Branding fundamentals: part 1 of 4

A definition of branding

What is a brand and why is it important?

It’s a common misconception that a brand is just a logo or a tag line — but they are merely its signature. So what is a brand?

To put it at its simplest, a brand is a promise. It encapsulates what people think about your business, product or service when they encounter it:

• What do they think your brand offers?
• Is their understanding of your brand what you wish it to be?
• How is your ‘offer’ differentiated from your competitors?
• Do people trust your brand to deliver that offer?
• What personality do they attribute to it?
• How does their perception alter once they have bought from you?

It’s self evident that these are questions of central importance to any business and the way that it communicate with its suspects, prospects and customers.

And it follows that if you have a business, you have a brand, whether you regard it as having one or not! The pertinent question to ask yourself is the extent to which you control your brand’s direction and influence its perception.

Branding fundamentals: part 2 of 4

Understand and take control of your brand

To take control of your existing brand or to build a new one, you must first understand its context — the brand landscape. The key to this is to consider perspectives other than your own by going through the logical branding process honed by thousands of businesses over the last half a century or more. These steps are common sense and can be applied diligently by anyone.

Of course, knowing how much time and energy is appropriate to put into each step, having the time to do it yourself, and then having the objectivity to apply the findings is not nearly so easy — which is where we can help!

Our programmes help you create a clear brand strategy.

Branding fundamentals: part 3 of 4

The foundation of a clear brand strategy

Our Micro Branding and Corporate Branding programmes help you achieve the following:

Survey your brand landscape

• Work out your (business, product or service) brand’s core competencies
• Assess who your existing and potential customers are and find out what they like and what they don’t
• Find out how your customers and your employees feel about your brand and those of your competitors
• Define how favourably your brand is viewed by customers and potential customers
• Consider how far you can credibly develop your brand without moving away from its core competencies

Create your brand blueprint

• Distil the findings into an easily digestible document, or series of documents, with clear action points
• Provide a basis for brand propositions that:
• Motivate and challenge your staff (internally focused mission and vision statements);
• Speak directly to your market and differentiate you from your competitors (externally focused tag lines and headlines)
• Armed with this, you are well placed to begin building a compelling and consistent brand.

Branding fundamentals: part 4 of 4

Building a compelling and consistent brand

Building a successful brand begins with a well-founded brand strategy — without this you’re just going on gut instinct. To implement such a strategy, you need marketing tools that communicate your brand values engagingly and consistently, and staff or products that uphold these same values.

The common thread that runs through all of this is honesty — stay true to what you offer and deliver to your customers. There are some salutory lessons that can be learnt by considering the biggest branding mistakes.

Whilst ensuring that your staff embody your brand is your responsibility, the crucial marketing assets that support their activities are usually outsourced.

We can develop a marketing strategy for you and then oversee its implementation. We work with third parties to help create corporate identities, printed collateral and web communications that are ‘on brand’. We can perform this role for you on a retained basis, either with your preferred suppliers, or with consultants that we recommend and work with regularly.