Firstly, we believe that, as a baseline principle ...
Brand is business, and business is brand.
A very clever bloke (Marty Neumeier) once wrote “your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what your customers say it is”. We agree. Every interaction and touchpoint in your business plays a part in shaping the perception that your customers have of your brand.
Every single audience interaction, and every conversation between your teams and your customers, adds to the picture of how you are perceived. Your products, your messages, your services, your marketing, your social media content, etc etc, all play a vital part in giving a sense of what you do and why you do it.
Everything you do in running your business affects the perception of your brand.
It can be complicated and complex to manage.
Dilution leads to confusion.
In the pursuit of growth, there is often a temptation to extend product lines or diversify the offer. Over time, it’s easy to lose sight of what your brand stands for and your core offer, often detaching it from the audience for whom it was originally intended.
In trying to speak to everyone, you might engage no-one. This can be detrimental to your internal audiences just as much as your external ones.
Strong brands concentrate on being famous for one thing. They find ways to grow without sacrificing what made them great in the first place. That is a position of strength. It’s much easier to be creative when your focus is narrow. Generalists struggle to perform magic.
The logistics brand DPD does this. They are famous for one thing (delivering parcels) and do it really well. If it was easy, then every other logistics company would do it well too. But they don't. At least not in my experience.
We’re not talking about a logo or even a proposition.
Your identity = purpose, principles and personality. It’s the DNA of who you are. The starting point. The raw components that drive everything else.
Brands with a clear reason for being seem to develop loyal, richer cultures and find it easier to innovate. They understand their position and place in the world. This doesn’t mean they are immune to the trappings and challenges of growth, but they are better placed to meet them head-on.
Here’s a list of the top 7 ‘values’ we encounter all of the time…
Quality. Integrity. Caring. Teamwork. Innovative. Excellence. Accountability. Arguably, they have lost their meaning in this context. If you have any of the above ‘values’ displayed on your website or walls, burn them and start again. You can do better.
Having a purpose does not work for all brands. But defining your identity is crucial.
Not enough businesses build their brand from the ground up.
Whether you agree with their product or not, look no further than Paddy Power for a brand with a grip on its identity. Cheeky, yet principled, it is not afraid to poke fun at itself and the sporting sector it represents.
Brands are clamouring for attention ALL OF THE TIME.
It sounds obvious, but what we see time and again is complexity. Added features, upgrades, multiple products or services, huge lists of what you can do with a service. Add to that internal strategies for upselling, cross-selling and bundles, and you have a confused team to add to the mix.
There’s nothing wrong with that of course. But if you want to stand out, reel it in.
Make your products easy to understand and easy to use. Make your audiences’ lives easier. Keep your customer interactions simple, engaging and rewarding. Ultimately, aim for simplicity.
If you have multiple audiences, speak to them individually. Don’t try to push one message for everyone. It will get lost.
Imagine if your brand was restricted to just one sentence to communicate what it does. How would you approach it?
Let the hare go.
If you want to build a strong brand you need to ditch the short-term view.
Remember the drink Prime? The coolest thing on the planet for 10 seconds. Stores couldn’t get enough of it. Parents paid over the odds for it. Then, when it wasn’t cool any more, it fell out of favour as quickly as it appeared.
Brands take time to mature and gain trust. When you peer under the surface, even the overnight successes are 10+ years old. Having a clear purpose will help to steer a course (see above).
Businesses that consistently stick to their story without repeating the same message build a stronger and lasting perception.
Consistency is key. Even though you might get bored of saying the same thing, customers that are new to you won’t.
The point is, a long-term strategy takes courage and discipline. Especially over a number of years, or even decades. Kit Kat has been using the same ‘have a break, have a Kit Kat’ idea since 1957. That’s almost 70 years of saying the same thing. Many brands would dump the line after 2 years now, in the chase for ‘new’.
Being disciplined doesn’t mean being boring. Improving processes that add to the customer experience, being creative with communications without straying from the core message and uniformly applying the visual identity across every brand touchpoint are all challenges to be relished.
Brands that identify genuine audience needs find it easier to design great experiences.
Many businesses create audience personas or profiles, but then fail to utilise them at all.
Brands that involve their audiences (but don’t obsess over them) are stronger for it. Getting feedback is only valuable if you frame it correctly; customers are not always right. They might tell you stuff but it doesn't mean you have to act upon it. What people say they do, think they do and actually do are entirely different things (thanks Margaret Mead).
Change is inevitable, and staying dynamic is hard to achieve when human nature prefers the safety of routine, process and certainty (businesses are just a collection of people after all).
The days of large super-brands are numbered. Those businesses that are less rigid in structure and more adaptable to the changing needs of their audiences will roll with the punches and emerge stronger.
Do you recognise any of these habits in your brand?
