. They are the yin and yang of well-planned businesses.
Your brand promise must be evident through;
- Internal service quality; which drives employee satisfaction and commitment.
- External service quality; which influences customer satisfaction and retention.
If the service qualities of both are aligned with a compelling brand promise then your strategic vision will be clearer to your target audiences, making the business more attractive and ownable. Perceived business relevance, profit growth and increased value will naturally follow.
Some people say that a brand is an ‘idea’ and that, while the product /service can be easily categorised, it is actually the promise of this idea that people buy into. This is what we call the brand promise and to define it will help your business address three key challenges.
- Be different – motivate with a distinctive and clear proposition
- Be valued – attract the right relationships with the right audiences
- Be smart – encourage your audiences to support you in your marketing efforts
Being different in a world that is constantly evolving is the first. Just think of some of the changes you have seen in your lifetime. It is the same in the business world – nothing stands still anymore. Anything that does stand still gets left behind. Ensuring your business doesn’t get left behind is essential. Presenting a unique and memorable offering is often a basic requirement for motivating business success. Wrapping this offering in a memorable story is the best way to own a unique and motivating brand promise.
Secondly, your brand is a design, marketing, communication and human resource tool, which will enable your business to build trusted relationships with audiences. Being valued by each at any time is the key to strong performance. Making a promise and then keeping to it will help substantiate your story. This tangible evidence delivered across every point of interaction with your brand will help to build loyalty. The more the whole story lives the idea, the greater chance your business will have in attracting the right relationships with the right audiences.
Thirdly everything you do, everything you own and everything you produce, helps to communicate the brand promise – so be smart. Successful businesses are built on collaborative working and your audience will play a big role in helping you to develop the wider story. This is something your marketing team should actively seek; after all “word of mouth advocacy is worth millions spent on advertising”. It is therefore important that your audience understands your vision as a brand promise and can see how it belongs in their world. Your audience must be allowed to see the promise as something they can own. Make the story personal and your audiences will write themselves into it and in so doing will support you in your marketing efforts.
If this interests you and you would like to know more, then contact us today and ask us to help you develop your ‘brand strategy’ so that you clarify your strategic vision in your brand promise.
We did a similar thing for PRA...read more
Use words and images to bring your brand/s to life
The old adage “less is more” is almost always correct. It is also true that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Therefore, we all need to learn to focus on what really needs to be addressed and not waste time on what doesn’t.
This is true when creating new brands, repositioning and rejuvenating brands in need of change, and working across the full range of communication challenges brands demand of us.
It’s only when you can feel a brand’s personality that you can buy into its promise. Brands should therefore look to appeal to their audiences’ senses by using a few carefully chosen words, images and other recall triggers.
Use words – The most powerful brands know how important it is to use words appropriately. The right words will help create; outstanding names; memorable messages and compelling behaviour. A set of values should drive your ‘belief system’ and underpin your organisation’s communications. The core values (no more than three or five in total) must be a unique combination to help distil your brand communications into simple, powerful, effective messages. Establishing a few key messages and delivering them creatively, will not only make the communication task more manageable but, will also encourage consistency in the story and so ensure your words are heard. “If they didn’t hear it, you didn’t say it”.
Use images – A brand is an investment, getting the design right from the start is crucial. Do you know what shape or form best captures your brand idea? If we are not careful to stay true to the brand’s sense of colour, tone of voice, design cues, we run the risk of producing communication that are simply less effective, or worse “off-brand”. Think about automotive brands. They are so much more than the badge on the front; they are the shape of the body-work, the sound of the engine, the smell of the interior, the choice of colour/s, the arrangement of the lights and the design of the radiator grill. All of these are what we refer to as ‘recall triggers’; the many components to each of our mind’s image of a brand promise. A brand image must not be an accident. It should be designed, crafted and carefully managed to ensure consistency in delivery. “It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it and that’s what gets results.”
Bring your brand/s to life – When we bring words and images together a very powerful thing happens; the message becomes an experience. This is vital if we want our audiences to believe in the brand idea. In order to find new routes to the customer we must place ‘experience’ at the heart of the communication planning process. The objective should be to leverage marketing and organisational development initiatives to bring the brand alive. How should your brand behave internally and externally? If it were a person, how would it react in every situation? Brand managers should be constantly striving to keep the brand fresh. Many a successful brand has become complacent, taken a nap and rested on its laurels too long, living off the glory days only to wake up adrift in unfamiliar territory.
The old adage..."It takes a soul to touch another soul; the soul within the brand."
We can help you develop your ‘brand communications’ to deliver the desired experience for your brand/s:
- Manage the communications
- Visualise the brand story
- Create and explore new opportunities
If this interests you and you would like to know more, then contact us today and ask us to help you to bring your brand to life.
We did a similar thing for First Protocol...read more
Plan and execute an effective brand experience
It takes time and pressure to make a diamond. The word diamond is derived from the ancient Greek and means ‘invincible’. A diamond brand might be perceived to be an organisation that has aligned all its key relationships; strategy to performance; leaders to their people; people to their customers; and business to the community.
Effectively managing each relationship so that it reinforces the desired brand experience is the secret to creating an invincible brand. This is because the brand has a central value to the absolute marketing mix by;
- Improving understanding of what you do
- Preserving integrity, goodwill and respect
- Influencing stakeholder awareness and belief in your products and services
This is just as true and important inside the organisation as it is outside. And it is important to remember that a brand is a living thing, which must be carefully nurtured. This is best achieved when agency/client and agency/agency work together in a collaborative way. It is important to work in partnership with client organisations to explore and develop strategic thinking, pushing boundaries and challenging convention. Planning and executing a brand experience, one that will differentiate the story from the also runs will demand a diverse mix of intellectual rigour and creativity. The aim is to shape the experience, embrace creativity and drive innovation to create top line growth for the business and so add value.
Shape the experience – be clear about the idea underpinning the brand. This is what gives the business its soul, allowing the audience to reach deep inside and to be rewarded for their interest. Brand experiences that consistently deliver on a relevant idea and involve their audiences in the story will engage prospects much more successfully. “Tell me and I may forget, show me and I may remember, but involve me and I will understand”.
Embrace creativity – to keep the experience fresh and exciting it is important to understand the role of creativity. Unfortunately, this is something we have marginalised in business culture for too long. Fundamentally everyone is creative and it is only when our culture is designed to encourage creativity that exciting and fresh things begin to happen. Creativity is revealed in our ability to solve problems, big and small.
Drive innovation – the objective should be to focus on ideas and inventions that help recruit and retain the best staff and customers, because these give people something to engage in. An effective brand experience will be all about the journey, not the destination. It is the experience of this journey that will allow the brand experience to enhance (or not) the reputation of the business.
Our associate brand consultant (please link to Mark Wing on Consultants page) can help you develop an effective ‘brand experience’ to influence and drive cultural change through:
- A greater sense of relevance
- Improved recruitment and retention
- Enhanced reputation
If this interests you and you would like to know more, then contact us today and ask us to help you to develop an effective brand experience.
We did a similar thing for BT...read more
How can brand help you motivate your staff?
As a brand consultant I often get asked to help with internal brand alignment programs.
Winning companies have learnt the importance of treating their staff in a manner consistent with their brand values. A business will not succeed unless its employees are aligned with the brand strategy. This is just as important to understand if you operate your business as a sole trader, a consultant building teams of freelancers around you, an SME, or you work in a large multinational organisation).
Employees need to be allowed to feel involved, responsible and engaged because managing the brand should not just be the responsibility of the marketing department. The way each person in a business behaves will say something about what the business believes in, how much it cares for its relationships and where it is going. If you/r own people do not buy into the brand its unlikely your customers will.
Lord Seiff (Former President) Marks & Spencer PLC once said; "no matter how good or successful or clever you are, your business is in the hands of the people you hire".
A friend of mine has been voted businesswoman of the year and her business is regarded as one of the fastest growing in the midlands. She only started a few years ago and is clearly a huge success today. I asked her what the secret is and she said, "we operate with one guiding principle; to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves".
She runs a 'people business' and so it has been essential that the people in the business understand the part they play in delivering this core idea. By so doing they have helped to ensure the success of the business for the benefit of all. As far as I am aware her employees are very motivated because they can see how the culture they work in is successful and they all get to share in that success.