Want Your Customers to be Loyal, Super, Raving Fans? What’s Your Brand Promise?

April 17, 2018/0 Comments/in Brand Promise /by Lorraine Carter

Your brand promise is an emotional contract you sign with your customer. Just like a real-world contract, it has qualifications and requirements that you’ve committed to upholding. And, also like an actual contract, your brand promise can bind you to your customer in a meaningful way for months or years to come—and this has big implications for your revenue.

In a Gallup study of more than 6,000 consumers, researchers focused on the brand promise of six major American companies representing the airline, hospitality, food and beverage, financial service, auto and retail industries [1].

The researchers set out to identify three key things:

First, whether customers could accurately identify the company’s brand promise
Second, whether customers were aligned with that promise and
Third, how much of the customer’s wallet share that brand received

Wallet share is described as the proportion of spending in a given category (i.e. the consumer’s monthly food and beverage budget) received by the specific brand.

The results told a very clear story. When consumers were both aware of the brand promise and aligned with it—which was the case with two out of the six brands studied—the company received an average wallet share of nearly 50 percent.

That’s compared with just 23 percent wallet share when customers were aware of the brand promise but not aligned with it.

In another example, a study by Deloitte found that hotel brands that both developed and delivered on a strong brand promise saw an increase in repeat bookings and ancillary spending by their guests—and the results were exponential [2].

For every 1 percent increase in the perceived strength of the hotel’s brand promise, it boosted the guest’s intent to recommend that hotel by more than 3 percent and their intent to book again by nearly 5 percent. The greater the perceived increase in brand promise, the bigger the impact on the bottom line.

Related: Brand Promises, How to Craft, Articulate and Live Them for Brand Success

And there was one additional component worth noting in the Deloitte study: hotels with a stronger brand promise enjoyed an increased likelihood of the customer becoming a brand advocate. And that’s the real holy grail here—to breed raving, loyal fans who not only shop with you consistently but sing your praises from the rooftops to anyone who will listen.

This tells us we have two jobs when it comes to a brand promise:

We must first articulate it clearly, and then

Deliver on it consistently to our customers

It might sound daunting, but a strong brand promise is something all enduring brands master. If you want to build a brand that will stand the test of time, nailing your brand promise is an essential component of your overall brand strategy. We’ll explain how to do it and, in turn, create dedicated brand champions who know, love and trust your company.

It’s critical to understand that branding is NOT marketing or design but the bedrock strategy supporting and directing your whole business so your brand strategy is fundamental to your business’s success, longevity and ongoing profitability.

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The Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ Mastermind empowers you to build your brand strategy, raise the visibility of your brand, reduce customer acquisition costs and position your brand as the №1 choice for your customers. Discover more here.

Branding is all about influencing your customer’s choice. Do you want professional direction crafting your company’s brand promise, profile and positioning from Persona Branding and Design so you can build your standout brand, make it highly visible, attract your ideal customers and give them a compelling reason to buy consistently — at a premium — and transform them into raving loyal fans? Get in touch here.

How To Build Your Brand Promise To Breed Raving Loyal Fans

1. Brand Promise Draws On The Power Of Emotion

When it comes to decision making, logic takes a backseat. That applies to purchasing decisions as well. Research has shown that even consumers who think they’re making a decision based on logic are merely using logic to support the emotion-based decision they’ve already made [3]. The good news for brands is that your brand promise is all about emotion.

Whereas brand positioning represents the “logic” side of the equation – the unique place in peoples’ minds that your brand occupies in the world – distinguishing your company through its brand profile and using a unique value proposition with your brand promise fulfils an emotional need for the customer. Even customers themselves readily admit they form a ‘psychological contract’ with brands they trust based on elements of that brand’s promise [4].

Creating a brand promise that elicits a strong emotional connection will help customers make a decision to buy from you, despite the price and other logic-based factors.

Related: Brand Promises: Are You Consistently Delivering Yours?

Colorado-based HED Cycling is a great example of a company that uses its brand promise in conjunction with brand collateral to draw an emotional response from its primary customers.

Image via HED Cycling

The company has adopted a promise it calls ‘True Speed,’ which is a commitment to ‘bringing every rider the best possible, most reliable, fastest, and most well-rounded cycling products.’[5]

Now, watch how the company articulates that promise in one of its marketing videos:

Though buyers could likely find a more affordable option for bicycle gear (some of HED’s wheels range upwards of $2,000 apiece), the video portrays cycling as something sleek and upscale—an experience rather than just a bike ride. HED’s brand promise to deliver the most excellent wheels and the fastest ride, in turn, rings true. It comes as no surprise that the company was named by Forbes as one of the Best Small Companies in America [6].

Related: 4 Reasons Why Your Business Profit Starts With Your Brand Mission

2. Brand Promise Builds Your Likability

Just as consumers make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, they also buy from brands they like with far greater frequency. That is to say, if a consumer finds a brand likeable, he or she is more likely to remember it and spend money with it in the future. A body of research asserts that in advertising, likability is the number one factor in the advert’s impact on a customer’s decision to buy [7].

Image via Bark Box

One brand that’s excelling in the likability department is BarkBox, a subscription box service that sends dogs a selection of toys and treats each month. Its brand promises (adorably) to bring pooches “The joy of 1 million belly scratches. From heavy chewers to options suiting those with special allergies, we paw-pick the best natural treats, chews, and innovative toys to match your dog’s unique preferences.”

The brand has become known for its “unboxing” videos, which instil delight in both humans and their furry friends.

Can you watch that and not smile? It’s an excellent tactic the brand uses to demonstrate firsthand how it follows through on its brand promise—and it’s paid off. Since BarkBox’s launch in 2012, the company has grown to a reported $100 million in annual revenue and more than 50 million products sold [8].

3. Infuse Your Brand Promise With Authenticity

Earlier, we touched on the importance of not only making a brand promise but following through with fulfilment on it. The reason for this is that your authenticity is at stake.

In a survey on brand values, participants ranked authenticity at the top of the list, with 87 percent of global consumers say it’s important for brands to “act with integrity at all times.”[9] To put things in perspective, authenticity outranked innovation as an essential quality by 15 percent.

Once you lose your authenticity and trust, the damage to your brand can be irreversible. Thus, it’s important to make sure your brand promise is infused into all levels of your operation.

Related: From Zero to Hero: How to Become a Must-Have Brand

Farmstead is a San Francisco based startup that promises to make grocery shopping easier and faster than going to the grocery store.

Image via Farmstead

It’s a wonderful promise, but it comes with some weighty responsibilities. Other popular food delivery services have drawn heavy criticism for making grocery shopping easier at the cost of contributing to society’s massive food waste problem [10].

Farmstead meets the challenge of its brand promise head-on with a transparent approach to combating food waste. The company tests product options and eliminates unpopular ones that would sit unpurchased in a warehouse, and uses artificial intelligence to more accurately assess when it’s time to re-stock in order to avoid spoilage [11].

It’s a working example of authenticity in action that fans have taken warmly to.

Farmstead Facebook reviews

Maintain your integrity in everything you do by keeping your brand promise in mind with every decision you make for the company and every part of your brand strategy.

Related: Use Psychology in Your Brand Strategy to Create Irresistible Brand Experiences and Increase Sales

4. Your Team Should Commit To Your Brand Promise Consistently

One of the most important assets to implementing your brand promise might be sitting right beside you as you read this: your team. Your employees are your boots on the ground that put your brand promise into practice day in and day out.

You can help them live your brand promise consistently and authentically by developing your internal brand strategy and marketing, in addition to the external marketing you execute for your customers. Your internal team are one of the most critical factors in creating a great customer experience with your brand.

Related: The Age Of Internal Branding And Selling It From The Inside Out

In a study from Thailand, researchers found that coordinating strong internal branding with human resource programmes like employee training and development had a strong impact on the attitude and behaviour of employees in their delivery of the brand promise [12]. When you help your employees believe in the brand and develop your internal branding together with your brand culture, they’ll be more likely to use their actions to turn your customers into the repeat customers and the raving fans you crave — and your bottom line loves.

Related: The Impact of Company Brand Culture On Driving Performance and Increasing Sales

Cancer Treatment Centers Of America is a standout example of a brand whose employees live out the brand promise in all that they do. The organization promises to “rally our team around you, delivering compassionate, integrative cancer care for your body, mind and spirit.”

Image via Cancer Treatment Centres of America

Watch as one of their patients shares her experience with the CTCA team:

It’s a brand promise that would truly be impossible to carry out without the full commitment of every doctor and practitioner on staff. CTCA was recently ranked among the top ten best-loved brands in America, as cited by AdWeek [13].

Image via Cancer Treatment Centres of America

It can be tempting to brush off brand promise as something that’s simply “fluffy” or “feel good.” But as these examples show, brand promise is a powerful tool to breed loyal, lifelong fans, which are one of the best possible revenue-drivers for your company.

Loyal customers are more likely to buy from you and spend more money on each purchase, and a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to a profit increase of anywhere from 25 to 95 percent [14]. That’s almost doubling your profits simply by focusing on keeping customers happy.

And happy customers multiply. A study by Bain and Company found that a customer who has a single positive ordering experience with a company is more likely to refer three friends, while a customer who has had at least ten positive ordering experiences with a company was likely to refer as many as seven friends [15].

By crafting a strong brand promise and infusing it into your company brand culture in an authentic way, you’ll create raving fans who give you invaluable word-of-mouth marketing, which is stronger than any advert you can buy.

If you prefer a DIY approach to building your brand, check out our Personality Profile Performer™ programme created to help you build your brand yourself — including your brand promise.

Start building your standout, highly visible brand now with Lorraine Carter here

The Personality Profile Performer™ is a highly effective programme for self-learners that guides you through the process of building your beloved brand step by step! It also ensures you get clear on what your brand stands for and enables you to articulate your brand promise Check it out here.

Questions To Consider:

What is your brand promise?
What emotional need does your product or service fulfil?
Is your brand likeable? If not, why?
Are you following through on your brand promise in an authentic way?
Do your employees truly buy into and live your brand promise every day?

Sources:

1. http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/153005/consumers-brand.aspx

2. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-consumer-business-hotel-brand-promise.pdf

3. http://www.today.mccombs.utexas.edu/2010/04/do-you-make-buying-decisions-based-on-logic-or-emotion-a-tale-of-two-chickens/

4. https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=48809

5. https://www.hedcycling.com/about/

6. https://www.forbes.com/sites/boburlingham/2017/05/09/forbes-small-giants-2017-americas-best-small-companies/#308f44014c32

7. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/management-advice/9014231/Think-Tank-Likeability-is-still-a-key-driver-of-advertisings-effectiveness.html

8. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299362

9. http://www.adweek.com/digital/the-20-most-authentic-brands-in-the-us-and-why/

10. https://foodtank.com/news/2017/08/amazon-whole-foods/

11. http://www.businessinsider.com/farmstead-is-taking-on-amazon-and-pursuing-a-100-billion-opportunity-2017-10

12. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241359276_Internal_branding_to_influence_employees%27_brand_promise_delivery_A_case_study_in_Thailand

13. http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/who-are-years-best-loved-brands-hint-half-are-probably-younger-you-168930/

14. https://smallbiztrends.com/2014/09/increase-in-customer-retention-increases-profits.html

15. http://www.bain.com/Images/Value_online_customer_loyalty_you_capture.pdf

7 Universal Branding Lessons From Christmas Adverts

December 12, 2016/0 Comments/in Advertising, Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Customer Engagement, Storytelling /by Lorraine Carter

You’d not be alone in thinking that 2016 delivered some unexpected political surprises on both sides of the pond. Your customers may share that thought. But uncertainty is no friend to retail therapy, so to lighten the mood and reinforce economic prosperity, we’ve collected some of the outstanding moments — for better or for worse — as distributed in video format by the forefront U.K. brands doing their best at storytelling this holiday season.

While entertaining to watch, you may also benefit from pairing several observations that apply to strategic thinking for SMBs / SMEs and enterprise organisations — we all need a laugh at the moment! Have you seen Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot Christmas advert?

Here are our favourites and others that miss the mark. Yet, lessons are learned all around.

Do you agree? Did we miss any?

1. Brand Personification

Aldi is a leading global retailer and one of the world’s largest privately owned companies with over 7,500 store locations. But that hasn’t stopped them from adopting a brand voice in the form of an animated three-inch-tall carrot who desperately wants to meet Santa. A sure fire winner due in no small part to the theme song from “Home Alone,” the one-minute rhymed narration has had 1.8 million YouTube views in its first four weeks. Short and sweet.

Takeaway: Give your brand an irresistible personality. Humanize your brand, give it an authentic voice, enable connections with the character your brand embodies. Think of enduring 20th century mascots such as the Jolly Green Giant and Ol’ Lonely, the Maytag Repairman with nothing to fix. Consider 21st century successes like the sexy Old Spice Man and “The Most Interesting Man in the World” by Dos Equis.

2. Confusing Branding

For the holiday voice of Sainsbury’s, James Corden sings, “The streets are chaotic, the shops idiotic, there’s a queue for the queue…” Weirdly, it’s an animation about a frazzled dad stuck on a delayed train (“It’s a catastrophe! I’ll never get it done!”) who perhaps never heard of online shopping. We’re not sure what mileage Sainsbury’s gets out of 3:35 minutes of highlighting the hassle of Christmas shopping.

Takeaway: Don’t stray off message. To elevate your brand, stick to the core messaging so consumers can quickly see the call to action. Like too many different fonts and colours on the same page, a message can easily get lost in the shuffle…especially during peak times such as holidays and back to school. Be clear, be consistent, be focused, be unified in your messaging.

3. Feel Good Branding

At a rather lengthy 2:10 minutes, John Lewis’s Christmas Advert 2016 takes a risk that viewers’ attention won’t wander. However, there’s not a chance, as viewers really do want to see how this story concludes. Featuring the family pet, foxes, badgers, squirrels and hedgehogs, we see animals enjoying a secret midnight trampoline romp. With extensive social media and TV tie-ins garnering a remarkable 21 million views and counting, it’s less of an advert than a short movie clip with an uplifting soundtrack (“One Day I’ll Fly Away”) about Buster the Boxer. Highly shareable — and directly associated with the store’s toy department — it’s a distinct pull away from last year’s lonely, elderly man “sadvertising” theme.

Takeaway: Emotional branding has huge appeal. To successfully tap into creating a bond between brand and consumer is the most effective connection of all. Get it right, like John Lewis does here, and you’re golden. (Bonus: Word-of-mouth and shares are guaranteed!)

4. Branding Content Without a Point

Tesco chooses to introduce us to yet another “typical” shopper annoyed with the season’s chores. We get to hear the thoughts running through her mind (“It’s only November and my clothes still smell of Bonfire”) as she becomes overwhelmed by a mental to-do list, rendering her frozen behind the shopping trolley in mid-aisle. We certainly get a sense of place (the uninspiring inside of a Tesco store), but what’s the story line? The only point made comes at the end (for any viewers that have hung around) when she speaks Tesco’s tagline aloud, “Nah, bring it on.” Did they actually think this advert would get many shares?

Takeaway: Like any good story, your brand message must grab your audience’s attention in the first few seconds, or they’re gone. Many video views will be made on mobile and a good percentage^[1] will be seen in public places with the volume turned off, so a woman standing still by her shopping cart cannot maintain audience interest.

5. Branding That Spins a Classic

Marks & Spencer re-purposes an age-old story, this one is about Santa and Mrs. Claus on Christmas Eve, and re-tells it with a modern spin. You needn’t have the Hollywood budget and Oscar-star studded cast that M&S can afford in order to accomplish something similar. The result is a compelling, contemporary tale with a feminist twist that some viewers are calling, “a hundred times better than John Lewis’s,” in the 2016 Christmas advert annual parade. Some 7.3 million views so far for “Christmas With Love From Mrs Claus.”

Takeaway: Dress up a classic tale is usually a good storytelling idea. Mrs Claus in a red sheath dress and high heels delivering gifts in her own helicopter works incredibly well. The advert manages to also provide a call to action that is on point for the brand, once we see what’s in the gift box Mrs Claus leaves under the Christmas tree.

6. Branding to Surprise and Delight

And the winner is…Heathrow Airport, connecting with everyone in their advertisement, “Coming Home for Christmas.” Anyone who has flown home for the holidays can identify with these two elderly teddy bears making their way from arrival gate to meeting point. Take a close look at Edward Bair’s passport — he’s 71, just like Heathrow Airport. Stay tuned for the surprise ending; there’s a lovely surprise.

Takeaway: Making authentic connections to human emotions are any brand’s surefire success. LHR does everything right in this year’s ad. Not a department store, not a supermarket, Heathrow Airport is the glue that speaks to both travelers and their hosts coming home for the holidays, so most everyone can relate to this tearjerker, even without the soundtrack.

7. Branding From Our House to Yours

Lidl Ireland packs a lot of emotion into one minute with “Homecoming.” See behind the scenes as a lovely, but unassuming family, prepares the country house and Christmas supper for a recently widowed Grandpa as guest of honor. At one minute, the length is perfect. No words are needed — go ahead, watch it without the sounds and see that it can still work.

Takeaways: Again, emotional branding that leaves people with a strong feeling is the hot button here. Will they smile or cry? That’s your choice. When you create material that’s so compelling that it’s eminently shareable, your viral brand is massively strengthened in customers’ hearts and minds.

Questions you may ask yourself about branding lessons from the pros:

Does my brand have a strong brand promise?
Have I fully communicated that brand promise well?
Does my brand have a personality? Does it align with my product or service?
Have I used my brand persona to grow audience beyond my base?
Does my brand receive more than its fair share? Or does my brand under-perform?
How do I know if it’s time for a brand re-fresh?

Want to clarify your brand promise, develop your brand personality — standout more effectively to increase your sales? Then take a look here at our online eprogramme which walks you through step-by-step ‘How to Build Your Brand’.

Alternatively if you want some in-person professional direction to build your brand then drop us a line to [email protected] or give us a call T: +353 1 8322724 (GMT).

We’d be delighted to help.

Find out ‘How to Build Your Brand’ with the Personality Profile Performer™ programme

^[1] https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/need-to-know/try-this-at-home/85-percent-facebook-videos-watched-without-sound

What Brands Can Learn From Political Campaigns

August 31, 2016/0 Comments/in Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relevance, Brand Reputation, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Challenger Brands, Disruptor Brands, Personal Branding, Storytelling, Sub-Branding, Sub-Brands /by Lorraine Carter

The races for 10 Downing Street and the White House highlight universal lessons in brand strategy for keen observers. As a brand, there’s none more emotive and powerful than a prime minister or president of the United States.

The time period available in politics for building a party platform, selecting leaders, and creating a campaign is much shorter, and consequently more intense, compared to all other arenas of brand building.

Nonetheless, just like the smallest of brands, the candidates must build that essential emotional bond whether through shaking hands, kissing babies or connecting with consumers at every single touchpoint in a way that’s relevant to them to earn every single vote. As students of brand marketing, the highly focused, condensed time frame and intense process of building a brand to attract voters — similarly to gaining customers — is rich in takeaways for businesses of any size.

US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – (Public Domain)

Brand Vision: Differentiation is Everything in Brand Strategy

How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m not voting…all politicians are the same.” Political campaigns remind us that clear brand differentiation is key if you are to capture your audience’s attention, imagination and support. In politics that vision is policy; in branding that vision can be whatever you choose…as long as it’s undeniably clear, relevant to your primary audience and expressed in easy to understand language that resonates with them.

Image via hillaryclinton.com

Explain your brand vision. Paint a picture of what the world could look like and how others can be part of that when they buy into the vision of your brand. This must be a really bright North Star that shines for your audience and attracts word-of-mouth referral time after time.

Listen as US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delineates four essential human freedoms. FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech leaves no question regarding the nation’s vision, “attainable in our own time and generation,” on the eve of US involvement in World War II.

Listen as John F. Kennedy takes just 30 seconds to articulate his vision in the 1961 inaugural address, speaking first to Americans and then to fellow citizens of the world.

Healthy Brand Competition

In sales training, we’re taught to emphasize benefits; trashing the competition is not the right approach. Some politicians are known to be terrible at this. Instead of articulating an optimistic vision, candidates often tell you how lousy the incumbent and/or the competition is. Arguably some consider Donald Trump to be the champion of insults — a skill he developed on reality television and honed in debates — which doesn’t always translate so well in real life.

To get out the vote, that political position must be communicated across all stakeholders: volunteer voter registration workers, doorbell ringers, call centres, college campus activists, hundreds of regional election headquarters, social media gurus, data experts, staffers, media and the public. To gain customers, that brand message must be reflected at every touchpoint and resonate with current buyers, prospective buyers, suppliers, vendors, distributors, every employee, shareholders, investors, and the CEO.

In the absence of articulating and sharing a compelling brand message, disinterest develops, or even cynicism and mistrust. In politics, this translates into divisiveness, fear, insecurity — and a landslide for the opposition. For a brand, it means that reputation suffers and sales decline.

You Are Your Brand

The brand called YOU is a multi-layered lesson we can learn (both good and bad practices) by watching the political stage during an election cycle. Certainly, public opinion can be influenced by the packaging: takeaways like Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and Donald Trump’s unique hairstyle make an indelible mark, as with any brand.

Meryl Streep as Donald Trump – (@simply_the_best_ms on Instagram)

Also, brand marketers can observe how politicians use tone of voice, choice of words, truthfulness, authenticity, facts, listening skills, presentation style, distribution channels, frequency, inspirational metaphors, storytelling, consistency or lack of it, and more to make connections and grow audience. On occasion, they provide examples of what NOT to do.

Everyone involved has a chance to be a brand that is worthy of notice via its most important asset: People. Motivated, enthusiastic, hard working, smiling, clever and talented people make all the difference.

Know Your Brand’s Target Audience

Skills and insight go into knowing and understanding your target audience so you can speak their language, tap into their attitudes and values, and build a simple, strong compelling message that they find irresistible. That magnetism factor is a really important part of successful brand building. It’s one of the critical tools used for mapping out your different customer types in what we call Purchaser Personas.

In fact it’s one of the key elements in our brand building programme called the Personality Profile Performer™. You can’t attract the attention of your ideal audience and sustain their interest if you don’t know them intimately — their needs, wants, loves, hates and aspirations. Every business has a minimum of two and up to twenty different customer Purchaser Personas which provide the critical insights and direction for how your brand can speak to your customers — winning their hearts and minds on their terms — so you can grow your business.

The mechanisms of polling, precincts and predicting are complicated. We leave that to the experts. Nonetheless, you’ll hear news commentary about politicians of all political persuasions “appealing to their base” and/or “broadening the base.”

As in branding, the articulation of mission, values, and promise are essential. Communication with target audiences to understand their likes and dislikes is the first step, however talking to the base over and over doesn’t bring in a single new vote. Brand expansion while maintaining brand loyalty with a core audience is the name of the game in politics as in retailing and other customer verticals.

Brand Messaging Cannot be Overrated

The importance of driving powerful brand impact is what Donald Trump might call “H-U-U-U-G-E” because connecting at a deep emotional level moves people strategically and emotionally. The intensity of the brand message is what makes it stand out; the authenticity of the brand message is what makes it stick.

How you communicate with your audience and what message you bring is what keeps audiences loyal and strengthens bonds. As with any branding strategy, placement, delivery, frequency and tone of voice matter. It’s so easy to turn people off with too much noise and overexposure.

In America, where the election process rolls out over two years and intensifies as election day draws nearer, this skill must be managed and sustained over weeks and months, just like a brand must do in the broader marketplace.

Image via donaldjtrump.com

Brand Storytelling Matters

It is critical to stay true to your brand’s DNA and not get lost, unglued, or disconnected. We’re conditioned that way. When a child asks you to read their favourite bedtime story, they’re anticipating the same story with the same ending.

Politicians are famous for the brand disaster known as a flip-flop on issues, and it can cost an election or tank sales. Whether in the political arena or in branding, there’s simply no room for inconsistent storytelling. It kills believability and trust.

The big why behind the brand story challenges us to build stories that promote something for the greater good. With vision, we can create and communicate a loveable brand, or a sustainable brand, or a socially responsible brand, or a caring, charitable brand…just like building a personality that people will vote for.

Sub-Branding Opportunities and Risks

Sometimes brands create sub-brands to serve expansion goals, as in Coors and Coors Light or American Express and the American Express Gold and Platinum Card. The risk is that sub-brands can detract from core brands, using precious time, energy and resources. Secondly, the sub-brand reputation reflects on its parent brand; the overall customer message can become diluted or compromised.

To minimise or eliminate risks, we recommend taking professional branding advice if you’re considering sub-branding to avoid costly mistakes. Planning your brand structures in the form of new or additional related or unrelated products or services, also known as brand architecture, is a critical part of the strategic planning and brand building process. We’ve seen this play out recently on the political world stage. Brand expansion must be taken seriously to protect core brand values. However, adding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to John McCain’s 2008 ticket diluted the brand.

When Hillary Clinton undertook a six-month vice presidential vetting process, the selection was received quite differently to when Britain’s new Prime Minister Theresa May selected dropout candidate Boris Johnson as foreign secretary in an overnight surprise. The former London mayor’s brand image is reportedly lacking in the required decorum associated with such an important role according to other world leaders.

“My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.” – Boris Johnson [1]

The Appeal of Disruptor Brands

What did brand managers learn from Bernie Sanders during the 14-month lead up to the Democratic Convention, when the challenger was the Millennials’ poster boy, a lovable white-haired grandfather, small-town Vermont Senator?

It takes time and resources — generally a year or so — for any challenger brand to successfully disrupt.

A clearly and passionately articulated brand vision should be communicated over and over again.

This candidate’s storytelling remained on message (since his youth), establishing strong authenticity, trust and delivering no surprises.

Bernie Sanders successfully reached a broad audience through brand activation and personal engagement. While pre-imposed deadlines brought his campaign to an end, the branding strategy was successful.

Watch what happens when a little bird lands on Bernie Sanders’ podium during a speech. The crowd goes crazy and the candidate turns the moment into an articulation of his vision, “No more wars.”

Consider these questions:

Is your brand vision well developed and clearly communicated?

Have you shared your brand vision with all stakeholders?

Is your brand failing to connect and perhaps in need of a rebrand or brand refresh?

Do you and your employees passionately personify your brand?

Is your brand story clearly articulated across multiple customer touchpoints?

Are you considering sub-branding as a strategy for brand expansion?

Are you a brand challenger with a clear point of differentiation?

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/london-mayor-election/mayor-of-london/10909094/Boris-Johnsons-top-50-quotes.html

10 Branding Tips From Silicon Valley on How to Be a Successful Startup Brand

August 9, 2016/2 Comments/in Brand Positioning, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relaunch, Brand Revitalisation, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Entrepreneur, Rebrand, Rebranding /by Lorraine Carter

From Silicon Valley to Silicon Docks and Silicon Roundabout, the buzzwords “entrepreneur”, “branding” and “startup” get bandied about quite a bit, so let’s take a look at their meanings. Dictionary definitions indicate that an entrepreneur is a person who initiates, organizes and manages a business and assumes its risk. A startup is the vehicle for doing so and branding is what makes your brand highly visible, different, memorable and much loved. Underlying the definition in common use today, is that an entrepreneur has a vision for a new brand, a startup that will disrupt a particular practice.

Entrepreneurship is “creative, disruptive innovation,” as notably coined by the early 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter.

A century later, a newer definition, courtesy of Silicon Valley-based investor Reid Hoffman^{^[1]}, is: “An entrepreneur is a person who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.”

Image via Gapingvoid, © Hugh MacLeod

Branding From the Beginning

Startup brands in our commercial midst are actually nothing new. In fact, branding has been central to the success of innovators from the beginning. For centuries before modern society’s computer chip lent Silicon Valley its moniker, startups have been an essential part of the economy, picking up steam — to coin a phrase — during the Industrial Revolution. In the Information Age, entrepreneurship accounted for 14 percent of all working-age Americans in 2015, some 27 million people, in the USA alone. ^{^[2]}

Startup Brands Are Still Brands

Startup brands are brands, just like established ones, only less developed. And, a branding professional who has been down this road many times can provide all-important markers for you in trailblazing the way ahead for your new brand. You’ll want to avoid brand mistakes that will likely require a costly do-over in time. Our Personality Profile Performer™ Programme is designed to guide brand owners and managers to build a highly visible, different, memorable and much loved new brand from scratch.

From birth you need a memorable name, a mission statement, a brand promise, a standout brand personality and a strong brand strategy prior to a brand launch. No one will debate that creating a startup brand isn’t hard work. We’re here to help!

Whether it’s the first sewing machine, a craft beer, or a new messaging app, being a founder is all-consuming…and always starts small even when you are thinking big.

What Is and Is Not Your Brand

The adage, “Everything is your brand and your brand is everything,”^{^[3]} as it appears in the pages of the Harvard Business Review, is true enough. However, until and unless you have your brand’s core values and the building blocks of your brand foundation in place, it is premature to take the next steps.

Your logo is not your brand. Your clever new dot.com name is not your brand. Your website is not your brand. Your packaging is not your brand. These are components of your brand to reflect your purpose and value.

Also, your place of business is definitely not your brand. Even a billion dollar brand can start in somebody’s garage…and they certainly have:

Disney in 1923
Hewlett Packard in 1939
Apple in 1976
Amazon in 1994
Google in 1998

Essentials for Startup Brands and Branding

As an entrepreneur, YOU are the voice and visionary of your brand, you embody your brand and your passion shows. Seasoned Silicon Valley startup pros offer plenty of free advice for today’s entrepreneurs.

One of the key takeaways on perspective comes from Dave McClure^{^[4]}, the straight-talking co-founder of 500Startups, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator and global investor. Here, McClure is describing the best way to make an elevator pitch for funding — yet the essence of his advice is spot-on for the strategic approach to building the foundation of a startup brand. He counsels:

“Here’s the secret: Pitch the problem, not the solution.”

“Just tell me the problem FIRST, not the SOLUTION. The reason is, I may not be able to understand what your solution does, but if you connect emotionally with me on what the problem is — and hopefully I also have the problem, or know someone who does — then I’ll give you PERMISSION to tell me more about how you’re going to solve the problem.”

Ten Essential Startup Branding Tips

Here we take a look at 10 essential startup branding tips with comments from a dozen or so outstanding innovators and advisors from the Silicon Valley dot.com frontier.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
Lynda co-founder Lynda Weinman
Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman
Microsoft founder Bill Gates
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki
Apple founder Steve Jobs
Media personality Oprah Winfrey
Intuit co-founder Scott D. Cook
Venture capitalist Matt Turck
High tech investor Ben Horowitz
Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk
Winner of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur 2015 and “Best Start-up Award” at Google’s Dublin HQ, 24-year-old James Foody, now San Francisco-based

Tip #1: Building Your Brand

“You don’t know what you don’t know.” – Oprah Winfrey at a 2014 Stanford University Graduate School of Business interview.^{^[5]}

Don’t try this alone. Silicon Valley wisdom counsels that even a genius cannot create a successful startup brand alone. No single person can possess all the required skills and have all the tools in their shed. Consider co-founders and advisors to move your business and branding strategy forward in the right direction. Remember…the “Fifth Beatle” for the Fab Four was their manager.

“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs

TechCrunch, a San Francisco, Silicon Valley media platform, says mentors are the secret weapons for a successful startup brand.^{^[6]} Their study shows that “mentors who had already achieved success in the tech industry were able to help younger tech startups outperform their peers by a factor of three.”

Broadlake, in Dublin, models their whole philosophy on a very hands-on approach as both advisors, mentors and investors who invest their time and capital to help entrepreneurs succeed.

“There’s always new challenges and I think with new challenges we gotta switch on, we gotta engage, we gotta work with these teams and try and achieve often for what these ambitious growing companies are looking to do, which is ground breaking stuff.” – Pete Smyth, Broadlake

Image via Broadlake

“Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast, or a bridge player.” – Bill Gates

Image via Stanford University

Tip #2: A Brand is Not a Logo

Brands are not solely visual. Your new brand is about how you make people think and feel about your product or service. The most common misperception out there among startups is from those who think their brand is about their logo and not much else! CEOs, owners, partners, investors and founders should not make this mistake…nor should designers.

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos

Image via Slideshare

A side note: When Marissa Mayer was appointed new CEO of a struggling Yahoo in 2013, a new logo was among the first tasks undertaken by an internal committee. Meantime, email customers were unhappy with their service.

Image via Naldz Graphics

Lesson: When Yahoo skipped the brand audit they ended up with a deep customer disconnect that was never regained. ^{^[7]}

The Yahoo backstory to date:

Image via Twitter

Tip #3: Build Brand Trust

As a founder, you are the embodiment of your brand both internally and externally. From the moment you interact with your first core users, trust is critical. Your company may grow, but brand trust is a constant.

“Google is a consumer company and our success is directly linked to our users trusting us.” – Susan Wojcicki

And when you hire, make sure you hire the right people to personify the brand in its infancy. It is absolutely critical that your brand is represented properly all the time.

Image via Twitter

“If someone likes you they will listen to you. If someone trusts you they will do business with you.” – James Foody, Ayda

Image via Ayda

Tip #4: Identify Brand Need

When Lynda Weinman started teaching web design in 1993, she went in search of a textbook. All the books she found were too technical for beginners. (You can probably see where this story will lead.)

“I remember thinking maybe this book doesn’t exist yet. I went home from the bookstore and wrote the book proposal.” – Lynda Weinman

It was early days on the internet in 1995 when Lynda then got the idea to move her reference materials online and create a teaching course around them. Two decades later, Weinman had earned the nickname, “Mother of the Internet.”^{^[8]}

In the spring of 2015, Lynda Weinman sold her company, Lynda.com, to LinkedIn for $1.5 billion. The new owner, the world’s premier business-oriented social networking service, was seven years away from its own founding when the brand Lynda.com was created.

Tip #5: Become a Brand Guru

Once you’ve identified a passion, become an expert in whatever it is. Tell your story well. In the brand’s early days, you need anecdotes, not raw data. Be authentic, be enthusiastic, be clued up and know your stuff. Your brand promise must be frequently voiced, relatable, and completely transparent.

“Whether you are interacting with customers, fundraising or recruiting, you are always selling and, and the best salespeople are master storytellers. Craft a compelling and genuine company story that resonates with your audience not just intellectually, but also emotionally.” – Matt Turck, Venture Capitalist, FirstMark Capital

Tip #6: Determine Brand Positioning

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is.” – Scott D. Cook

Your core customers are your sounding board — an important audience for a startup. Is your brand positioning clear? Customers want companies to listen to their opinions, so you’ll need feedback to guide you in shaping your brand position in the marketplace. Before you can concern yourself with traction and loyalty, you need to ensure that the brand resonates, fills a need, and has value. Get feedback at every iteration along the way to ensure you’re moving in the right direction for consumer wants and needs. Tweaks will be necessary.

“Another one of my favourite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, “Done is better than perfect.” I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.” – Sheryl Sandberg

Tip #7: Communicate Your Brand

It can be difficult to properly communicate your startup vision to others. But, it’s critical that you do so effectively.

Keep lines of communication open constantly and force yourself to listen to critics. Learning how to manage people takes work. But if you don’t learn how to communicate, you risk destroying relationships with customers and employees.

“As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.” – Ben Horowitz

Image via Gapingvoid, © Hugh MacLeod

Tip #8: Delight Your Customers

Bill Gates says the one word that best describes the startup mindset is optimism. Self-made multi-billionaire Warren Buffett says “At 85, I tap dance to work every day.”

Have fun and the pleasure of doing business with you will show right across your startup brand. Even if your brand is about heavily scientific based inter-planetary colonization, like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, let your good humour shine through.

“I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact.” – Elon Musk

“Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I’ve done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin’s success.” – Richard Branson

Tip #9: Believe in Your Brand

Perseverance is the name of the game. Believe in your vision. Remember the lesson from a 30-year-old Steve Jobs when he got fired from the company he founded…it’s OK to fail. So be brave, take risks, learn from them, and don’t give up if you love what you do.

Passion will keep you going when you get hit in the head with a brick, which will only make success taste even sweeter.

Fact: A startup brand will experience setbacks.

“See criticism as free learning that makes you a better entrepreneur. Don’t be constrained or deflated by criticism, but do learn from it.” – James Foody

Tip #10: Nurture Your Brand

Once you’re certain your startup brand is is ready for launch, keep your vision focused on the moonshot…the thing that people may not think is possible could be within your reach. Listen to your inner GPS and let it guide you on the ride of your life.

“Picking what problem to go and solve is a much bigger and more important challenge than being able to solve the problem.” – Mark Zuckerberg

“When people use your brand name as a verb, that is remarkable.” – Meg Whitman

Ask Yourself…

Are you developing a new brand to launch to market but you’re just not sure where to start to ensure a strong financial return? Our “Personality Profile Performer”™ course is perfect for you.
Have you got an existing brand but it’s just not strong enough to make it to No.1 in the market? Talk to us about how we can guide you to build your brand recognition plan.
Have you underestimated how difficult a startup brand really is? Or, perhaps you’re not dreaming big enough. We can help you with a branding strategy to ensure that you are properly positioned.
Are you struggling with your brand story? Let us help you craft a compelling one in your brand’s own tone of voice.
Does your brand identity need a boost? We can consult with you on everything from font to packaging design.
Have you attempted a startup that missed its mark? We can help you revitalize and relaunch a product or service to get the result you’re looking for.

^{^[1]} https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/1213

^{^[2]} http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reaches-record-highs.html

^{^[3]} https://hbr.org/2011/06/a-logo-is-not-a-brand/

^{^[4]} https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemcclure

^{^[5]} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DlrqeWrczs

^{^[6]} https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/22/mentors-are-the-secret-weapons-of-successful-startups

^{^[7]} http://www.inc.com/cody-steve/yahoo-logo-redesign-marissa-mayer.html

^{^[8]} http://bit.ly/2aj9GDW

Brand Equity: How to Measure the Strength and Effectiveness of Your Brand

May 8, 2016/0 Comments/in Brand Audit, Brand Auditing, Brand Audits, Brand Culture, Brand Loyalty, Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relevance, Brand Research, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Business /by Lorraine Carter

According to statistics, 88 percent of consumers say quality makes them loyal to a brand, and only 50 percent say price is their primary concern. [1] Also, when people have a negative experience with a brand, 50 percent said they were unlikely to consume content from that brand again. Clearly, this data shows how important it is to ensure your brand is sending the right messages to your customers, and making them want to align with it for the right reasons.

Image via www.business2community.com

What is a Brand, and Why is Brand Equity So Important?

Your brand encompasses your total offering to your customers,[2] from what it stands for, to its personality, the experience it gives your customers, what it promises to deliver consistently, the language, tone of voice and messaging it uses to express itself throughout its communications, the fundamental culture of the organization it represents, its brand collateral and the people who represent it.

In short it’s the sum of all its parts from the quality of its offering to its attributes and the emotional meanings associated to it together with all its brand collateral which includes visual identifiers like its logo, website, packaging, printed literature, trade stands, staff uniforms, interior and exteriors site design and signage, vehicle livery, video content and so forth. All of these elements collectively are what make up your brand when they all consistently and congruently engage your primary audience in a way which is relevant to them, yet are distinctive, different and memorable.

Brand equity is then derived from the overall perception of your brand, the way customers perceive your total brand offering, products or services, rather than the just the isolated features and benefits of the offerings themselves. When customers have a favorable brand perception with a consistently good experience, it’s far more likely they’ll remain loyal to your brand, and recommend it to others. In order to achieve strong brand equity, your brand needs to be unforgettable to your customers — it must resonate both with their hearts and their minds.

However, strong brand equity has more advantages than just customer loyalty: [3]

It enables you to form stronger ongoing relationships and negotiating power with vendors
Positive brand equity supports long-term company growth e.g. expansion into new markets, product extensions etc.
Strong brand equity could partially shield you if you hit a bump in the road e.g. reputational ramifications related to something unusual such as defective product or atypical manufacturing delay — assuming you handle the situation appropriately
Fundamentally customers are willing to pay more for a brand they trust and value

Although brand equity may seem intangible, it has real dollar, euro, or pound value. Brand equity can be tracked and measured using a combination of specialist research and specific algorithms applied on a comparative annual basis.

Measuring brand equity accurately is a niche expertise, with a number of companies specializing in this particular field. Interbrand is one of those companies and they annually track the brand equity value of companies and brands from year to year. By way of example, in 2014 the brand equity of credit card company American Express was $19.5 billion. That figure is impressive in itself, but it’s even more striking to note the brand’s equity value had grown 11 percent from the previous year. [4]

Evaluating Your Brand Equity: Auditing its Current State and Identifying Weaknesses

The first step in analyzing your brand equity is to get a reading of customer perceptions. It’s also important to research employee perceptions for comparative alignment. If there are underlying problems with a company’s brand culture there are also likely to be underperformance issues coupled with incongruent communications that customers will pick up on — all of which means they will be less likely to embrace your brand, and may even doubt its authenticity, which in turn causes a lack of trust.

A brand audit health check is a very useful and practical way to gauge how your primary audience and staff feel about your brand. It can also enable you to identify weaknesses that might not have been noticed previously. Once you identify weaknesses and inconsistencies in your brand, you’ll be in a much better position to convert them into strengths, or at least minimize the aspects of those weaknesses that make your brand less effective when pitched against your competitors. A brand audit health check also enables you to uncover and identify new opportunities for growth and innovation.

Make Your Brand Stronger using Keller’s Brand Equity Principles

When working with our clients to help them develop stronger brand equity, we also advocate principals from Keller’s Brand Equity Model, also known as the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Model. It suggests before you’re able to strengthen brand equity, you must first shape how customers think and feel about the brand. [5]

The model is a pyramid shape, with brand identity at the bottom. That section represents the key characteristics and personality of the brand. It’s important customers recognize those attributes correctly, and believe they are different from what competitors offer.

The next level of the pyramid relates to brand meaning. In other words, what does your brand stand for, and how well does it meet customers’ needs, both in terms of performance, and on social and psychological levels? Think about the ways you want customers to experience your brand, and use those factors to create your brand personality and key characteristics.

Brand response represents the third tier of the pyramid. Credibility, actual and perceived quality, and comparisons with competing products all help shape brand response. Your goal is to make your brand evoke direct feelings and innate emotions.

The top level of the pyramid is brand resonance. When customers actively engage with your brand even when not purchasing it, that demonstrates brand resonance, as does a desire to be associated with a “community” of fellow purchasers. Customers also show brand resonance through behavioral loyalty, such as repeat purchases.

Measuring Brand Equity with the Six-Stage Brand Development Model

The six-stage brand development model is a diagnostic tool that combines proven metrics and a framework to guide brand equity strategies. Below, you’ll find the different characteristics a brand should have [6], plus how to make improvements if necessary.

A Brand Should Be Recognizable: If your brand lacks recognition in the marketplace it’s crucial to develop your brand strategy and enaction it tactically with a fully intergrated branding plan in order to raise its profile. Brand recognition increases through repeated exposure.

The Brand Must Be Memorable: The brand should be among the first called to mind when customers decide what to purchase. If that’s not happening, educate your target market about what your brand offers and why it’s unique – while remembering to enage your aduience at both emotional and rational levels.

A Brand Should Be Viewed Favourably: As we often remind our clients, it’s not enough for people to be aware of a brand. The target audience must also believe the brand is able to meet their needs with trust and respect for what the brand represents.

A Brand Should Be Distinctive: When customers are ready to buy an item (product or service), they must feel compelled to do so because they think the product offers a unique brand promise unlike what any competitors can provide. Brand perception occurs at both functional and emotional levels, so the goal is to position your brand effectively by stressing attributes that motivate purchases.

The Brand Must Be Preferred: Ideally, customers will prefer your brand over all others, and be willing to purchase it repeatedly. If preference for your brand is low, you’ll need to evaluate why through a brand audit and then implement changes based on the analysis and findings made. Fundamentally you must build brand trust if you want to engender long term brand loyalty.

Your Market Must Be Satisfied with the Brand: Ideally, customers will be so happy with what your brand offers they aren’t just personally content, but eager to recommend your brand to friends — become brand champions. If that isn’t currently happening, you may need to evaluate where the discontent lies and work on improving your product or service in terms of both percieved and actual quality.

Image via www.mindtools.com

Let’s briefly examine three case studies where improving brand equity was the central goal:

Image via www.starbucks.com

Starbucks

Starbucks has become a global brand worth $10 billion. In 2011, the brand went through a brand identity expansion to boost brand equity. A recognizable green mermaid traditionally decorated bags of the brand’s trademark coffees.

However, Starbucks wanted to expand its future vision by also using its identity more broadly on other products besides coffee, and associate it with offerings like teas and lemonades. The transition to use the mermaid logo more broadly was lauded by industry experts [7], with some believing strongly the broader use of the logo would trigger new growth and bolster recognition, without compromising acquired brand equity.

Image via www.veritaswines.com

Veritas Winery

Established in 2002 as a family-run business, Veritas Wineries was one of the first businesses of its kind in Virginia. The company realized its history and provenance helped establish its brand equity and wanted to implement some brand enhancements without compromising its valuable legacy.

The company commissioned a full brand audit, which resulted in small but meaningful changes [8] to the brand’s identity and made the overall brand more consistent to promote prolonged marketplace success. These alterations have enabled the brand to maintain its dominance, despite increasing competition.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola used “Open Happiness,” as a global campaign, to appeal to its consumers’ desire to feel optimistic and be comforted despite a weak economy. At the time, it was the brand’s first new campaign in three years. Advertising spots ran in both print and television media.

Although previous campaigns won awards, some analysts felt they required localized tweaking to resonate with culturally different audiences in different parts of the world. [9] The intention was that “Open Happiness” would have mass worldwide appeal. In the end, that goal was achieved, and the campaign achieved widespread industry praise for its ingenuity.

In conclusion, brand equity is measured one brilliant customer experience at a time. That’s why it’s so important to maintain a positive brand tone, understand how to relate to your target audience in a way that matters most to them, while simultaneously meeting their needs. Building and maintaining brand equity is an ongoing process, remember successful brand building is as much about all the small things you do consistently well coupled with the bigger campaigns and new initiatives.

Key Takeaways:

Brand equity can make the difference in how customers experience your brand, and whether they want to align themselves with it.

Brand equity is derived from customer perceptions. Strong brand equity increases the likelihood customers recommend your brand to others.

A brand audit can indicate how customers perceive your brand, and enable you to identify weaknesses.

Brand equity is tied to how customers both think and feel.

Brands should be preferred, distinctive, favorably viewed, recognizable and memorable if strong brand equity is to be achieved.

Questions to consider:

What actions or brand strategies could be implemented to increase customer engagement with your brand?

What would help improve the actual and perceived quality of your brand?

Have you taken steps to become informed and evaluate your brand’s weaknesses compared to competitors?

Do you feel your brand adequately conveys why and how it meets your customer needs?

Does your brand connect with people globally, and is that necessary for its brand equity?

• Brand Personality: Is Your Brand’s Character Big Enough to Compete?

• Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling

• Brand Loyalty: 5 Key Steps to Building Your Loyal Fan Base

• Brand Audit: Tips for Determining Your Brand’s Health – Can It Be Improved?

• Humanizing Your Brand: Why It is Key to Commercial Success

• Brand Differentiation: 30 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand

• Brand Profiling: Top 6 Components to Creating a Strong Brand Personality

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

• Brand Profiling: How to Use Emotion to Make Your Brand More Profitable

[1] Eric Hammis, http://www.business2community.com, “How Important is Brand Identity?”, April 2015.

[2] Lois Geller, http://www.forbes.com, “Why a Brand Matters”, May 2012

[3] John Fatteross, http://www.thehartford.com, ” Advantages of Strong Brand Equity”

[4] Jennifer Connelly, htttp://www.entrepreneur.com, “‘Brand Equity’ is an Intangible That’s Worth Real Money”

[5] https://www.mindtools.com/, “Keller’s Brand Equity Model: Building a Powerful Brand”

[6] http://rockresearch.com/a-brand-development-model-how-to-define-and-measure-brand-equity/, “A Brand Development Model: How to Define and Measure Brand Equality,” December 2013

[7] Carl Johnson, http://www.adage.com, “Why Starbucks Logo Change Doesn’t Equate to Brand Change,” January 2011

[8] http://www.designbywatermark, “What is a Brand Refresh?”

[9] Betsy McKay and Suzanne Vranica, http://www.wsj.com, “Coca-Cola to Uncap ‘Open Happiness’ Campaign” January 2009

Branding: Creativity without Strategic Rigour is a Waste of Budget

April 5, 2016/0 Comments/in Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relevance, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Branding, Disruptor Brands, Entrepreneur, Storytelling /by Lorraine Carter

“Creativity is Intelligence Having Fun.” – Albert Einstein

2016 will be a year of convergence for brand strategies. As Joel Comm[1] put it, “there’s nothing more social than face-to-face engagement,” and this is the application strategy that brands need to focus on. They need to combine traditional marketing with the emerging. They need to be creative, smart, strategic, and more than anything disruptive. Look at what Amazon is doing. They changed the way the world shopped by pulling in customers online. Just when everyone got hooked, they are focusing on brick and mortar stores. Disruption, new methods and new forms of engagement is the life blood of successful brand strategies.

Why is that important? Because you have to constantly innovate and look at how you use branding more strategically and more creatively. It’s not just a logo or a design and its not just strategy and analytics either.

Instead of just a scientific or design endeavour it should be looked upon as a process that combines analytic and creative thinking. As Sun Tzu[2] had described in The Art of War, “Strategy is an Art; never a Science; it is the Art of the conscious mind in action.”

Brands need creative and artful strategy to be actionable. No strategy, traditional or digital can operate on its own in isolated silo. It needs to be creatively aligned and converged in a cohesive brand message, to offer a complete brand experience.

Image via www.storify.com

Strategy and creativity go hand in hand and this is exactly what Airbnb’s CMO Jonathan Mildenhall[3] emphasized at the panel discussion hosted by The Economist at 2015 Cannes Lions. As he and others in the panel pointed out, there is data and then there is the need to manage this data and extract the brand story hidden within.

Image via www.storify.com

Mildenhall points out that strategic thinking does not have to kill creativity, though if abused it can smother all ingenuity. Equally, creativity without solid strategic thinking frequently fails to deliver the required commercial returns as well. Both are needed and must go hand-in-hand for optimum success. Businesses need to use the data creatively, not use it to stifle creativity and creativity needs to be underpinned by informed brand strategy.

One of the most common mistakes amongst SMEs is that they don’t employ strategic rigour, unlike larger or global brands, which sometimes squash creativity in favour of too much data analysis. It is imperative that creative talent and strategic thinking be merged seamlessly because one is incomplete without the other. In other words, strategic rigour is the essential foundation on which to build creativity.

Therefore, design should never be based on just subjective aesthetic preferences but driven by a well-developed brand strategy. This includes research and analytics together with developing the whole platform of the brand through brand profiling (vision, mission, values, purpose, promise, personality, archetype, story, tone-of-voice, purchaser personas, positioning) and so forth.

As Mildenhall said, when you can state the “non-obvious truth” as a great strategic insight, your brand has won. For you are now hitting on something that is there but has not been noticed or considered before. It takes creativity to get to this point but also means a walk among the data.

Branding sets the stage for clients’ expectations and creativity needs to be activated to bring that promise to life and deliver on it in a ways that’s relevant to the brand’s primary audience.

A salient fact to reflect on –

Your audience couldn’t care less if 73% of the world’s brands disappeared tomorrow – Havas Media

Yes, this is alarming but it’s true so now is your opportunity to ensure you’re not the brand that’s easily forgotten. Instead, develop a strategic foundation on which to build your brand now and into the future to ensure it’s different, distinctive and memorable with a purpose and personality your primary audience finds irresistible. Use data and digital strategy combined with brand profiling to inform and provide direction for your brand’s priorities. Use creativity to tell your story informed by data, and use this story to evolve your brand into something people want to talk about, share and refer.

As David C. Edelman[4] pointed out, “… today, consumers are promiscuous in their brand relationships…” The presence of increasing media options and social networks enable them to simultaneously connect with myriad brands and sift through them at will.

Businesses therefore, need to understand which media to use and how to leverage those channels appropriately to share their brand story. All the pieces need to come together in a highly informed and smart brand strategy which is interactive, dynamic and makes for a cohesive customer journey. It’s crucial to create a knowledgebase. It’s important to use the channels like Facebook and Google, if they’re appropriate to your product, service and primary audience, coupled with other marketing automation players.

Before you develop your brand strategy here are some brand facts to keep in mind:[5]

45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what it says and how it says it

Your brand is your promise

54% of people don’t trust brands

Much of this distrust comes from broken promises and brand not delivering on customer expectations

There are 2.1 million negative social mentions about brands in the U.S. alone, every single day

Monitoring, managing and controlling your brand message and reputation is essential

48% of Americans expect brands to know them and help them discover new products or services that fit their needs

Customers expect your brand to provide them personalized solutions

72% of marketers think branded content is more effective than advertising in a magazine; 69% say it is superior to direct mail and PR

Branded content is an effective way to educate potential clients while establishing your authority in your industry. Build trust with branded content

80% of customers said “authenticity of content” is the most influential factor in their decision to become a follower of a brand

Focus on creating authentic content that gives value and reflects the values of your brand without the hard sales push, think pull more than push in your communications

60% of US millennials expect consistent experiences when dealing with brands online, in-store, or by phone

A consistent brand is essential. Humans by nature crave consistency. Carefully monitor all aspects of your brand touch points and communications to ensure your audience has a consistent experience

Colour increases brand recognition by up to 80%

As a professional branding expert and international speaker this colour statistic is one that never fails to surprise audiences or branding master-class participants whenever I mention it. It also underpins why colour psychology is so important, should never be underrated or deployed because of personal preferences.

Colour needs to be leveraged both strategically and creatively, and every brand needs a properly developed colour palette which expresses the brand’s personality appropriately, suits context and cultural preferences while also meeting the needs of its primary audience.

It might be worth reflecting on these statistics in the context of how does your business and brand measure up when compared against them? Would a brand audit health check be in order?

Creativity and data analysis are no longer diametrically opposed tools, operating in disconnected silos. Data and creative teams need to work within a cohesive framework because if one doesn’t inform the other, the entire brand building strategy not only remains incomplete but runs the risk of failing.

Case Study #1 – Connecting Strategy with Brand Performance – Lexus[6]

The latest Lexus campaign is an eye-opener. In order to sell a new 467-horsepower, high-performance vehicle it has eschewed conventional rhetoric and has instead created a branded game.

Called “GS F the Bracket”, this has been developed from the ground up in collaboration with Yahoo Sports. The rollout of the new luxury sports sedan will complement Lexus’ sponsorship of Yahoo’s fantasy sports bracket and the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament. Once registered, users get to pick the player match-ups who they predict will most quickly reach a combined 60 points for a chance to win a “GS F-inspired vacation.”

Image via © www.gsfthebracket.com

The campaign blends in Lexus’ branding strategies with its performance by targeting two very different audiences. The first is the affluent group who can afford to spend $80,000 on a new vehicle. The second is the group of younger prospects who are aspiring to buy their dream Lexus car one day.

Working in tandem with Oracle Marketing Cloud’s data management platform, the automobile giant has invested in an addressable data strategy to optimize its performance based on where the customer is in the Lexus life cycle. So while television is still an important medium for them, they are applying email and transactional data to manage and affect customer mindsets. This is exactly what Airbnb CMO talked about when he stressed on the important of creativity and strategy.

Lesson Learned:

A large marketing budget and a great strategy team will be of no use if the brand campaign lacks innovation. A creative thought process that has correctly analyzed how to engage the customer and generate organic demand will have stronger results leading to optimal sales.

So how should a business engage brand profiling and brand strategy coupled with creative inputs effectively? At the very least you need to have absolute clarity over what your brand stands for, its purpose, what makes it different to your competitors, its personality and the needs it fulfills for your ideal audience together with fully developed purchaser personas for each of your different customer types.

Your brand is not just who you are but also what others perceive you to be. As Jeff Bezos so succinctly put it, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”.

As experts[7] have pointed out in the HBR – Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy, managers who do not reconcile creative with realistic strategies are doomed to weigh the futile rigour of ordinary strategic planning. “The key is to recognize that conventional strategic planning is not entirely scientific…… also integral to the scientific method are the creation of novel hypotheses and the careful generation of custom-tailored tests of those hypotheses—two elements that conventional strategic planning typically lacks.” What this essentially means is that modern strategic planning can only be successful when scientific is combined with artistic.

Creativity and strategy when combined to tap into human emotions, lies at the root of successful branding. There is a growing debate on whether advertising and marketing automation stifles this creativity. When smart brand strategies are applied, marketing automation can actually provide brands with immense opportunity to be proactive instead of reactive. They offer message immediacy and pave the way for data to further fuel branding campaigns. Strategic rigour and application of data allows you to see what’s working and what’s not. This feedback can then be used to feed back into the creative process.

The tools of communications have to be chosen wisely, not just for wider brand creation but to engage human emotions creatively. What you communicate visually and verbally, and the various distribution channels chosen, underpin the foundations of strategically driven branding. All these are the what, where, when and to whom you plan on communicating to.

Case Study #2 – Global vs Local – Airbnb[8]

It is important to create a core global brand strategy. But it is even more important to allow localised ideas more room to scale within the company, in order to be sensitive to different cultural nuances. This is often more difficult for bigger companies because institutional friction and the politics of business often prevents the culturally nuanced to work or build diversity into teams. However, it’s a huge opportunity for the more agile and flexible smaller business.

Social media and the rise of crowd culture have broken through geographical barriers and brings together all communities that were once geographically isolated, thereby greatly increasing collaboration. Airbnb’s innovative use of social media, both in terms of promotion and content, has been phenomenal is driving viral leads.

Image via © http://blog.tortugabackpacks.com

They have fused global experience with direct and substantial local sub-cultural influences. You can find ways to travel free or with minimum outlay and plan your vacation, stories and blogs about the places you are searching, see why Hollywood stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Beyoncé[9] use Airbnb and post it on their social media page, and find easy ways to connect with the service whenever you are ready to book your flight and hotel.

Lesson Learned:

Progressive means blending cultural innovation with early adopter markets. This is an example of how businesses can combine creative with strategic rigour and reach out to millions of global customers simultaneously.

How can smaller businesses achieve an edge?

Be creative when you strategize your brand message – right at the onset of your brand profiling process. Your brand vision and goals should be fully aligned with your business objectives. It should express your brand personality and be positioned in a way that enables you to stand out effectively while also appearing irresistible to your potential customers. Brand profiling and positioning are the tools and systems that enable you to differentiate your offering from your competitors and rise above the generic confusion and noise.

Consider what you deliver and how you can fulfill that promise in a way that reinforces your differences and distinctions while also making your brand more attractive, referable and memorable to your ideal customer. Build your brand promise around that delivery. It tells your customers what they can expect from your products or services and why your brand matters more to them.

How can smaller businesses balance the need for brand strategy underpinned by creativity?

According to Paris-based branding consultant Bolanile Maté[10], applying smart strategies for example, like heritage and provenance positioning can work extremely well. Though she used Hermès as an example, she also pointed out how these more traditional concepts can capture the imagination of more modern audience too. Its all in the positioning and how you share you’re authentic brand story.

Conventional branding tools have stressed on building brand awareness through repetitive push marketing strategies. Whether it is a print advert or an electronic one, the focus has been on taking the product and placing it in front of the customer, telling them what’s out there, where to find it, what to do and how to use it.

While this has its place in the marketing process, the way this message is delivered has changed. Brand strategy needs to utilize a fully integrated process combining both social and media channels, where relevant, to raise awareness and generate demand. In the age of internet marketing it’s more effective to attract this organic interest with inbound marketing rather than the more traditional push marketing model, to encourage customers to seek out the product, service or company on their own terms. And this is very doable for all smaller businesses and brand owners.

Traditionally, big companies introducing new products into the market use the traditional push marketing strategies when their products are new and unfamiliar.[11] However the smarter ones are utilizing more creative routes combined with well-developed brand strategies. They’re utilizing multiple touch-points and media channels to generate more viral and word-of-mouth brand messaging, all of which smaller businesses can do very flexibly too, on modest resources.

Case Study #3 – Using Familial Roots as a Strategic Tool – cHarissa [12]

This company is a great example of how they blended conventional and new media to make themselves more familiar with their target audience. More importantly, how they strategically used their familial spices to create taste and flavours in a brand that people love.

Octogenarians Earl Fultz and his wife, Gloria Elmaleh of New York started their Moroccan sauces and spices business, “cHarissa” when most people are happily retired. For them the strategy for success was provenance and familiarity – hers with the spices of her familial roots and in his case the food industry.

Image via © http://www.charissaspice.com

They used their prior knowledge as a resource but did not stop there. They went on to hire smart people, the ones who knew how modern marketing worked to build a brand that skillfully expresses its personality and touches its audiences with strong emotional resonance, combined with experience and endurance. They’ve used traditional advertising but the real strength of their brand lies in the word-of-mouth and social marketing coupled with innovative promotions. For example, Earl’s presence as a guest chef led to cHarissa being served at the Revolving Restaurant on top of the World Trade Centre.

That is the power of creativity underpinned by strategy.

Lesson Learned:

It’s very accessible for SMEs and new businesses to integrate conventional and newer media to share their brand message, generate demand for their products and services and grow their brand as a viral phenomenon.

Case Study #4 – Using Creative Social Interactions to Build a Sustainable Brand – Herschel [13]

Vancouver based travel goods and accessories business Herschel Supply Co. used social media not only to improve customer service but also to build memorable impressions through well-thought out and consistent branding strategies. They’ve been very smart about analytics and using this information to leverage hot trends and create proactive customer support.

Using smart business tools like Hootsuite they’ve been able to achieve a 20% lift in customer service satisfaction rate, to serve their customers more effectively and on a more personal level. They’ve also gained about 60% increase in their overall positive brand sentiment.

The result – they have become quite synonymous with modern travel fashion – and their followers comprise of the fashion inspired, tech savvy globetrotters.

Lesson Learned:

The most effective way for SME businesses to get a strong footing in the competitive global market is not to worry about big budget media spending. Instead implement clever social strategies which combine traditional and social platforms to creatively engage your audience with campaigns using creativity underpinned by strategy and strong analytics.

Key Learnings:

In order to be intriguing and successful every brand needs a creative strategy
Creativity without strategic rigour is a waste of time and resources
Creative strategy determines pivotal marketing and advertising efforts
Analytics needs to merge with creative risks for unique breakthroughs
A creative branding strategy will help a brand standout and engage its primary audience
Creativity when based on strong analytical foundations yield robust results
A strong brand profile has to have an authentic brand story worth telling

Questions to consider:

• Are you employing strategic rigour with your creative endeavours?

• Have you fully defined your brand, what it stands for and what makes it different to your competitors so you can use this brand strategy to underpin your creative outputs?

Are you focusing too much on data analysis and consequently stifling your creative or worse still failing to develop your brand strategy with brand profiling and indulging your creative fantasies without any strategic basis?

• Is your brand strategy based on esoteric data or eclectic client expectations?

• Are you generating leads or creating active interest and demand for your brand?

• Before you indulge your creative inclinations in new brand collateral have you evaluated the most effective direction using brand strategy to inform your choices?

• Can you tell a good brand story out of your data?

Brand Profiling: How Brand Performance and Purpose are Inextricably Linked

Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling

Brand Promises: How to Craft, Articulate and Live Them for Brand Success

Brand Audits: 10 Things Successful Brand Owners and Managers Must Know

Brand Revitalisation and Relaunch: The do’s and don’ts of doing it successfully!

Brand CSR: The Business Case for Successful Branding and Social Good

The Power of Disruptor Brands and Challenger Brands

[1] 10 Expert Marketing Predictions for 2016, http://www.inc.com/leonard-kim/10-expert-marketing-predictions-for-2016.html

[2] Sun Tzu, The Art of War

[3] [3] Jonathan Mildenhall, Marketing Week, https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/06/22/airbnb-creativity-without-strategic-rigour-is-a-waste-of-marketers-budget/ ,2015

[4] David C. Edelman, “Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places,” https://hbr.org/2010/12/branding-in-the-digital-age-youre-spending-your-money-in-all-the-wrong-places Harvard Business Review, 2010

[5] Jeremy Durant, “15 Crazy Branding Stats You Need to Know,” https://www.bopdesign.com/bop-blog/2015/10/15-crazy-branding-stats/ BOP Design, San Diego, 2015,]

[6] Kelly Liyakasa, “Branding And Performance Intersect For Lexus,” http://adexchanger.com/advertiser/branding-performance-intersect-lexus/ March 2016

[7] A.G. Lafley Roger L. Martin Jan W. Rivkin Nicolaj Siggelkow, “Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy”, https://hbr.org/2012/09/bringing-science-to-the-art-of-strategy/ar/1 Harvard Business Review, September 2012

[8] https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/06/22/airbnb-creativity-without-strategic-rigour-is-a-waste-of-marketers-budget/

[9] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3437631/Beyonce-shares-selfies-inside-10-000-night-luxury-rental-booked-San-Francisco.html

http://www.vogue.com/13396609/beyonce-gwyneth-airbnb-super-bowl-rentals-celebrities/

[10] Bolanile Maté, http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/271837

[11] David C. Edelman, “Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places,” https://hbr.org/2010/12/branding-in-the-digital-age-youre-spending-your-money-in-all-the-wrong-places Harvard Business Review, 2010

[12] Carol Roth, March 2016 https://youtu.be/DjE3BOxqMKQ

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271867

[13] Kristina Cisnero, “3 Small Businesses That Found Social Media Success,” https://blog.hootsuite.com/small-business-social-media-success-stories/ JUNE 2014

Brand Promises: How to Craft, Articulate and Live Them for Brand Success

March 22, 2016/0 Comments/in Brand Ambassador, Brand Audit, Brand Auditing, Brand Audits, Brand Champions, Brand Culture, Brand Experience, Brand Health Check, Brand Loyalty, Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Values, Branding /by Lorraine Carter

According to a Gallup study of nearly 18 million people, most customers say brands don’t live up to what they promise. [1] Many are also disengaged with their respective brands, and consequently not loyal to them either. Here we take a look at how to create, develop, share and authentically live out and deliver on your brand promise to help you thrive in the marketplace and increase your profitability.

Image via www.gallup.com

What is a Brand Promise?

Your brand promise is an extension of your brand’s positioning, and can be explicitly spelled out, or manifested in more subtle ways. A compelling brand promise contains tangible emotional benefits, which in turn stimulates desire amongst its target audience.

Furthermore, a strong brand promise establishes expectations by informing customers on what the brand stands for and what it represents. [2] Sometimes the brand name in itself conveys the promise. Consider that most people hear the word “Cadillac” and instantly think of an upscale car.

Brand promises can also be communicated through symbolism such as the signature aqua blue associated with Tiffany’s jewelry. Before even opening the box, recipients anticipate that the item inside will be luxurious. The colour has been given meaning by what the brand stands for and the promise it consistently delivers.

Image via www.tiffany.com

Familiarity is also a major aspect of the brand promise.[3] When people see the golden arches of a McDonald’s restaurant sign, they expect the brand to deliver on its promise of uncomplicated fun. This is underpinned by good service and convenient food — all of which is a consistent experience of simple, easy enjoyment regardless of McDonald’s location.

Making Your Brand Promise

Your brand promise should be easy for customers to understand, and very relatable. Most importantly it should be livable on a daily basis within your organization. As customers’ tastes and expectations change, your brand promise may need to evolve over time too. Your brand promise can transform as your brand adapts to the changing market but should remain true to your core brand DNA. [4] Ideally, customer expectations should be mirrored to whatever your brand promise consistently delivers.

Brand promises should be emotionally compelling, and exciting.[5] Consider the brand promise conveyed when families book trips to Disney World, often referred to as “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Travelers who are Disney World-bound expect a promise of stress-free, fun-filled happy adventures where memories are created and shared.

You must be able to succinctly describe the emotional benefit your brand fulfills when developing a brand promise. What can your brand deliver that’s perceived to be totally different to your competitors. Consider this in terms of your brand experience, personality, mission, values, brand story and so forth. This process, known as brand profiling, will help you evaluate which human needs or desires are most relevant to your purchaser personas or customer avatars so you can develop your product or service to really meet their needs. Some examples include:

Need to belong
Desire to do feel; good, healthier, beautiful, intelligent, worthy, smarter etc.
Desire to have; fun, adventure, excitement, relaxation, challenge
Need to get necessities without hassles
Need to get items at best price available
Desire to be admired by peers; status symbol, trend-setter etc.
Need to have a solution which solves a particular problem
Want to have something that intuitively works

The emotional rewards combined with rational benefits, all perceived to be delivered in a way which is incomparable to your competitors, are what contribute to a compelling brand promise. However, you also need to ponder factors such as your commitment to customers, your customer service and the customer journey and which elements contribute most to customer loyalty and ultimately the creation of brand advocates.

Articulating Your Brand Promise

Your brand promise may be communicated through a snappy tagline that emphasizes what people can expect.[6] In the 1980s, Federal Express set expectations about delivery speed with the tagline, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” That’s an example of a very bold brand promise. However, you also may find it advantageous to utilize a more ambiguous approach. Apple did that with their “Think Different” tagline that was open to various interpretations.

A brand promise and a tagline are not the same thing. However, a tagline can be useful for communicating what your brand promise says in a distilled way that’s easy for customers to understand, remember and refer.

Although it is important for a brand promise to be communicated to customers, it must first be internalize amongst your team because staff members are your best brand advocates. Most importantly if your staff and stakeholders don’t fully understand and live your brand promise, your external market — your customers won’t either, which leaves you at risk of being just another generic commodity and failing to meet expectations. [7]

Conduct a brand audit health check to evaluate how well aligned (or not) your internal team are with the external market. If you uncover weak points in your brand culture and misconceptions about your brand promise, you’ll be empowered to implement internal changes with brand induction and training.

In addition to educating employees about your brand promise, you also need to make them feel invested in it as an important part of the whole entity where their contributions are key to the greater good and brand success, so they care about the emotional needs your brand promise fulfills.

It’s essential to create an emotional brand attachment with your customers, as well as with your employees otherwise they won’t be effective brand ambassadors or properly represent your brand. They are in effect the living embodiment of your brand so their understanding, internalization and commitment to living what it stands for and delivering on your promise is critical to your brand success and long term business growth.

Remember, fundamentally people buy products or services with emotion first and justify with rationale afterwards, regardless of gender or cultural background, so you must touch the heart to move the mind.

When being communicated to customers, the brand promise should have a genre that can be expressed through audible and visual cues.[8] For example, the grocery store Trader Joe’s has the unusual genre of a trading post, and promises it has a team of people who search the globe for high-quality products backed by an impressive guarantee.

Your brand promise should also have a unique voice that defines and expresses the brand’s character or personality. When the brand promise is associated with a strong voice, it becomes more relatable and memorable.

Communicating your brand’s promise effectively means being consistent when attracting customers’ attention, educating them, stimulating desire and converting them into paying individuals. If your ideal audience are effectively engaged at each stage, it’s easier to communicate your brand promise in a worthwhile and profitable way.

Finally, your brand promise should be communicated consistently and congruently across all brand touch-points.[9] You may choose to share it through social media, direct mail brand collateral or your website amongst others. Most importantly it should be a ‘tangible experience’ throughout your whole customer journey, particularly where physical connecting occurs such as over the phone or face-to-face. It should be an emphatic part of your brand experience, be that in the office, on the show room floor or in your physical outlet or store.

Living Your Brand Promise

When evolving or discussing your brand promise with your team, always aim to do so face-to-face and provide opportunities for engagement and feedback.[10] Also, provide direction and suggestions on how staff can personify your brand promise at work amongst themselves and when interacting with customers, through your training and brand induction programmes. Explain and demonstrate that living your brand promise is not a one-off activity, but an integral part of how you do things. When the brand promise is lived out internally, it naturally gets far more effectively expressed to and experienced by external customers simultaneously. [11]

Be intentional about showcasing your brand promise to customers through your company brand culture. Rather than leaving things to chance, keep channels of communication open, and accept that your brand promise may evolve over time. If you discover your brand is not living up to its promise, considering engaging external professional assistance to help you re-evaluate your whole brand offering using tools and systems like a brand audit health check and brand profile development with a system like the Personality Profile Performer™ to improve matters.

Now that you’re aware of what a brand promise is, and how to create and authentically live it, let’s look at brands that have succeeded in developing compelling brand promises and delivering on them consistently and successfully.

CASE STUDY: Saba Restaurant, Dublin

Saba is widely regarded as being the best authentic Thai and Vietnamese Restaurant in Ireland with an impressive and very extensive array of national and international awards — which are constantly being added to.

Saba means, ‘happy meeting place’, so the brand’s primary aim and promise is to provide really happy experiences for its customers, the kind that mellow into happy memories. This is at the heart of the Saba brand promise and an integral part of the brand culture, which can be tangibly experienced at every stage of the customer journey from initial booking to front line staff interactions at their multiple locations. And the Saba staff are very congruent in the experience they provide to their customers.

Image via www.sabadublin.com

With a very strong commitment to developing his team, Paul Cadden, founder and owner, ensures his team are really well trained throughout the business. The fact that Saba has some of the highest retention rates in the industry is a testament not only to Paul’s remarkable vision but to the genuine commitment of all his team.

Image via www.sabadublin.com

Every team member knows what the brand stands for, their brand promise and genuinely live it internally amongst themselves and proudly ensure its central to all their customers interactions and experiences with them — all of which is evidenced not only in the countless awards received but in the hundreds of customer reviews and testimonials given.

CASE STUDY: Big Blue Whale Toys and Curiosities

This Houston, Texas-based small business delivers the brand promise through the descriptor, “A Magical Place to Find Classic, Hard-To-Find, and Handmade Toys in Houston, TX”. Although its website is basic, it offers a photo gallery that clearly depicts the inviting shop.

Bursting with items for the young and young-at-heart, the photos demonstrate shoppers do indeed have a very good chance of locating toys they couldn’t find elsewhere. The ocean-themed windows also help entice people to come and indulge their curiosities by wandering around this “magical place” that lives up to expectations. The shop has even been recognized by Business Insider as one of Houston’s coolest businesses. [12]

Image via www.houstoniamag.com

CASE STUDY: Ace Hardware

Ace Hardware’s brand promise is as follows: Deliver helpful, neighbourly service to every customer—every time. Although the brand has always prided itself on excellent service, it has more recently begun expanding on the “neighbourly” aspect.

The brand now offers same-day service to homes that are within 15 miles of local stores when orders are placed by 13:00p.m. That perk is very attractive and compelling for customers embroiled in home improvement projects, or can’t fit bulky items into their vehicles.

Image via www.mesquitelocalnews.com

CASE STUDY: Tourism Vancouver

The brand promise of this tourism board is “The Vancouver experience will exceed visitors’ expectations. We will deliver superior value in a spectacular destination that is safe, exciting and welcoming to everyone.”

This organization has created a “brand toolkit” to help other businesses live the brand promise, and thereby promote Vancouver as a great place to visit. The company also holds an award ceremony to recognize outside parties that are delivering on the brand promise with excellence. The brand promise is emphasized through an extensive collection of media clips, including some that show how Vancouver can be exciting even if people are visiting for business reasons and not only pleasure.

Image via www.discovervancouver.ca

Now that you have a better understanding of what a brand promise is, how to create one, and why it’s essential to your brand success, hopefully you’re on track to not only make promises, but keep them and indeed deliver them in an unforgettably way. If you can do that, customers will thank you not only with their loyalty but also through referring and sharing your brand too.

Key Takeaways:

Your brand promise can be explicit or subtle, and may change as customers’ needs evolve.

Brand promises most effectively relate to emotional needs customers want fulfilling.

Your brand promise, customer experiences and expectations should be fully integrated and congruent.

Consistency is essential throughout every touch-point and communication when fulfilling your brand promise.

Employee commitment, brand induction and training are critical for effectively communicating and upholding your brand promise successfully.

Questions to Consider:

• What’s at least one emotional need your brand meets better than you’re your competitors? Have you developed your brand promise fully using the brand profiling process?

• How are you ensuring your employees’ perceptions of your brand promise are fully understood, congruent, authentically lived and effectively delivered throughout your organisation?

• Which channels are the most effective to communicate your brand promise to your customers and enhance their experience with your brand?

• Consider an occasion when a brand you love did not live up to its promise, how are you going to ensure your brand never falls foul with the same kind of disappointment?

• How are you connecting your brand promise to your existing company brand values, as Ace Hardware did? Have you considered or recently conducted a brand audit health check to evaluate how well your brand is performing, where it could do better and where new opportunities lie?

Brand Profiling: How Brand Performance and Purpose are Inextricably Linked

Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling

Brand Profiling: How to Use Emotion to Make Your Brand More Profitable

Brand Audits: 10 Things Successful Brand Owners and Managers Must Know

Brand Revitalisation and Relaunch: The do’s and don’ts of doing it successfully!

Brand CSR: The Business Case for Successful Branding and Social Good

Top 10 Brands for Customer Experience and What You Can Learn From Them

Co-Branding: 13 Tips for Growing Your Brand Through Strategic Partnerships

The Power of Disruptor and Challenger Brands

[1] Ed O’Boyle and Amy Adkins, http://www.gallup.com/ “Companies Only Deliver on Their Brand Promises Half the Time,” May 2015.

[2] Susan Gunelius, http://www.aytm.com, “Brand Promise – How to Make It and Keep It”

[3] Lee Frederiksen, “http://www.hingemarketing.com, “Elements of a Successful Brand 4: Brand Promise”

[4] Sree Hameed, http://www.forbes.com, “Your Brand Promise Can Create or Destroy Customer Loyalty,” June 2013.

[5] Sue Kirchner, http://www.theworkathomewoman.com, “How to Write a Killer Brand Promise That Helps You Stand Out from the Crowd”

[6] http://www.creativemporium.co.uk, “Branding Series (Part 2): Creating a Brand Promise,” July 2014.

[7] Susan Guneilus, http://www.womenonbusiness.com, “The Importance of Integrating Your Brand Promise Into Your Company Culture,” August 2013.

[8] Laurence Vincent, http://www.inc.com, “How to Bind Customers to Your Brand”

[9] John Oechsle, http://www.business2community.com, “How & When: Using Communication to Deliver on Brand Promise,” August 2015.

[10] Ashley Freeman, http://www.allthingsic.com “Nine Golden Rules to Help Live Your Brand Internally” April 2015.

[11] Chris Cancialosi, http://www.forbes.com, “The Secret to Faithfully Delivering On Your Brand Promise,” March 2015.

[12] Emmie Martin, http://www.businessinsider.com, “The 18 Coolest New Businesses in Houston., ” April 2015.

[13] Natasha D. Smith, http://www.dmmnews.com, “Ace Hardware’s Brand Promise is Its Strongest Marketing Tool” March 2015.

Brand Profiling: How Brand Performance and Purpose Are Inextricably Linked

February 9, 2016/0 Comments/in Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Branding, Business /by Lorraine Carter

Ask the people in any room for a show of hands for who leaves the house to go shopping for unheard of brands in nondescript shops. No hands will go up. Wishy washy products and unremarkable, generic services certainly don’t motivate anyone. However, instantly recognizable market leaders, famous brands, cults and classics pack in plenty of appeal by projecting a purpose that’s engaging and compelling for both employees and customers alike.

Purpose Equals Purchase

“Consumers choose the brands that engage them on their passions and interests 42 percent more often than they do those that simply urge them to buy the product being advertised,” according to a 2014 report by Think with Google, undertaken in partnership with TNS and Ogilvy. Interviews with purchasers of auto vehicles, beauty products and smartphones indicates that, more than ever,

Purpose = Purchase.

Profit is Not Brand Purpose

The sole intention, or purpose of a business, is not, and cannot be, just to make money. Rather, profit is a consequence of doing business. In 2000, Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory, shared his thoughts on this topic as mentor to the former chairman of Procter & Gamble, “The purpose of a company is to create a customer” and “A business….is defined by the want the customer satisfies when he or she buys a product or a service. To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business.”[1]

What Does Your Brand Stand For…And Upon?

One cannot over emphasize the importance of building a strong base as a platform for a brand, using the following key elements as bricks in its foundation:

vision
mission
values
purpose
promise
positioning
architecture/hierarchy structure
story
personality
corporate social responsibility

When working with our private clients or indeed delivering our open branding masterclasses and workshops we use the Personality Profile Performer™ System to develop all these key brand foundational elements for our clients’ or workshop participant’s brands. The outputs from the Personality Profile Performer™ then provide you with your brand blueprint or brand roadmap, together with the brand direction for your brand design application in brand collateral, brand communications strategy, training and so forth.

Notice that purpose is one of the key building blocks for a strong brand foundation. This part of the brand foundation provides the critical direction for brand strategy, and consequently, for high performance with the laser-focused results marketers seek. Here we aim to show you how a well-defined brand purpose is inextricably tied to stronger brand performance.

Defining Brand Purpose

Since some employees and employers may say that the purpose of a business it to make a profit, it’s understandable that thought leaders must reiterate the actual meaning of brand purpose.

So, what is brand purpose and what is it not? Drucker and other experts observed that brand purpose is to create customers through superior products and services which have value and usefulness. In other words, customers do not shop and pay so that a company can become richer. They buy because they perceive value in their purchases.

It’s important to note that 60% of branding is about perceived value and only 40% about the actual product or service, so how you communicate your brand’s mission, vision and purpose actually has a significant impact on your bottom line.

To quote Simon Sinek “People don’t buy what you do, they buy ‘why’ you do it, and what you do simply proves what you believe.”

Branding expert David Aaker writes about value that inspires purchase from both sides of the buy/sell relationship. “It is easy to get caught in a focus on financials, but employees and customers are increasingly attracted to brands and firms that have a higher purpose.”[2]

This is why, for example, at their very foundation of purpose, Volvo family cars are built around a steel cage design to achieve maximum safety, Mercedes-Benz defines meticulous German engineering and innovation in luxury cars, and Tesla produces electric cars to decrease our dependency on gasoline. Purpose is also why one of the most successful brands on earth doesn’t just sell computers, but dreams up groundbreaking products such as the Apple Watch, iPads and iPods to create “insanely great products” that enhance peoples’ lives and that many people consequently want…a lot.

How Clear Brand Purpose Improves Performance

Brand educator Mark Di Somma counsels that marketers should view the relationship between purpose and product as a symbiotic one, not as an either/or one.[3] “For purpose to realize its full potential, the commercial leadership must align with, and be framed by, a clear and shared moral leadership.”[4]

When brands are able to connect and balance great storytelling founded on a clear vision, mission, values, and purpose, with the right product or service, then the magic happens. We look into three case studies from Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart Stores and Patagonia.

Case Study 1: How Coca-Cola Made History Selling Togetherness

Who remembers the tune, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company”? It was 1971 when McCann-Erickson’s creative and music directors first produced those lyrics[5], placed a group of Coke bottle-holding, flowers-in-the-hair, multicultural lip-syncing teenagers on top of a hill outside Rome and portrayed a positive message of sharing, hope and love. The world said “Wow!”

One of the most successful adverts of all time, now enshrined in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution[6], married the idea of happiness and universal love with the product. In a ground-breaking collaboration between advertising and the record industry, it was re-envisioned as a hit song rising to UK #1, as a Christmas advert and as a Disney collaboration for years to come.

Case Study 2: How Wal-Mart is Re-Thinking Purpose

In America, Walmart has been reportedly criticized, rightly or wrongly for years, one issue after another. Non-union jobs at low wages that depress the job market, running small businesses out of town, accusations of racial and gender employee discrimination, foreign product sourcing, and environmental policies are a few of the themes that have splashed across the pages of various news publications and media.

America’s largest retailer is also America’s largest employer. Wal-Mart Stores has also created America’s richest family with a fortune placed at US $149 billion.[7] Yes, they have low prices in 5,000 stores. But, it’s fair to ask: What’s their brand purpose? What do they stand for?

Image via Wikipedia CC 4.0, Credit: Miosotis Jade

In keeping with the growing trend in other parts of the world, American consumers’ sense of values have become more focused on where products come from, how they are made, whether a company is doing the right thing for the environment, for sustainability, for its workers and for corporate citizenship, says Allen Adamson, North American chairman at Landor Associates in AdWeek.[8]

Since mid-2015, AdWeek reports Walmart is starting to turn things around by embracing brand purpose. Examples include partnering with actor and gender-equality activist Geena Davis for a hometown theater festival in Arkansas, speaking out against anti-gay legislation, raising hourly salaries above federal minimum wage, and adopting “five freedoms of animal welfare” for its supplier chain.

Case Study 3: How Patagonia Used Reverse Psychology with its Purpose

“Don’t Buy This Jacket,” screeched the boldface type in caps to accompany the image of a parka. To launch their Common Threads Initiative[9], (reduce, repair, reuse, recycle, reimagine) the outdoor clothing maker grabbed attention in the New York Times on 2011’s Black Friday, a frenzied shopping day.

“This season, share some values,” the advertisement beseeched readers, focusing attention on consumerism versus conservation — hence, Patagonia’s mission: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

As AdWeek explains[10] about Patagonia’s startling spin on things, “The point is, Patagonia, whose business relies literally on the outdoors, is in it for the long term.” Actively protecting the environment is central to Patagonia’s core purpose or raison d’être.

What happened to sales? According to Bloomberg Business,[11] two years into the buy less campaign, outdoorsy customers pumped an extra US $158 million, nearly a 40 percent lift, into the company, which opened 14 additional store locations. Environmentalists may take note that Patagonia has launched “Twenty Million & Change,”[12] a venture capital fund to invest in startups that share environmentally responsible corporate values.[13]

More Case Studies on Brand Purpose

For readers who may wish to research further examples of clear brand purpose driving improved business performance, we can suggest the following:

• Charles Schwab, the investment broker, highlights how they can help small investors who don’t really want, or need, to understand the stock market in depth to beat inflation. “Talk to Chuck.” was the groundbreaking campaign launched in 2005, years ahead of social media interactive conversations. Their personality-driven approach successfully carved out a unique positioning for the brokerage, squarely between the discount broker firms and the full-service Wall Street firms for larger investors.

• Rubicoin, founded by Dublin-born Emmet Savage who is listed in Irish America’s Wall Street 50 (the list recognises the achievements of the most innovative Irish-American and Irish-born leaders in finance) is noted as one of the most successful investors in the world and this brand’s primary purpose is to get the world investing successfully, to remove the perceived barriers to accessing the stock market by giving everyone the basic ingredients required to successfully invest so they are empowered to change their lives financially.

• Nike places their mission statement up front and center: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.” Note the asterisk on the word “athlete.” Former university track and field coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman said, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” Any questions?

• The Walt Disney Company, of course, was the brainchild of a master visionary. Now parent to four major companies, Walt explained the theme park concept best when explaining how he was bored watching his daughters in a playground. “I felt that there should be something built…something where the parents and the children could have fun together.” Walt would have approved of the company’s purpose as addressed by its former mission statement, “To make people happy.”[14]

Do you think they miss the mark with the current one? “Now Disney’s mission is “To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world.”[15]

That’s certainly a mouthful for Mickey Mouse or a dreamy-eyed child…or just about anyone outside the boardroom.

Questions About Brand Purpose to Consider:

• Does your brand have a clearly defined purpose? Have you engaged in the brand profiling process using a system like the Personality Profile Performer™?

• Is your brand’s purpose written in plain and simple language which everyone, both employes and customers alike, can clearly articulate on, or is it written in corporate lingo?

• How often do you re-visit, re-evaluate and brand health check your expression of your brand purpose?

• In what way is your brand’s purpose actively lived, expressed and shared with everyone in your business and interpreted by your employees?

• How would your employees respond to the question of what excites them and gets them out of bed in the morning?

• How and where is your brand’s purpose expressed to existing or potential customers?

If you’re struggling to answer these questions maybe its time your gave your brand a brand audit health check or brand refresh. Feel free to get in touch, we’d love to help!

‘What Customers Want: Top 16 Branding Trends in 2016’

‘Brand Profiling: How to Use Emotion to Make Your Brand More Profitable’

‘Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling’

‘Brand Audits: 10 Things Successful Brand Owners and Managers Must Know’

The Profit Power of Cult Brands, Why and How to Create One

‘Brand Revitalisation and Relaunch: The do’s and don’ts of doing it successfully!’

Brand CSR: The Business Case for Successful Branding and Social Good

‘Co-Branding: 13 Tips for Growing Your Brand Through Strategic Partnerships’

[1] https://hbr.org/2009/11/why-read-peter-drucker

[2] https://www.prophet.com/blog/aakeronbrands/216-what-is-your-higher-purpose

[3] http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2016/01/brand-debate-focus-on-product-or-purpose.html#.VqwmcmRViko

[4] http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2014/08/defining-your-brand-purpose.html#.VqxKb2RVikp

[5] http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-hilltop-story

[6] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/american-history-museum-scholar-coke-advertisement-180955318/?preview&no-ist

[7] http://www.forbes.com/profile/walton-1

[8] http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/walmart-trying-brand-itself-socially-conscious-165034

[9] http://www.patagonia.com/us/worn-wear

[10] http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-patagonia-136745

[11] http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-08-28/patagonias-buy-less-plea-spurs-more-buying

[12] http://www.patagoniaworks.com/#index

[13] http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682011/patagonia-launches-a-venture-fund-for-environmentally-responsible-startups

[14] http://www.fastcompany.com/1821021/defining-your-companys-vision

[15] https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/about/

Brand CSR: The Business Case for Successful Branding and Social Good

February 1, 2016/0 Comments/in Brand Champions, Brand Collateral, Brand Differentiation, Brand Experience, Brand Leadership, Brand Loyalty, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relevance, Brand Reputation, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Branding, Business, Cause Marketing, Corporate Social Responsibility, Millennial Branding /by Lorraine Carter

According to a Nielsen poll of consumers in 60 countries, 55 percent of purchasers are willing to pay more for products and services from companies that do their part to encourage positive social and environmental impacts.[1]

Clearly, corporate social responsibility influences buying preferences, but how else is it important? We’ll examine the answer to that question below.

Image via www.huffpost.com

What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR, occurs when companies take into account the sociological, financial and environmental impacts its actions have in the world and decides to ensure its actions make a positive impact. [2].

Some business experts have simplified the definition of CSR even further to suggest it encompasses everything a company actively does to have a positive impact on society.

There are numerous types of CSR, such as:

Philanthropy
Production Improvements
Better Conditions for Workers
Sustainability
Community Enrichment
Diversity in Hiring Practices
Supporting Companies with Similar Values

Typically, the manner in which a company engages in CSR is closely aligned with its brand strategy, brand values, positioning, primary audience and industry sector. For example, a clothing manufacturer might iron out a CSR plan that improves working conditions in factories located in developing countries, while an establishment that makes paper products might commit to CSR that ensures the world’s most at-risk forests are protected and regenerated.

Why is CSR Good for Business?

Although many corporate leaders are encouraged by the aforementioned statistic that shows a company’s involvement in CSR may mean a customer is willing to pay more for its services, they usually require stronger beneficial commercial evidence before taking further action.

However, they don’t need to look very far before uncovering some of the numerous other benefits linked to CSR, including: [3]

Happier Staff: Employees take pride in working for a company that supports the greater good through worthy actions and happier staff are more productive and better brand ambassadors

More Informed Customers: If your company announces a CSR strategy, the associated plans could potentially result in a more transparent organization which in turn typically results in more loyal customers.

Research shows customers want to know more about the things they buy, product or service, than ever before. For example, a study published by IBM noted 59 percent of American consumers and 57 percent of consumers from the United Kingdom have become more informed about the foods they buy and eat over the two years prior to the study’s publication.[4]

In other words, customers’ predisposition to buy, product or service, is becoming increasingly influenced by an organization’s authenticity, openness and commitment to the greater good.

Reduced Costs: CSR can cut costs by helping companies become aware of and minimize risks, plus improve the efficiency of their supply chains.

Improved Competitiveness: In a challenging marketplace, a worthwhile CSR plan could carve out a more solid place with a unique positioning for a company to thrive.

Better Public Relations and Reputation Management: A CSR plan gives a company a platform through which to promote good things like community involvement, donations to charities and other big-hearted gestures.

Developing an Effective Corporate Responsibility Plan for Your Brand

In order to launch a CSR plan that’s good for business and engages genuinely with your stakeholders, it must be carefully crafted. The key is to strike a balance between benefiting society at large, and benefitting the business. [5] Doing that means:

Evaluating how and where the business can have the greatest societal impact without taxing the company’s leadership and resources. This frequently involves scrutinizing the company’s existing competencies. Those strengths can provide clues to possible CSR strategies that are revealed after tapping into existing skillsets.

Cultivating a deep understanding of how certain actions could help the business while simultaneously supporting the chosen causes. This often also necessitates having an open heart and mind while listening to feedback from stakeholders.

Aligning with partners can propel your desired efforts and help bring goals to fruition. Ideally, adopting a long-term mindset when forming collaborative CSR relationships is best for all concerned.

Ensure business objectives and CSR goals match up. If there is a disconnect between these two components, your CSR activities risk being time-consuming and lacking the power needed to make lasting changes.

Examples of Brand CSR Strategies That Have Worked Well, and Why

Now you have a deeper understanding of what corporate social responsibility is and how to start formulating your own plan, let’s look at the characteristics of some successful CSR programs with companies that are excelling in their CSR endeavors [6]. You can then use these actionable tips to drive your own brand CSR inspiration.

CSR experts agree all successful CSR programmes typically have:

clear objectives
measurable outcomes
well-developed theories for how to achieve the desired goals
sufficient information for stakeholders about why causes are worth pursuing
dedicated and highly focused efforts from the entire company
a willingness to partner with credible experts.

Let’s look at a few case studies that detail some stellar CSR successes.

APS Group

This UK-based SME spent years ironing out its CSR strategy. Lacking the resources to hire a dedicated CSR team, the company found employees who were willing to champion the company’s CSR causes, which include education and supplier sustainability.

Media clips from the company place a strong emphasis on making things possible for clients that they would not be able to achieve alone, as does the company’s published document about its CSR initiatives. Through CSR efforts, it can also be strongly argued the company is living out its “Make More Possible” slogan by enabling the people and organizations affected by the causes it supports. APS Group is a great example of how even if a company thinks creating a CSR plan is a daunting task, success is still within reach. [8]

Method

This brand of cleaning products uses natural ingredients such as coconut oil and soy. Furthermore, the products’ packaging is environmentally responsible and biodegradable. Since the company boasts over $100 million in revenue annually, that is proof “green” products can be commercially viable.

Furthermore, Method demonstrates CSR focuses do not have to be separate from the products you make. Some media clips from the company that details its CSR focuses specifically highlight input from industry experts to make a bigger impact.

LUSH Cosmetics

This company sells bathing and beauty products filled with natural ‘Fair Trade’ ingredients. The brand’s Charity Pot is sold to benefit a rotating assortment of non-profit organizations. All proceeds from the Charity Pot go directly to the chosen groups, resulting in millions of dollars raised. [10]

The packaging is just one indicator of how easy it is for people to support good causes by purchasing these black, lotion-filled containers. LUSH uses the labels on the top of pots to inform consumers who the recipients are by clearly stating the designated charity concerned.

The brand also has a fund that supports communities which produce fairly traded goods. It was launched in 2010 and borne from a desire the company had to do something more than just use fair-trade ingredients in their products whenever possible. [11]

Charting the Results of Your CSR Strategy

It can sometimes appear somewhat difficult to determine with certainty whether your CSR strategies have achieved the desired outcomes. One of the more effective ways you can answer that question is by engaging an independent research firm, with specialist expertise, to rank certain aspects of a company’s CSR performance, from human rights to the environment and community. [12]

Additionally, you can check effectiveness through various metrics [13] such as:

Environmental indices for pollution or air/water/soil quality
Quality and quantity of mentions in media outlets
Measurements for the quality of life within a society, such as literacy rates, life expectancy and incidences of disease, plus mental, physical and emotional heath. The latter could be gauged through feedback surveys given to workers
Indicators of the company’s economic health by way of profits, growth, and stability, before and after a CSR campaign launches

In conclusion, customers are becoming increasingly hyper-conscious of how and where they spend their money. Recent research also indicates this trend is strongest among Millennials, the largest consumer segment in terms of buying power. [14] Specifically, 91 percent of Millennials actively switch to brands that support a worthy cause, and abandon the brands that aren’t perceived to have an authentic contribution policy.

In addition to boosting your customer base and potential profits, a well-developed CSR plan could strengthen your relationship with suppliers, increase competitiveness in the marketplace and help you cut costs by becoming more aware of risks. Therefore, many business leaders have come to realize it’s short sighted to not be involved in corporate social responsibility.

Key Takeaways

Customers are typically willing to pay more for products from companies associated with strong CSR brand strategies
CSR goals vary depending on a company’s values and the composition of their stakeholders
A good CSR plan should both benefit the business and help society
The CSR plan must align with a company’s business objectives
Expert individuals or notable groups can help improve CSR strategy success
Metrics and independent research groups can evaluate whether a CSR plan is working well

Have you integrated a CSR strategy into your organization? If not, it might be a good idea to take a look at how CSR could benefit all concerned.

Questions to Consider

Does your company have well-defined core competencies that could translate into areas of CSR focus?

How motivated are your stakeholders to pursue a CSR plan?

Are there obstacles that might delay CSR-related brand strategy plans?

Have you thought about how to tackle negative responses from stakeholders that CSR is not currently worthwhile?

Which measurement methods will you consider using to verify your CSR brand strategy effectiveness?

• What Customers Want: Top 16 Branding Trends in 2016

• Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling

• Brand Profiling: Top 6 Components to Creating a Strong Brand Personality

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

• Brand Personality: Is Your Brand’s Character Big Enough to Compete?

• Millennial Branding: 6 Ways Your Brand Can Appeal to Millennial Customers

• Co-Branding: 13 Tips for Growing Your Brand Through Strategic Partnerships

• Video Brand Strategy: Top 11 Tips for How and Why You Need to Use Video

[1] http://www.nielsen.com, “Global Consumers Are Willing to Put Their Money Where Their Heart Is When it Comes to Goods and Services from Companies Committed to Social Responsibility”, June 2014

[2] http://toolkit.smallbiz.nsw.gov.au, “What is Corporate Social Responsibility?”

[3] http://www.csrinpractice.com, “What is Corporate Social Responsibility?”

[4] George Pohle and Jeff Hittner, https://www-935.ibm.com, “Attaining Sustainable Growth Through Corporate Responsibility.”, 2008

[5] Tracey Keys, Thomas W. Malnight, and Kees van der Graaf, http://www.mckinsey.com, “Making the Most of Corporate Social Responsibility” June 2009

[6] Frederick E. Allen, http://www.forbes.com, “The Five Elements of the Best CSR Programs.” April 2011.

[7] http://www.theapsgroup.com/who-we-are/corporate-social-responsibility/

[8] Lisa Henshaw, http://www.theguardian.com, “How SMEs Can Engage in Social Responsibility Programmes,” December 2011.

[9] http://www.inc.com, “How Two Friends Built a $100 Million Company”

[10] Helaina Hovitz, http://www.forbes.com, “Following the Millions in LUSH’s ‘Charity Pot’. December 2014

[11] https://www.lush.co.uk/. “Introducing the SLush Fund”

[12] Tima Bansal, Natalie Slawinski, Cara Maurer, Natalie Slawinski, Cara Maurer. http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com, “Beyond Good Intentions: Strategies for Managing Your CSR Performance” January/February 2008.

[13] Katherine N. Lemon, John H. Roberts, Priya Raghubir and Russell S. Winter, http://www.philoma.org. “A Stakeholder-Based Approach: Measuring the Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility”, 2011.

[14] www.conecomm.com, “New Cone Communications Research Confirms Millennials as America’s Most Ardent CSR Supporters,” September 2015.

Luxury Branding: How to Establish or Re-Position Your High-End Brand

November 30, 2015/0 Comments/in Brand Ambassador, Brand Audit, Brand Auditing, Brand Audits, Brand Champions, Brand Collaboration, Brand Experience, Brand Health Check, Brand Identity Design, Brand Personality, Brand Premiumisation, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Strategy, Branding, Co-Branding, Luxury Branding, Packaging, Packaging Design, Premiumization /by Lorraine Carter

The combined value of the various luxury goods markets in 2014 was an estimated 865 billion euros, with luxury cars, personal luxury goods and luxury hospitality taking the top three places, with values of 351 billion, 223 billion and 150 billion respectively. [1]

In order to understand the branding strategies developed and utilized by the top luxury brands, those who have maintained their reputation for over several decades, as well as those that have successfully re-positioned themselves as high-end brands, we must first look at the very definition of luxury.

There are four main characteristics by which the luxury customer defines a luxury brand:

Quality
Craftsmanship
Exclusivity
Elegance

However, the way in which someone perceives luxury will depend on factors ranging from their socio-economic status to their geographical location. According to latest Albatross Global Solutions and Numberly study, “The Journey of a Luxury Consumer”, people from different parts of the world prioritize the order of importance of these key factors differently when defining luxury goods. For example, an overwhelming majority of luxury consumers worldwide value quality above all else, however, UK luxury consumers place more importance on craftsmanship, while elegance plays a more vital role when it comes the global luxury market.

Since customer preferences and definitions can vary from one jurisdiction to another, luxury brands need to tailor their brand communications strategy for each of the relevant market segments they are targeting, while remaining true to their core brand values, brand DNA and brand story. It can be challenging but with the right brand strategy it can be hugely rewarding, as evidenced by Louis Vuitton and their distinctly different approach to marketing their luxury brand in Japan.

The brand collaborated with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami in the early 2000’s to create a more colourful version of their classic monogram, and even reduced prices slightly during the economic crisis, to retain its position on the Japanese luxury market. However, it performed best when focusing on the quality and craftsmanship aspects of luxury brand on the Japanese market, as opposed to the allure of exclusivity and elegance — that had a greater impact with their customers in Western countries.

Luxury is About Exclusivity

In order to thrive, a luxury brand needs to secure its own unique corner of the market. Premiumisation strategies or high price points are designed to attract a particular kind of customer while alienating others – the high quality, and the unique experience that a luxury brand provides will not be right for everyone, nor should it be. To quote the head of Lexus Europe, Alain Uyttenhoven: “Our cars won’t please everyone.”

The brand strategy developed and deployed in different jurisdictions often varies because the definition of luxury changes amongst consumers as we move around the world and up the socio-economic ladder. Also, some of the top luxury brands strategically choose to stay out of the most obvious limelight. Very subtle marketing and the fact that the general public isn’t necessarily aware of their existence creates a unique aura of mystique and exclusivity. It also alludes to the fact that high-quality craftsmanship and aesthetics are amongst luxury brands’ highest priorities, values which are not compromised by things such as price sensitivities.

The brands at the very top of the luxury spectrum are not necessarily bound by the same constrictions of the more mainstream ‘accessible’ luxury or premium sector. Indeed, more exceptionally wealthy clientele might perceive price tags or ostentatious displays of affluence as lacking in taste in certain markets. In fact, there is a wise old saying in the luxury yacht industry: “If you have to ask about the price, you probably can’t afford it.”

Infographic via Raconteur.net

The French purveyor of personalized luggage, Goyard, is a fine example of a luxury fashion brand that has retained its high-end status for over a century, continually prospering without engaging in many of the strategies that are considered to be the cornerstones of effective mainstream marketing.

The brand favours direct sales and word of mouth marketing over media hype, large-scale advertising and online sales, even though Goyard has thousands of followers on several social media platforms, including the luxury brand’s newly launched YouTube channel.

This extreme level of exclusivity amongst long established luxury brands, e.g. specialising in a single product category to the point of elevating a brand to the level of art or supreme craftsmanship, can be used as one element of a brand strategy to create distinction and separate it from the rest of the market, but it can also be a more challenging route for newer entrants to the luxury market.

The luxury landscape is changing, and a brand can quickly become irrelevant if it lacks online exposure. Millennials are close to outspending Baby Boomers, according to a Berglass + Associates and Women’s Wear Daily study that explored the retail industry, which means that a brand has to account for the values that drive Millennials when developing their brand strategy.

For Millennials the bigger purpose of a brand, its big why, has a significant impact on their purchasing decisions which means that CSR and so forth has a bigger role to play in brand strategy than every before — for this growing audience.

The smartphone is an essential component of the Millennial lifestyle because it allows easy access to multiple online platforms and immediate connectivity – 85% of Millennials in the 18-25 age bracket and 86% of those in the 25-34 age bracket own a smartphone[2], while 88% of Millennials use Facebook as their primary news source.[3] For more traditional brands this means embracing new fully integrated brand strategies that wouldn’t have seemed relevant eight to ten years ago.

Even luxury brands that are primarily focused on in-store purchases, e.g. Goyard, are investing in social media and reaching out to affluent Millennials. The way that younger generations perceive luxury is markedly different from the way Baby Boomers perceive it, and luxury brands have a challenging task ahead of them – educating Millennials on luxury goods and adapting their brand strategy to fit the Millennial lifestyle.

Develop Trademark Brand Symbols and Assets Beyond Just Your Brand Logo

Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé has been virtually unchanged for years, and the silhouette itself is just as recognizable as the logo, brand name and the Spirit of Ecstasy mascot attached to the bonnet.

It’s the Rolls-Royce uncompromising commitment to quality craftsmanship and attention to detail that has the brand where it is today. When we work with clients to develop a distinct brand identity that reflects their core brand values, personality, story and communicates their brand message it requires a similar level of focus from everyone working on the project coupled with a deep understanding of the brand’s primary target audience in order to achieve successful results.

Burberry’s trademark black, tan and red check pattern and Channel No. 5 perfume’s simple, yet elegant bottle design are both instantly recognised by the average consumer. These are distinct, different and memorable brand assets that are as important as the brand names themselves.

Founded 150 years ago Burberry is a particularly interesting case study because not long ago it was struggling to maintain a consistent brand identity leading to the brand falling off its luxury positioning, despite its admirable provenance. Inconsistencies in product variants, pricing and communication strategies all combined to undermine the brand. In fact this brand, now worn by Emma Watson and Kate Moss to mention a few high profile names, was once at risk of being considered frumpy before its very successful luxury revitalization strategy was implemented so successfully.

It wasn’t until Angela Ahrendts took over as CEO that a long-overdue brand repositioning and brand relaunch was set in motion resulting in the iconic and much sought-after luxury brand we see today. The company was restructured and the sourcing of materials and production was centralised in the UK. Burberry stores were modernized and equipped with iPads, digital displays and audio equipment that enabled the brand to showcase its quality craftsmanship through video material, and to provide a more engaging customer experience.

However, the true stroke of genius was the decision to focus on a younger demographic, and utilize social media as a powerful promotional tool. To successfully target the affluent Millennial consumer, Burberry had to diversify its product line and make significant stylistic changes, while at the same time retaining the timeless aesthetic that the brand was once known for.

The results of the brand relaunch were astonishing – Burberry doubled their revenue and operating income within five years, and successfully repositioned their brand as a luxury brand. Their famous Burberry check is once again associated with premium quality British craftsmanship.

Provide a Memorable Brand Experience for Your Customers

With a luxury product, the brand packaging, presentation and shopping experience are just as important as the quality and exclusivity of the product itself. Luxury customers are far from average shoppers, they are wealthy and powerful people with refined tastes. A luxury brand has to engage these customers on multiple levels – spark curiosity, engage all the senses, stimulate the mind, and make an emotional connection.

The Gentleman Floris, a new line of luxury men’s grooming products launched by the Floris London, a nearly 300-year-old British family perfumers brand since 1730, uses understated heraldic symbolism on the embossed navy blue packaging to reference its noble origins and royal patronage coupled with its renowned to quality, craftsmanship and rich heritage. The brand story is used eloquently to draw its audience in and sell its brand proposition.

We have created many different packaging design solutions for clients over the years, both luxury and FMCG, and when you consider that on average you have less than 9 seconds to engage your customer through the impact your packaging design has on them, it is critical that your customer gets an immediate sense of your brand story, promise and values if you want to close the sale.

Image via www.florislondon.com

In luxury branding everything from the customer journey to the brand experience and customer service, not to mention the accessories, has to be carefully considered to ensure that it’s elevated to an exceptional level.

The brand experience has to be much more personal, which means that staff, your brand ambassadors, must be chosen to fit with your brand values and culture. They need to be fully inducted and trained in all the details of how your brand is lived and experienced, both internally and externally, and how that unique brand experienced is transferred and cultivated with each the individual customer.

Sometimes this training may also require the front line staff to make important judgement calls in the heat of the moment, in order to accommodate the customer’s specific needs. At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, each employee is empowered and trained to anticipate and fulfil their guests needs with an exemplary level of service.[4]

Image via www.Ritz-Carlton.com

The Ritz-Carlton is another good example of a luxury brand that successfully maintain its positioning for decades and in fact case studies have been built around its success. The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Centre is now the place where executives from other companies worldwide in many different sectors come to learn The Ritz-Carlton principles of service.

The Ritz-Carlton success is due to a number key factors such as they have:

A formulated a set of standardized hiring criteria
Empowered their front line staff and instituted a standardized brand language
A consistent high-end luxury brand experience regardless of location
Take note of user feedback, perform regular brand audit health checks
Constantly evolved to adapt with the times while staying true to their core brand values

The Ritz-Carlton has created an admirable balance between maintaining a consistent brand image and evolving to meet the needs of a new generation of patrons who prefer more authentic interactions with the staff. It’s their uncompromising commitment to excellence which has made them the only brand to win the much sought after US Presidential Baldrige Performance Excellence Award twice, firmly establishing Ritz-Carlton’s positioning as a luxury brand and setting the highest standards for customer service throughout the luxury hotel market.

Create an Aura of Exclusivity by Limiting Supply

Special limited edition items often become cherished collector’s pieces and dramatically increase in value over the years. In fact, the lack of product availability doesn’t negatively affect a luxury brand they way it might other mainstream brands. Its limited availability to the select few makes it even more appealing to its target customers.

Long waiting lists have never deterred Hermès fans, who often wait several months for the privilege of purchasing the brand’s signature Birkin bag. [5] Some of the most popular luxury car brands are the ones with both the highest prices and longest waiting lists. Only the most persistent and loyal customers gain access to these limited items, which enables you as a brand owner or manager to create an elite subgroup within your customer base.

The Rolls Royce SG50 Ghost Series II is a prime example of a brand offering a limited edition product to a particular segment of their target demographic, another example of the exclusivity strategy at work, and establish an emotional connection with its customers. In this particular example, Rolls Royce honours the fact that 2015 marks 50 years of Singapore’s independence, helping it increase individualised customer brand relevance and secure an increased market share in one of Asia’s most developed economies, second only to Hong Kong in terms of financial freedom.

Image via www.luxuriousmagazine.com

The Apple Hermès brand collaboration helped connect the luxury fashion brand connect to a well-developed demographic of tech-savvy affluent Millennials while at the same time opening the horizons of the wealthy Apple users to the allure of a luxurious brand such as Hermès.

Image via www.apple.com

High-end craftsmanship and a sense of exclusivity have already been associated with both brands, but the halo effect of this collaborative project, the super-luxurious Apple watch, has proved to be quite beneficial in terms of exposing previously unexplored segments of the market to each brand.

Luxury watch aficionados and loyal Hermès customers who are delighted with this new offering will be tempted to explore some of the other Apple devices. On the other hand, the more affluent Apple consumer may easily eschew their previous luxury favourite and make Hermès their alternative preferred choice instead.

Be Proud of Your Heritage, but Offer Customization to Build an Emotional Connection

Giving consumers some decision-making power over the production process, even if their contributions are limited to the choice of colour or engraving, accomplishes several things:

It turns each product into a personalised more unique item that is to be cherished
It creates a more personal connection between the customer and the brand
It enhances the overall customer experience

Goyard doesn’t offer a diverse product range, but what it does offer is the ability choose from a wide range of colours and styles. A luxury customer can leave the Goyard store safe in the knowledge that the product they have purchased is truly unique, and tailored to their personal tastes.

Image via www.Goyard.com

Luxury brands can also use their geographical location to their advantage. A luxury brand is often associated with its country and region of origin – sparkling wines from the Champagne region have become a key component of many major celebrations, BMW and Mercedes are touted as the epitome of German engineering precision and so on. The brand thus takes on the qualities associated with the local culture. We can use Burberry as a good example once again – its British heritage has been a key component in successfully repositioning the brand as a high-end brand.[6]

Create an Epic Brand Story that Mesmerizes Your Customers

A good brand story is instrumental in capturing the imagination of customers, but a luxury brand needs to go beyond mere storytelling and develop a veritable fairy-tale that fully immerses a customer, to the point where he or she wants to become a part of your luxurious world. The brand experience and how that is created lived and experienced is the penultimate test.

The legend of Coco Chanel and the immense respect consumers still have for the Chanel brand matriarch is a prime example of how effective legends can be in promoting a luxury brand. Her humble beginnings, timeless style and daring persona are woven into a narrative that all ambitious, independent, fashionable and adventurous women around the world find inspiring.

On the other hand, we have brands with a proud and storied history, such as White’s Gentlemen’s Club in London, which has no intention of expanding or opening its doors to anyone but the most select clientele.

Image via www.Goyard.com

Much like Goyard, White’s has no need for heavily resourced marketing campaigns, as it relies on its few elite “members” for word of mouth marketing. With patrons like Prince Charles and several British Prime Ministers gracing the bar and gaming rooms with their presence, being a member of White’s Gentlemen’s Club is considered a privilege. Even David Cameron’s vocal critique of men-only clubs and the fact that the British Prime Minister resigned from White’s did little to tarnish the reputation built on several centuries of myth and legend.

Key Takeaways to Consider

In conclusion, here are some key points to keep front of mind when re-evaluating your luxury branding or premiumization brand strategy:

Ultra premium luxury brands often use understated branding strategies coupled with word of mouth, but offer unmatched top end quality and exclusivity
Brands that have successfully repositioned themselves have invested in brand audit health checks and embraced the affluent Millennial demographic and use social media to spread brand awareness
Luxury brands that have successfully maintained their positioning for decades have used their provenance and leveraged near mythical brand stories to maintain brand distinction, but continued researching the market and changing trends regularly, and encouraged customer feedback to maintain relevance
Providing an exceptional customer experience in-store, through empowering frontline staff and developing a consistent brand language, is very important, as a majority of luxury consumers make their purchases in person
Involving customers in the production process enables a luxury brand to personalise its offering with a diversified range of unique variations, even if it doesn’t have an extensive reach across multiple categories
Collaborating with a brand that has a significantly different customer base and brand associations can produce a halo effect that is highly beneficial for both brands

• Co-Branding: 13 Tips for Growing Your Brand Through Strategic Partnerships

• Brand Audit: Tips for Determining Your Brand’s Health – Can it be Improved?

• Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling

• Rebranding Strategy: Using Premium Repositioning To Increase Profitability

• Colour in Brand Strategy: Colour Psychology and How it Influences Branding

• Video Brand Strategy: Top 11 Tips for How and Why You Need to Use Video

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

• Brand Profiling: Top 6 Components to Creating a Strong Brand Personality

• Millennial Branding: 6 Ways Your Brand Can Appeal to Millennial Customers

So, what do you think?

• Have you performed a brand audit to identify the holes in your luxury branding strategy?

• Is your brand utilising social media to its fullest potential and reaching out to affluent Millennials?

• Are you using appropriate brand language?

• Have you created a consistent brand image?

• Have you considered how you can make your brand more profitable by changing your brand strategy with a premiumization approach to reposition your brand, create an aura of exclusivity and attract luxury consumers?

• Do you have an exceptionally engaging brand story that elevates the brand to legendary status and could be leveraged to better effect with a rebranding?

[1] Statista.com, Value of various global luxury markets in 2014, by market type (in billion euros)

[2] Nielsen, Mobile Millennials: Over 85% of Generation Y Owns Smartphones, September 2014

[3] Americanpressinstitute.org, How Millennials Use and Control Social Media, March 2015

[4] Forbes.com, Micah Solomon, Your Customer Service Is Your Branding: The Ritz-Carlton Case Study, September 2015

[5] Uché Okonkwo, Luxury Fashion Branding: Trends, Tactics, Techniques

[6] The Australian, “Paul Smith, Burberry and Mulberry Revive ‘Made in Britain’”, September 2014

The results told a very clear story. When consumers were both aware of the brand promise and aligned with it—which was the case with two out of the six brands studied—the company received an average wallet share of nearly 50 percent.

That’s compared with just 23 percent wallet share when customers were aware of the brand promise but not aligned with it.

Related: Brand Promises, How to Craft, Articulate and Live Them for Brand Success

It’s critical to understand that branding is NOT marketing or design but the bedrock strategy supporting and directing your whole business so your brand strategy is fundamental to your business’s success, longevity and ongoing profitability.

The Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ Mastermind empowers you to build your brand strategy, raise the visibility of your brand, reduce customer acquisition costs and position your brand as the №1 choice for your customers. Discover more here.

How To Build Your Brand Promise To Breed Raving Loyal Fans

1. Brand Promise Draws On The Power Of Emotion

Related: Brand Promises: Are You Consistently Delivering Yours?

Related: 4 Reasons Why Your Business Profit Starts With Your Brand Mission

2. Brand Promise Builds Your Likability

3. Infuse Your Brand Promise With Authenticity

Related: From Zero to Hero: How to Become a Must-Have Brand

Related: Use Psychology in Your Brand Strategy to Create Irresistible Brand Experiences and Increase Sales

4. Your Team Should Commit To Your Brand Promise Consistently

Related: The Age Of Internal Branding And Selling It From The Inside Out

Related: The Impact of Company Brand Culture On Driving Performance and Increasing Sales

Questions To Consider:

1. Brand Personification

2. Confusing Branding

3. Feel Good Branding

4. Branding Content Without a Point

5. Branding That Spins a Classic

6. Branding to Surprise and Delight

7. Branding From Our House to Yours

Questions you may ask yourself about branding lessons from the pros:

Brand Vision: Differentiation is Everything in Brand Strategy

Healthy Brand Competition

You Are Your Brand

Know Your Brand’s Target Audience

Brand Messaging Cannot be Overrated

Brand Storytelling Matters

Sub-Branding Opportunities and Risks

The Appeal of Disruptor Brands

Consider these questions:

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2984" src="http://www.personadesign.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/scaring-you-shitless.gif" alt="scaring-you-shitless" width="852" height="669" /> Image via Gapingvoid, © Hugh MacLeod

Branding From the Beginning

Startup Brands Are Still Brands

What Is and Is Not Your Brand

Essentials for Startup Brands and Branding

“Here’s the secret: Pitch the problem, not the solution.”

Ten Essential Startup Branding Tips

Tip #1: Building Your Brand

Image via Broadlake

Image via Stanford University

Tip #2: A Brand is Not a Logo

Image via Slideshare

Image via Naldz Graphics

Image via Twitter

Tip #3: Build Brand Trust

Image via Twitter

Image via Ayda

Tip #4: Identify Brand Need

Tip #5: Become a Brand Guru

Tip #6: Determine Brand Positioning

Tip #7: Communicate Your Brand

Image via Gapingvoid, © Hugh MacLeod

Tip #8: Delight Your Customers

Tip #9: Believe in Your Brand

Tip #10: Nurture Your Brand

Ask Yourself…

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/1213

[2] http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reaches-record-highs.html

[3] https://hbr.org/2011/06/a-logo-is-not-a-brand/

[4] https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemcclure

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DlrqeWrczs

[6] https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/22/mentors-are-the-secret-weapons-of-successful-startups

[7] http://www.inc.com/cody-steve/yahoo-logo-redesign-marissa-mayer.html

[8] http://bit.ly/2aj9GDW

What is a Brand, and Why is Brand Equity So Important?

Evaluating Your Brand Equity: Auditing its Current State and Identifying Weaknesses

Make Your Brand Stronger using Keller’s Brand Equity Principles

Measuring Brand Equity with the Six-Stage Brand Development Model

Starbucks

Veritas Winery

Coca-Cola

Key Takeaways:

You might also like:

“Creativity is Intelligence Having Fun.” – Albert Einstein

Case Study #1 – Connecting Strategy with Brand Performance – Lexus[6]

Case Study #2 – Global vs Local – Airbnb[8]

Image via Gapingvoid, © Hugh MacLeod

^{^[1]} https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/1213

^{^[2]} http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reaches-record-highs.html

^{^[3]} https://hbr.org/2011/06/a-logo-is-not-a-brand/

^{^[4]} https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemcclure

^{^[5]} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DlrqeWrczs

^{^[6]} https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/22/mentors-are-the-secret-weapons-of-successful-startups

^{^[7]} http://www.inc.com/cody-steve/yahoo-logo-redesign-marissa-mayer.html

^{^[8]} http://bit.ly/2aj9GDW