Brand Voice Archives : Page 2 of 3 : Persona Design

Packaging Design: How to Make it into an Irresistible Customer Brand Magnet

June 25, 2015/0 Comments/in Brand Design, Brand Differentiation, Brand Personality, Brand Premiumisation, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relevance, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Graphic Design, Packaging, Packaging Design /by Lorraine Carter

The growing proliferation of multiple different brands in the market place has made customers spoilt for choice, but often at the expense of easy decision-making.

As most of us know, shopping has become a far more arduous affair where we frequently find ourselves overwhelmed and sometimes confused by the array of products on shelf and amount of decisions we’re required to make.

When presented with an assortment of options in which nothing decisively stands out, with a compellingly clear message that speaks to a customer succinctly, analysis paralysis sets in. It’s when faced with this situation that a confused shopper will typically default to making decisions based on price alone.

The question here is, where does your brand sit in the mix?

Does it stand out from the crowd with a really strong message that attracts its ideal target audience with laser edged efficiency? Or is it guilty of the ultimate sin . . . hybrid mediocrity, blending in with every other competitor and lost in the crowd!

The question for under performing brands becomes how to differentiate themselves effectively from among their competitors in a way that makes it much easier for them to attract the attention of their ideal customer and convince them to buy, all in the blink of an eye.

Part of the winning formula of these high performers lies in that fact that those leading brands have absolute clarity over who their ideal customer is. Consequently they’ve developed a really strong brand message, which irresistibly appeals to their particular customer who in turn sees that brand as different, distinctive and memorable in a way that’s totally relevant to their specific preferences.

A really distinct brand has a unique brand profile, with a clear position and purpose, which helps it cut through the competing noise so it stands out, head and shoulders above the rest.

By not only being perceived to be unique but also solving problems, making life easier, supplying exclusive solutions for a particular kind of customer and communicating this uniqueness through subtle and overt on pack messaging a brand can outperform its competitors.

However don’t make the mistake of thinking that packaging design aesthetics alone are going to provide you with repeated lotto wins! Effective design must be underpinned by a well-developed strategic focus, which provides the required creative direction. It’s when you have those insights, understanding and a fully developed brand profile that a brand can speak directly and distinctly to its ideal customer through great design.

Leading brands cut through the visual and cognitive noise created by an oversaturated market full of aggressive competitors and hook their ideal customers by meeting their needs both emotionally and rationally.

Evaluate Your Market and Define Your Brand Position and Purpose

Before any of the above objectives can be met, brands must first define their ideal customer or customers and then develop their brand strategy to reach those customers. Their branding strategy will be guided by how they respond to several key factors that help set brands apart from one another.

1. Fit for Purpose

What function does your brand serve? Does it have a deeper purpose beyond the obvious — what’s its ‘big why’? Successful brands dig deeper beyond the superficial and glaringly obviousness of their product category, to something which meets the needs of their customers in more emotionally engaging ways.

A toothbrush might seem rather hum drum and ubiquitousis. It’s certainly used for cleaning your teeth, but is your toothbrush especially effective with its new cutting edge technology making it far more thorough than the competition in removing dental plaque? Is it made with materials which have been chosen to appeal more strongly to your customers with a particular set of values? Define your unique purpose, align them to your brand values and amplify these through your messaging so your brand is separated from the rest in a meaningful way.

2. Emotionally Engaging

An emotional connection might be seen as a secondary factor, but in reality, it’s equally important and often more important than functional benefits. Is your toothbrush commanding a more premium position that not only reduces visits to the dentist, but represents the preferred choice of professional dentists and oral hygenists, making the customer feel more confident and happier with their choice? Will your extra-thorough, VIP celebrity endorsed toothbrush, the preferred choice of ‘those in the know,’ help your ideal customer feel better and more assured they have made the right decision?

3. Commercially Viable

Your brand’s positioning must be congruent with your budget and marketing strategy. Your pricing strategy, for instance, could fill a gap in between existing competitor prices or command a premium. Perhaps your toothbrush is perceived to be so much more superior compared to its nearest competitor that a higher price point is justified.

Remember that pricing can be seen as a direct value-added relationship, but higher price points or margins can also be achieved by altering brand perceptions in relation to the brand’s position to appeal to a more upscale market through premiumisation, also known as premium brand positioning.

4. Translates Regionally, Nationally or Internationally as Required

Brands looking to scale must plan for regional or national differences combined with having absolute clarity of their buyer personas, also known as customer profiles or pen portraits of their primary target audience, if they intend to penetrate other markets. A brand positioning and profile that works well for one region may not translate so well to another, even on an island as small as Ireland or the UK. Will your ultra-premium toothbrush, which appeals to high end Londoners, be seen as irrelevant by customers in Leeds?

Combining answers to these factors and questions will help you create an overarching brand profile that matches the needs of your core customer profile. A fully developed brand profile will typically include how your brand communicates its unique:

Vision — The way your brand sees the world and consequently stands out
Values — What matters to your brand, its aesthetics or the social causes your brand cares about the most
Personality — The characteristics of the humanised way in which your brand speaks to your market
Experience — The customer’s journey from discovery of your brand to usage, referral and repeat business
Promise — A combination of values and experience that you pledge to uphold to your customer
Story — Your brand’s purpose explained through both narrative and aesthetic choices

The development of your brand profile under all these key headings are what provides the much needed direction and rational for your brand packaging design. It’s one of the most important stages in the branding process and one we engage in with every client we work with before moving on to design or communications strategy, assuming the research or brand audit work as also been completed before hand.

Every considered detail in your packaging design from the colour palette to the typography, messaging and copywriting, graphics, photography or illustration references these factors to ensure the design route chosen is relevant and effective — or what’s known in industry jargon as being ‘on brand’.

To give you a better idea of how this process informs packaging design, here are some examples of strongly-positioned brands aided by unique package designs in order to establish a compelling shelf presence and wholly original brand position.

Three Examples of How Effective Packaging Design Can Influence Customer Brand Perceptions and Buying Decisions

Lovechock

Dutch brand Lovechock recently underwent a major rebranding overhaul, pulling off their transition beautifully. Their new package gives them a unique shelf presence, atypical to competitors in their category, through a simple shape and strikingly singular vision. The overall effect of the packaging is one that engenders trust amongst those customers looking for “free from” products of natural origin.

Image via www.lovechock.com/en/

Colour

Plain, brown kraft cardboard boxes not only speak to environmental values, they also conjure up the rich tones of the chocolate itself. A band of vibrant and natural-looking colours on the differing product labels ensures each variant is clearly distinguishable from the next while also enticing the palate with colours that excite the senses.

The simplicity of the outer pack hides a wonderful surprise inside. Open the pack to find the beauty of illustrative patterns reminiscent of decorative hardcover book end papers. This subtle design element surprises and delights, connecting to their “happiness inside” tagline whilst broadcasting the brand’s personal value set that something simple and natural can hide a deeper inner beauty.

Image via www.lovechock.com/en/

Typography

Continuing with their “raw” theme, Lovechock uses clean and modern sans-serif fonts but with a “chunky” look that reminds you of the products natural and ostensibly handmade origins. An all-lowercase logo and “happiness inside” tagline are contrasted with the all-uppercase “100% RAW CHOCOLATE” to clearly indicate the product’s difference from the majority of its competitors.

Illustration

A simple logo in the style of the hand drawn whimsical feeling typeface continues the product’s handmade, printmaking aesthetic. The little Aztec man speaks to the chocolate’s Central American roots. He holds a “molinillo” which is a two-handed tool for whisking chocolate and blending cocoa beans into an even mixture. The end is covered in chocolate to form a heart, blending “love” and “chocolate” together. Small hearts emanating from this first heart show how positive feelings can emanate from a single, natural source.

Structural Packaging Design Details

Lovechock uses a simple shape and an unfolding box to hark back to a time when packaging was of a more handmade aesthetic. The long, blocky shape also reminds customers of the mouthwatering, log-shaped product inside, so that each bar’s box is delicious-looking by association. A tiny visible patch of the inner pattern is also used to tease the mind about the hidden pleasures and secrets the box holds inside.

Packaging Digest called this approach “seductive,” and when the ideal customer opens the pack to see the product and beautifully patterned paper lining inside their expectations will have been exceeded, assuming of course the test excels too!

The package also uses 100 percent recyclable materials to give back to the earth that produced the chocolate while also helping customers spread the love rather than their love of chocolate hurting the planet in return — all of which is totally congruent with Lovechock’s core brand values, vision, story and brand promise.

Marmite

Marmite is a brand with a rich historical legacy stretching back to the nineteenth century and yet it’s managed to maintain primary consumer relevance combined with tradition throughout the decades. Admittedly this is a very British brand with an almost a cult like following between consumers who love this spread with its distinctive, powerful, salty flavour and those who don’t — and not much in between. Marmite knows this and plays to its polarising factor to the full in its branding strategy — to great effect.

This is a brand with a strong personality, individualistic and singular in its outlook and a clever sense of humour that is very British in its quirkiness and eccentricity. It has a really distinctive brand voice that is unmistakably memorable ensuring it really stands out, indeed proudly shouts out its idiosyncratic and unrivalled specialness!

Image via www.marmite.co.uk

Every pack successful expresses this brand’s unique personality. Its’ bulbous shaped jar is a very distinctive shape and it has been sold in this shape since the 1920’s. Even without a visible brand name it’s entirely recognisable and consequently a very definitive unique part of the brand’s identity. An owned asset, which can’t be copied!

Part of Marmite’s incredible success can be attributed to its limited or special editions brand packaging strategy, which it started in 2002 with its 100th year anniversary. Each limited edition jar has successfully encapsulated more of the brands uniquely British personality through its messaging and choice of language, and personably use of the British vernacular.

Image via www.marmite.co.uk

Since then the brand has released a significant number of limited editions packaging design lines with great success. The brand has also aligned with other iconic brands in its limited editions packaging strategy. A great example is the limited edition Marmite Guinness range produced in just 300,000 250g jars using 30% Guinness yeast in 2007 which elevated the brand in terms of profile and positioning.

Image via www.marmite.co.uk

The brand’s most recent limited edition packaging is themed around ‘Summer of Love’ and ‘Summer of Hate’ Marmite jars which are only available from July next month until September. Only ninety-four ‘Summer of Hate’ jars will be available across the UK (one for each day of the UK summer). Such scarcity will make them even more appealing as collectibles amongst its fans. Made with a ‘lighter summery blend’, the packaging takes its inspiration from Woodstock and the summer of love in 1967, playing on its nostalgic provenance to the full.

Image via www.marmite.co.uk

Boss Monster Card Game

Sometimes, a packaging concept can be so powerful that it stands in as a major selling point of the product unto itself. American card game designer Brotherwise Games struck a chord of nostalgia with Kickstarter funders.

Image via www.brotherwisegames.com

Accuracy of design was absolutely crucial to this concept in order to win over the right type of fans. The box containing the card decks looks uncannily identical to a product box for original Nintendo Entertainment System games of the late ‘80s, all the way down to the shape of the illustration border and the placement of badges.

Card game enthusiasts were so enthusiastic about the nostalgic element of this packaging design that they funded the game’s initial Kickstarter campaign well beyond all the initial funding goals.

Image via www.brotherwisegames.com

Many buyers were adamant about getting the special packaging sleeve that slid over the original package and mimicked Nintendo’s famous first “Legend of Zelda” game box. Products like these create strong emotional connections, develop cult followings and invite “unboxing” videos galore on social media.

Conclusion: Plot Your Unique Brand Path Then Journey Down It Fearlessly

In an ideal world all agencies, organisations and companies would invest resources into developing their brand strategy to ensure that it is fit for purpose, emotionally engaging and commercially successful in the short and medium term while also ensuring that it translates nationally and internationally as required across all its relevant markets.

With so many choices and options available be it at the local supermarket or online, brands cannot afford to be unclear or equivocal about their brand’s positioning, promise, personality or the way in which it communicate its values. Instead, the brand packaging must be like a lightning rod drawing energy and enthusiasm towards the shelved product.

Our experience working with many clients over the years has repeatedly brought to the fore that one of the many challenges organisations and businesses face is evaluating and developing the most effective positioning and profile for their brand — the best way in which to engage their primary target audiences and give them a compelling reason to engage and become loyal brand advocates. It’s the uppermost issue that challenenges brand owners and managers all the time, and the reason why we developed the Personality Profile Performer™, a systemized process to provide them with a much needed solution.

People buy with emotion, regardless of gender, and justify with rationale. Consequently, every brand needs to be grounded in emotional appeal by tapping into the emotionally motivating factors that most readily engages their primary audiences. After all, there are very few, if any, truly new-to-the-world ideas anymore. To be perceived as truly distinctive, a brand must convey more compelling, sustaining differentiation, and the best way to do so is through emotion, as evidenced masterfully by Apple. Tying service, product details or even ideas to emotional values and seeking emotional connections with your primary audience cultivates more meaningful, sustained customer relationships.

In order to forge this type of relationship, your organisation needs to create an emotionally compelling, humanised brand through a highly-developed brand strategy. Part of this task includes shaping your brand, defining it and articulating what it is “all about” as well as what it stands for in the global scheme. Developing your brand’s profile involves defining: vision, values, personality, experience, promise and story, coupled with hierarchy planning — all focussed around the needs of your primary target audience. This process is accomplished using a system like the Personality Profile Performer™, which we use when working with our clients.

Applying a strategic approach in this way provides stronger direction and the essential brand foundations required for positioning, differentiation and directing the creative expression of the brand or design outputs — e.g. brand logo design, brand collateral design, web design, packaging design, etc. All of these elements can only come after the brand foundation work has been completed. The outputs from Personality Profile Performer™ help identify, and amplify differentiating brand messaging which is also used to shape the bespoke nature of integrated marketing communications as well as PR focused around the needs and preferences the primary target audience.

In the end, your brand must be able to speak to the world through its packaging in a clear, distinct voice that not only resonates with a clearly identified group but impels them to take action. Successful brands are able to reinforce emotional customer behaviours to the point where repeat business almost becomes a ritual in loyalty. Unsuccessful brands are faceless generic packs gathering dust on a shelf before they disappear forever.

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

• Rebranding: How to Make it Through a Rebrand and Emerge Stronger

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

• Packaging Design: How it Can Make or Break Your Brand

• Humanizing Your Brand: Why it’s Key to Commercial Success

So what do you think?

• What promises does your brand strategy make to your primary customers?

• Does your product packaging design accurately distil your brand’s promises and the values they hold dear?

• Are the colours, graphics, typefaces, illustration or photography style used in your packaging design conveying the right brand messages?

• Are you doing everything you can to reduce your packaging’s carbon footprint or impact on the environment?

• Are there elements of your current packaging design that no longer serve your brand appropriately, or no longer fit with current trends within branding or packaging and would be best eliminated as part of your rebranding strategy?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

Brand Voice: Differentiating Through Your Own Brand Language and Attitude

May 15, 2015/0 Comments/in Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding /by Lorraine Carter

In the world of branding, differentiation is a primary driver of success. However, it’s increasingly challenging for brands to stand out in a noisy, crowded marketplace where countless brands are competing across multiple channels for audience attention. One of the most effective ways to differentiate your brand and stand out from the crowd is to develop your own distinctive brand voice.

Brand voice is how your brand expresses its personality and messaging, the tone in which you engage with your audience. Brand voice involves not only what you have to say, but how you say it—through word choice, medium, and presentation. A great brand voice will genuinely reflect your brand’s personality, vision, messaging and brand promise in a way that truly resonates with your customers, empowering you to strengthen your brand differentiation and ultimately boost your bottom line.

The following top three tips will help you develop and use your brand voice to best effect — and are proven brand stratgies we use with our clients.

Top 3 Tips for Developing Your Brand’s Voice

1. Who Do You Think You Are?

The first and most vital step to building a brand voice is to understand who your brand is, it’s personality and what it stands for, and what you are endeavouring to consistently deliver, through your brand promise, to your customers.

Image via www.katespade.com

Unfortunately many brands fail from the start, because they haven’t develop their brand profile using a system like the Personality Profile Performer™, which provides the foundations, direction and development parameters for a brands’ tone of voice. It’s also really important to understand that the personality of your brand and how it expresses itself and does things has a big impact on customer perceptions, who consequently help shape a brands tone of voice through their interactions with it, particularly online.

Regardless of what you want your brand to be, it is imperative to ensure that your customers relate to your brand vision. If your perception of your brand is contrary to that of your customers, out of alignment, then the brand voice you develop will not ring true—and this disconnect will alienate your customers. Your brand voice must be authentic in order to be effective.

2. Making Your Brand Voice Personal

Developing a personal voice ensures that you’re presenting customers with a brand, rather than a commodity. A commodity is a product or service that’s largely price driven, used with little thought to what it stands for, and has no real compelling reason to use that same product or service again, apart from price—but a brand is something customers find emotionally compelling, can get behind, remain loyal to, and encourage others to purchase and use too.

In order for your brand to be successful it needs a brand voice that is personalised, compelling, and accessible. Your brand voice should represent the hallmark of your brand, and convey an authentic honesty that reflects your brand’s values, story, platform, and market positioning.

Creating a personal brand voice requires establishing the personality of your brand in a way that reflects or influences customer perceptions, as discussed above, and then identifying and structuring communications throughout your company in terms of syntax, viewpoints, semantics, and word choice to amplify that personality.

Image via www.lush.co.uk

Even within the same product categories, brands can have very different and distinctive personal voices. As an example, beauty companies Lush and L’Oreal offer many of the same types of products—but the brand voice for each company is unique.

The language Lush uses in its marketing and brand collateral focuses on the eco-friendly qualities of their makeup, while L’Oreal’s word choice and descriptions draw upon science and innovation. Here’s how each of these brands describes their moisturisers:

Lush: In these little pots is every last ounce of our experience and expertise, along with a world of high quality, natural ingredients.

L’Oreal: Proven science, cutting-edge innovations captured in luxurious textures for a sumptuous skin care experience.

Within these descriptions, you may also note that Lush takes a more direct and conversational tone, while L’Oreal conveys greater sophistication through sentence style—which matches the high-end fashion perception of the brand.

3. Choosing the Right Channels and Keeping Them Consistent

It’s a multi-channel world out there, and not every channel is effective for every brand message. What sounds engaging as a spoken message, such as a YouTube video or a radio commercial, may fall flat in a different medium like text or graphics, and vice versa.

Once you’ve established your brand voice, underpinned by the direction from your brand profile outputs, it’s important to ensure your messaging is adjusted to suit the marketing channels you’re using to establish that voice—and further, that you’re choosing the channels where your audience is likely to receive your message and hear your voice and potentially engage with or respond to it. If your brand voice targets Millennials, for example, more traditional channels like television commercials, and print advertisements are unlikely to deliver much return on the investment.

But regardless of the channels you use, consistency is the key to a powerful and effective brand voice. The brand voice is a reflection of your brand promise, and should be cultivated to infuse every piece of brand collateral and every touch point, from your website to your customer service representatives and the way your employees answer the phone. Developing a consistent brand voice will drive greater customer engagement and loyalty, increasing your brand value and your revenues.

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

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

• Brand Stories: Top 7 Tips for Creating a Great Brand Story

So, what do you think?

• Have you focused on developing a brand voice? What’s the personality and tone of your brand?

• Do your customers’ perceptions match your own views of your brand?

• How well do your marketing messages align with your brand voice?

• What is the personality of your brand, and does your voice authentically reflect that personality?

• Does your brand strategy include using the appropriate and relevant channels to reach your target audience? Does your brand voice come across distinctly through those channels?

• How consistent is your brand voice? Is it reflected across all of your brand collateral, touch points and communications channels?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

May 6, 2015/0 Comments/in Brand Audit, Brand Auditing, Brand Audits, Brand Culture, Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relaunch, Brand Research, Brand Revitalisation, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Rebrand, Rebranding, Target Market /by Lorraine Carter

Launching a new brand is both exciting and challenging. The excitement comes in the promise of something fresh and new that could be wildly successful, be it for your well established, emerging or new startup company — and the challenge comes in getting it right the first time.

Evaluating, articulating, developing and documenting your new brand’s position and purpose is crucial to building a strong successful brand. It provides the roadmap and rationale to get you out of the starting blocks and heading in the right direction towards your ultimate success. And similar to your business plan, it’s also a key foundation to any successful business, be it product or service.

Getting your branding right, from the beginning, is particularly important when you consider it typically costs far more in the long run to rebrand again in the future, if you do it badly the first time, and that’s assuming you even get a second chance.

To help you move in the right direction with your branding here are some of the elements we typically include in our branding process every time we’re working with a client to help them build their brand, whether it’s revitalizing an existing brand or launching a totally new brand to market. These are actionable points you should reference and evaluate before you launch your new brand — product or service — to market.

Top 10 Tips for Branding Success

1. Evaluate and Develop Your Brand Message

The strongest, most successful brands have a consistent message that encapsulates what the brand stands for, its promise and the expected customer experience. Your brand message should ‘show and tell’ your customers who you are through your brand story, and what defines your company—what you stand for and why you’re different, as well as what they can expect when they interact with your brand. They should be able to experience ‘what your brand stands for’ in a real tangible sense, as part of the brand experience.

Actions speak louder than words, so your brand will only be successful if you give your customers a compelling reason to buy through your brands mission, vision, values, promise and so forth. Your brand values and promise, the reasons ‘why’ you do what you do, must be a fully ‘livable experience’ within everything in your business both internally and externally from a customer perspective.

To use the words of Simon Sinek, ‘people don’t buy what you do, they buy ‘why’ you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe.’

Developing a strong foundation for your brand is vital to the planning and execution of your successful brand strategy.

Consider these important points:

What are the needs or problems of your customers?
How does your brand fulfill those needs or solve those problems?
What values and qualities are important to your brand and your primary customer?
What type of experience do you want associated with your brand?
How will your brand enhance your primary customer’s life
Does it make their lives easier?
How will your brand make your customers feel? What do you want them to feel?

Note: People buy with emotion (regardless of gender) and justify with rational so you need to tap into their emotional needs as much as their rational needs if you want your brand to be successful.

In evaluating these attributes, amongst others, you need to ensure your brand message is clear, authentic, relevant, and unique. We use the Personality Profile Performer™ system to identify, develop and articulate all the key factors mentioned, amongst others.

2. Define Your Brand Vision

How do you want your brand to be seen or perceived? Establishing the distinctive character attributes of your brand, together with how it sees the world and how the world perceives it, will help you launch with a strong consistent brand platform that captures the right audience.

Successful brands have a life of their own in the sense that they’re humanized entities through the personality and characteristics they portray. To be successful you’ll need to develop a clear mental image of what your brand is all about — it’s vision — together with its’ persona or character attributes before your launch.

Whether you’re going for adventurous, reliable, timeless, sophisticated, fun and youthful, or innovative and cutting-edge, create and develop your vision for your brand and incorporate it consistently into all your brand touch points or channels and brand collateral.

3. Get Your Employees Involved

Successful brands start from the inside out. As a well established business, entrepreneur or new startup, you have the opportunity to ensure your entire team is engaged and on board with your brand, prior to the revitalization and re-launch or new introduction to market.

This process is just as important if you are revitalizing an established brand or launching a new brand to market. Your team can provide invaluable insights and the more you involve them in the process the more likely they are to embrace it, take ownership and act as catalysts for change by being early adopters of new cultural behaviours throughout the business. Your brand promise is far more likely to be carried consistently across the customer experience if everyone believes in it and really lives it in everything they do.

4. Research and Develop an Intimate Knowledge of Your Customers

50% plus of marketing spend is misaligned, going to areas that don’t influence the purchasing decisions of top customers (Source: McKinsey&Company). Find out what really matter to your customers.

It’s impossible to target a brand audience if you don’t know who that audience is or what they want. If you want to make your brand compelling you have to know what matters to your customers and the only way to really establish that is to conduct research.

This can include aspects of you customer such as demographics—the age group(s), gender(s), socioeconomics, geographic locations, what they have in common, what motivates them and so forth if preferences are not strictly age related and other relevant categorical factors that help define your ideal customer.

Do some test marketing or research into identifying your target demographics, and then find out what appeals to them—their needs and desires, and the problems your brand can help them solve.

It’s also important to consider developing Buyer Personas or Pen Portraits of your ideal customer to help you shape your branding strategy. The combination of both Buyer Personas and market research or limited test run service or production run (if you’re selling a physical product) can provide you with invaluable insights. These can then help you develop and plan your branding strategy specifically tailored to meet your customers real needs, particularly when you incorporate these customer motivations into your brand collateral and various branding platforms and brand experience.

5. Evaluate, Benchmark and Rate Your Competition

A brand audit or market research prior to re-launching or launching a new brand is critical not just for your target audience, but also for your competitors. You need to know what type of competition you’re facing in your intended market, and find out what they do well and where they may be lacking. Their weaknesses are your opportunities, potentially providing you with gaps in the market that you can leverage to your advantage.

Once you’ve identified your competitors’ weak points or areas of poor customer satisfaction, you may be able to build a brand niche on fulfilling those unmet needs for your customers. The ability to differentiate from the competition, be that perceived or actual, is key to a thriving and successful brand. By carrying out a comprehensive competitive analysis and brand audit of your market sector, you can build differentiation into your brand from the start.

6. Review Your Brand Concept for Usefulness

Some new companies make the mistake of launching a brand based on hype, touting their products as “new and different” or relying on surface factors (such as beautiful packaging or a stunning logo) in order to capitalize on the brand. However, if the actual products or services are not high quality and really enhancing the lives of their customers in a way that tangibly matters to them, the brand will fail.

The best brands fulfill a customer need or desire, or solve problems that other brands don’t. There are many forms this fulfillment can take, whether it’s true innovation, a new twist on an existing line, or even perceived value that is higher than the competition—but the core quality must be there for any of these strategies to succeed. This is where audience targeting can be crucial, as it can take some time to identify the right demographics for your brand to serve.

7. Design a Distinctive Brand Identity

Truthfully, obtaining perfection is an impossible goal—but your brand logo should be as close to perfect as you can get when you launch a new brand. Your brand logo design is the central identifier or visual component of any brand, and a great logo can be a powerful tool for success. Think of iconic brand logos that are instantly recognizable: the Nike swoosh, McDonald’s golden arches, the Olympic rings, the Mercedes-Benz three-point star or Virgin. All of these logos help convey the values and qualities of the brands they stand for, and foster brand visibility and loyalty.

Image via www.virgin.com

Take the time to create a brand logo that is unique, clean and strong, and succinctly expresses your brand, and what it stands for, at a glance. When used consistently, a compelling and recognizable brand logo will support the drive for brand success.

8. Let Your Passions Shine

Whether you’re a long established business launching a new brand, a seasoned entrepreneur or an uninitiated start-up you are uniquely positioned to infuse your new brand with the passion that led to the launch of your business.

All of the enthusiasm and excitement that went into creating your company should be poured into your brand development and messaging with the same passion. This will enable you to build an authentic brand that connects with your customers and evokes emotion—which in turn fosters loyalty, repeat purchase and referral for brand success.

9. Develop and Commit to Your Brand Promise—and Never Break it

Every successful brand comes with a promise to its customers. For example, Johnson & Johnson baby products makes a promise to parents that the brand will care for their baby’s sensitive skin like no other. Domino’s Pizza promises that its customers will have their orders delivered in 30 minutes or less—and reinforces that promise with a money-back guarantee.

What will your brand promise your customers? It is essential to not only define your brand promise, but to keep it every time, with every customer interaction. Brands that break their promises quickly fall out of favour and struggle to stay afloat in the market.

10. Maintain Your Brand Consistency

Finally, successful brands are unfailingly consistent—across every customer channel, every brand touch point, and every piece of brand collateral. Brand consistency means infusing every aspect of your brand, from packaging to marketing to in-store, customer facing staff or online experiences, with the values and promise your brand stands for.

It’s about far more than maintaining your corporate colours in your marketing material (although that aspect is also absolutely essential too and the reason Brand Style Guides are created). Being consistent should extend throughout your brand presentation, communication, and customer service. Creating a single impression for your brand from the beginning enables you to quickly increase visibility and recognition, and develop a loyal customer base who will spread your brand message for you.

Strong, engaging, and consistent branding is the critical foundation that supports all of your marketing activities, and drives the success for your company. Use a system like our Personality Profile Performer™ to get a great started with a well-defined brand that meets the needs of your target audience and outshines your competition, and you’ll enjoy a long and successful branding experience.

You may also like:

• Brand Differentiation: 30 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand

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

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

So, what do you think?

• What excites you about launching a new brand? What are the challenges you believe you’ll face for your new brand?

• How well do you understand the requirements of your new brand messaging?

• Who is your ideal customer? What are the specific demographics of your target audience?

• How will your new brand differentiate from the competition?

• Does your brand offer the right quality and value to your customers for its positioning? How can you tie that offering to your target audience?

• Have you expressed your brands’ passions through your brand strategy? How will you capitalize on this?

• What is your brand promise, and how will you maintain it consistently across all of your brand touch points?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

Brand Stories: Top 7 Tips for Creating a Great Brand Story

February 9, 2015/0 Comments/in Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Story, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding /by Lorraine Carter

Your brand is the most powerful asset your business owns. A compelling brand will drive sustainability and long-term profits, increasing your market share and elevate your business above the competition. In order to develop, maintain, and grow your brand, you need an effective brand strategy that combines several elements—and one of the most crucial of those elements is your brand story. To quote Seth Godin “marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about the stories you tell.”

What is a brand story? It’s more than a quick background sketch on your About page. A great brand story taps into the emotions of your target audience, tying your company values to your brand promise and conveying the overall brand experience. Effective brand stories are evocative, relevant, and highly memorable, with the power to connect with your primary customer in a way that supports building a strong and loyal customer base.

Here are some of the elements we include or consider when creating our clients brand stories using our Brand Story Selling System™. These seven tips will also help you create your brand story so that it engages your customers, encourages brand loyalty, and ultimately helps you boost your bottom line.

Top 7 Tips for Creating a Compelling Brand Story

1. Know Your Brand’s Big “Why”

When creating your brand story, it’s essential to know your brand inside and out. This includes not only your production values and target audiences, but the reasons your brand exists. Many companies make the mistake of focusing a brand story on the what or the how of their products or services—what they do, how they help people or features and benefits—when the focus should really be on why you do what you do.

Emphasising the “big why” of your brand allows you to create an emotionally compelling, human-centric brand story. It’s important here to differentiate a brand story from marketing collateral, the aspects of your brand that convey the benefits of your products and services to your customers. The purpose of your brand story is to bring your brand to life, in a way that people can connect with and actually relate to. When you highlight the big “why” of your brand, it’s easier to create that emotional connection.

2. Set the Right Tone

The tone of your brand story should reflect the values, emotions, and experiences you want people to associate with your brand. Whether your brand is elegant and sophisticated, timeless and traditional, fun and modern, or serious and influential, your brand story needs to capture that tone with appropriate wording and imagery that reinforces your brand values.

Image via www.smilesquared.com

One effective method of brand storytelling that conveys a relevant tone is a heartfelt message from brands that are committed to making a difference in the world. Toothbrush brand Smile Squared serves as an excellent example of this—their About page tells the story of how a husband-and-wife team founded the company after travelling to disadvantaged countries and witnessing the impact of a lack of basic dental care firsthand. Smile Squared is built on a “buy one, give one” philosophy: for every toothbrush a customer buys, the company donates a toothbrush to a child in need.

Fun and humour can also create a memorable, engaging brand story that sets the tone for the brand experience. For example, DollarShaveClub.com created a fun and unique video that tells the story of their brand, which went viral and currently has more than 18 million views on YouTube.

3. Tie into Your Provenance

Placing a focus on the home location of your brand can make for a powerful and engaging brand story. Provenance is the origin location of your brand, which can mean either the geographic area of your business, or the original country or city of the company’s founders.

Many effective brands have built a brand story around provenance. The story can be general, such as brands that emphasise cultural values and originate from small towns, or region-specific, such as brand values that are tied to the perceptions of their country of origin. L’Oreal is a well-known example of brand provenance. The cosmetics company consistently ties their brand story and platform to Paris, focusing on the chic and stylish reputation of the French city to differentiate the brand.

4. Build a Brand Hero

Brand stories that revolve around a central character can create a powerful connection with your customers and strengthen brand loyalty. There are several different types of brand heroes that can be used to tell a brand story. Some of these include:

Fictional characters (Keebler Elves, Tony the Tiger)
Brand mascots (Pillsbury Dough Boy, Churchill the Bulldog)
Founder characters (Colonel Sanders)
Brand personas (Google Chrome)

A well-crafted brand hero allows your customers to connect directly and personally to your brand. The best character brand stories encapsulate your brand values and promise, and personify the aspects of your brand that set you apart from the competition.

5. Keep Your Brand Promise Consistent

Brand storytelling is a concept that should extend beyond the About page of your website. The most effective brand storytelling is woven into multiple aspects of an overall brand strategy, including social media, marketing campaigns, and even your brand tagline and slogans. In order to make your brand story work for you, it’s essential to ensure that your brand promise is presented consistently across all your brand collateral and platforms.

The Red Bull brand is an excellent example of brand story consistency. With brand values that include freedom, adventure, and extreme lifestyles consistent with the company’s energy drink offerings, Red Bull marketing campaigns continually reflect those values and tell the story of the brand. The strong sense of challenge and adventure that pervades the Red Bull story creates an immediate connection with the brand’s target audience that customers can expect from every interaction.

6. Be Authentic

Authenticity is a primary key to an effective brand story. An authentic brand story is true to your company’s values and mission statement, aligning strongly with your products and services while remaining genuine and heartfelt. Brand stories that attempt to sell, or those that are obviously disassociated from the brand, will fail every time with audiences.

Being authentic doesn’t mean there is no room for creativity in your brand story. It simply means that the your core brand values embodied by your brand’s storytelling are a true reflection of what your brand offers, and that every brand touchpoint reinforces the ideals presented by your story.

7. Make Your Brand Story Shareable

Finally, an effective brand story is one that can be easily shared. A great brand story should be a central core of your overall brand strategy—not merely relegated to your About Us page, but highlighted through a variety of media and collateral and displayed in ways that allow your customers to spread the word and get involved.

In addition to telling your brand story through words, you can create videos, post images or quotes, and develop taglines that capture the essence of your brand storytelling to help the message spread. Particularly for modern audiences, a great brand story is the best way to create a connection and make customers want to share your story with the world. Shareable brand stories help you harness word of mouth and elevate your brand to new heights of success.

• Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

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

• Packaging Design: How to Make it into an Irresistible Customer Brand Magnet

• Brand Strategy: 6 Lessons Learned from Tourism Queensland, One of the Most Successful Brand Campaigns Ever!

So, what do you think?

• Is your brand story confined to your About page?

• What is the bit “why” of your brand? How can you articulate it in a compelling brand story?

• Does your existing brand story accurately reflect the tone of your brand?

• How can you effectively tie your brand to provenance?

• What type of brand hero would best represent your brand?

• Is your brand story authentic and honest? Is it consistent?

• How many ways can you share your brand story with your audience?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

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

February 2, 2015/2 Comments/in Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Relevance, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Target Market /by Lorraine Carter

Your brand is much more than merely product or service related features and benefits, or a logo. Brands are an experience—the relationship between your business and your customers. In the words of Simon Sinek “people don’t buy what you do, they buy ‘why’ you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe.” In other words people buy what your brand stands for, something that has meaning – which is both personal and important to them. And in order to create an exceptional customer experience, underpinned with strong meaning, your brand must have an irresistible personality.

Typically, customers choose one brand over another because they’ve made an emotional connection with that particular brand because it means something important to them and they trust that brand. While that connection may sometimes be the brand with the lowest price, more often than not it’s due to the distinctive personality, characteristics, values and behaviours of a brand – the emotional experience and meaning that association with that brand gives them.

Martyn Newman, PhD, consulting leadership and emotional intelligence psychologist and best selling author of ‘Emotional Capitalist – The Ultimate Guide to Developing Emotional Intelligence for Leaders’ is one of the leading speakers at Europe’s largest EQ Summit in London in March 2015. Newman talks about emotional capital; the asset on the balance sheet you can’t afford to ignore. In short without sounding cynical, “there’s money in emotion”, “trust is fundamentally built on an emotional experience and emotions are involved with everything a company does. Emotions determine whether or not people will work well with you, buy from you, hire you, or enter into business with you. For this reason, the value of these emotions eventually shows up in financial performance.”

“In the new economy it is no longer sufficient to view a company or a brand simply as a commercial entity and its assets cannot be fully accounted for by inventories of financial capital and not even human capital.” “Ultimately, the only way to create real profit is to attract the emotional rather than the rational customer by appealing to their feelings and imagination.”

Image via www.eqsummit.com

“In the information age and globalised economy where values and meaning matter more in the market place, the value of emotional capital increases. This creates brand value and goodwill and results in repeat sales through customer loyalty, lifetime relationships and referrals. In other words, the brand is more than a name or a logo; it creates trust and recognition and is a promise and an emotional contract with each customer.”

Brands that compete on price alone fight in a commodity driven arena where only those with the deepest pockets win. Brands with strong, compelling personalities are able to rise above this lowest price, dog fight and command premium pricing, greater market share, and an expanded base of loyal customers.

Brand profiling is the systematic process of creating, developing and implementing your brand character and personality through shaping its brand promise, values, the do’s and don’ts of its behaviours, story, emotional benefits, its culture and what it stands for and so forth. It’s this humanized entity that gets your brand message out into the market, cuts through the noise and gets the attention of your primary customers in a way that matters to them. It gives you a clear understanding and expression of what your band offers and what that means for your customers, partners, and key audiences.

When creating and developing the profiles for our clients’ brands we use our bespoke Personality Profile Performer™, a systematic approach which underpins the commercial, rational, and holistic aspects of successful brand profile building. The following six key elements are representative of some of the core ingredients included within this branding process, used to create and deploy a compelling personality for your brand.

1. Know Your Market

Market research is crucial for any successful brand. You need to be absolutely clear on who your target market is in terms of things like their needs, wants, loves, dislikes and aspirations. Where they live, their life stage, what they do in their leisure time and work life, what matters to them, their interests, education, holiday preferences, what other brands they like, buy or aspire to owning etc.

Essentially you need to develop a ‘pen portrait’ or ‘buyer persona’ of who your ideal customer is so that you can create a compelling brand that meets their needs emotionally and rationally. And you need all this information as the basis on which to develop your brands’ profile or personality.

As part of your knowing your market you also need to research your competition. Where are they most successful and why, where do the untapped opportunities lie and what simply doesn’t or hasn’t worked in your market sector and so forth. You also need to find out and evaluate what your existing or potential new customers think about your competitors together with their perceptions. Remember 60% of branding is about perception and only 40% about the product or service.

It’s only then when you have all this groundwork covered that you can create and actively shape your brand the way you ideally want customers to perceive it. Make no mistake, customers are very intelligent and perceptive so whatever you do, or whatever approach you take, you must do it with good intent, authenticity and integrity if you want to be successful. Brands that ‘mislead’ or behave ‘dishonorably’ are always ‘found out’ and invariable suffer the consequences, particularly via social media.

You can gather this market research information through a variety of ways e.g. desk research, surveys, one-to-one interviews etc. Your choice of methodologies is often driven by what is most appropriate to your sector, market size, business or organization size and resources, but usually involves a combination of some of the approaches mentioned.

Customer surveys are a great strategy for gaining some of this important information and insights. You can design longer, more formal surveys for use in email marketing or on your business website, or use your social media channels to post quick, informal surveys. Some helpful survey types may include:

Give customers a list of personality adjectives, and ask them to rate your brand or multiple brands on each one, using a scale (1 to 5 or 1 to 10)
Display photographs of individual people and ask customers which brand(s) in your product category they believe each person would use, and why
Ask customers to perform free association with your brand name or slogan—list the first words or phrases that come to mind when they envision your brand
Provide a list of brands (including your own) and ask customers to relate them to other types of items such as cars, animals, movies, or books—for example: “If this brand was a movie, which one would it be?”

By using these direct-to-customer types of research methods, you’ll not only generate large amounts of information that will help you define the parameter of your brand personality—you’ll also increase customer engagement and interest in your brand.

2. Define Your Brand Personality

In addition to evaluating your market, you must also develop the parameters of your brand in the context of what is relevant to your primary target audience. This means determining a brand personality that will be authentic and believable for the customer, accurately reflect your brand values and brand promise, and is consistently represented across your entire brand platform, and throughout all your brand collateral.

Remember, your brand personality is a set of emotions and characteristics, rather like a real person, it’s a humanized entity that’s underpins your total brand experience. Brand personalities are often reflective of the target market—for example, brands aimed at Millennials may be fresh, energetic, innovative, or “fast,” while brands focusing on an older demographic base may embrace characteristics like tradition, nostalgia, and reliability.

As a basic start to determining your brand personality, consider which of the Big Five Personality Traits your brand falls under. Originally categorized as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, in relation to brands they are: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness.

These Big Five traits are traditionally used in personality tests, and virtually any brand can be related to one of them. Choosing a broad brand personality category can help you to refine this choice further in your brand profiling.

3. Create Distinction for Your Brand Profile

Once you have an overview of your brands’ personality, you need to refine your brand profile in order to differentiate from the competition. Take certain aspects of your brands’ character traits and amplify them to create increased distinction and memorability. There are many ways to accomplish brand differentiation, ranging from subtle yet continually reinforced messaging to truly stand-out separation. Regardless of the level of your brand differentiation strategy, it all begins with the essentials of your brand profile.

As an example of subtle distinction, major U.S. based department store brands Walmart, K-Mart, and Target share very similar operations and strategies. Yet the Target brand distinguishes itself by focusing on different elements of the brand experience compared to its competitors. Where Walmart and K-Mart typically focus on more affordable pricing, Target infuses its brand collateral and customer-facing content with style, design, and lifestyle choices. The fact that they are competitively priced and offering ‘value’ (which is not just price related) is assumed.

Some brands achieve distinctive personalities through a massive departure from convention. One example we’ve previously discussed is FMGC brand PooPouri, a bathroom odour control product that inverts the traditional discretion and euphemistic elegance of the industry by embracing the idea that poo stinks—and their product stops the stink.

4. Develop or Refine Your Brand Story

Brand storytelling is another powerful strategy and important part of your brand profile. A great brand story should fully incorporate and reflect your brand’s personality with compelling, memorable elements that help reaffirm, explain and exemplify what it stands for, its brand values and brand promise, how it sees the world, its humour type, tone of voice, what it likes and doesn’t like and so forth.

Image via www.hootmarketing.co.uk

There are several methods for approaching brand story creation – ranging from actual brand origin stories that are emotional, compelling, interesting or engaging, to brand stories that restate your brand values in creative ways, to brand stories that revolve around a symbol such as a brand mascot—think the Keebler Elves, the Pillsbury Doughboy, or Tony the Tiger.

FMCG brand OXO created a powerful brand story through their series of commercials aired through the 1980s and 1990s, starring the “OXO Family.” These adverts showed the family growing up and progressively evolving through various stages of life, held together during each stage by a mum who cooked meals using OXO stock cubes. The brand story proved so effective that when the lead actress, Lynda Bellingham, passed away in 2014, more than 150,000 people joined a Facebook campaign to resurrect the advert series.

5. Develop a Strategic Direction

In order to use brand profiling effectively in your brand communications plans, you must have a well-planned strategic direction for infusing the personality and characteristics of your brand into your all brand collateral and various touch points. It’s essential to find creative and engaging ways to communicate your brands’ personality congruently to your customers across multiple platforms, including physical presentation in retail stores, online media and marketing channels, and internal branding with your employees and leadership team.

Online channels like your company website and social media channels can provide excellent opportunities to reinforce your brand personality. Use things like your company’s “About Us” page to creatively reflect the main characteristics of your brand profile—replace stiff images and droning corporate copy with carefully selected content and brand image collateral that conveys the personality you want to communicate. Engage your customers on social medial with posts that reflect your brand’s chosen qualities and characteristics.

Image via www.papajohns.com

Pizza chain Papa John’s employed a smart strategy when expanding their U.S. based market into the UK—translating larger-than-life chain owner John “Papa” Schnatter’s sports enthusiasm into an association with the UK’s Football League and weaving this association heavily into their social media channels. As a result, Papa John’s market share in the UK has risen dramatically over the last 12 months.

6. Maintain Brand Consistency

Consistency is critically important in every aspect of your brand strategy, and this applies to your brand’s personality as well. The more consistently your brand’s personality is reflected across every platform, every customer touch point, and every piece of brand collateral, the stronger and more established your brand becomes.

Brand consistency must apply to both the tangible and intangible aspects of your brand—everything from your logo and corporate colors, to your packaging, to your employees’ attitudes and customer experiences and engagement strategies.

With a compelling brand personality, applied consistently, you can establish a strong brand profile that increases your market share—and ultimately your profits.

So, what do you think?

• How well do you understand your brand personality as it’s perceived by your customers?

• Do your brand’s current market perceptions reflect the embodiment of the brand personality you’d like to achieve for your brand?

• What distinction or distinctions separate your brand’s personality from your competition?

• How does your brand story tie into your brand profile? Could it be better aligned?

• What is your strategic direction for reinforcing your desired brand personality?

• Is your brand profile reflected consistently across all touch points and brand collateral? How could you be more consistent and more congruent?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

Social Branding: The New Rules for Brand Success on Social Media

October 14, 2014/3 Comments/in Brand Experience, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Integrated Marketing, Social Engagement, Social Media /by Lorraine Carter

There’s no doubt about it: If you want a successful brand, you need to incorporate social media into your branding strategy. Customer interactions are increasingly taking place online rather than in person or over the phone, and your audience expects to find a strong social media presence for their favorite brands.

Just how important is social media?

Here’s what the landscape looks like as of January 2014, and the statistics just keep growing:

74 percent of the world’s Internet users are active on social networks

44 percent of users in Western Europe are active on social networks

Mobile is increasingly used for social, and Western Europe’s mobile penetration stands at 128 percent—or 1.28 devices for every person

Social penetration is 78 percent in the UK

Source: US Census Bureau, ITU, CIA

In the early days, brands were successful on social media if they had a lot of fans or followers. The bigger the numbers, the better your brand was perceived. But now that social has exploded into a vast sea of noise, effective social branding has moved out of the numbers game. It’s not the size of your customer base on social media – it’s what you do with it that counts.

Top 4 of today’s most important rules for social media branding success.

Rule 1: Be Consistent

As with any other element of your branding strategy, consistency is vital for social media success. Each of your social channels and platforms should clearly belong to your brand – but remember that consistency extends to much more than your logo and signature colours. With social media, you also need to develop consistent brand messaging, and a consistent tone and voice. Your company can’t be formal and serious on Facebook, yet irreverent and fun on Twitter.

Being consistent on social media requires your brand to develop and adhere to a style that is followed without fail. If you have more than one employee participating in your social media campaigns, especially if they work on different platforms, make sure they’re on the same page when it comes to your brand messaging, promise, values, voice and your brand tone.

Etsy is a strong example of a brand that maintains social media consistency. The online community marketplace with an emphasis on hand-crafted and vintage items has a branded presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest, that makes use of the Etsy brand’s simple, memorable logo and distinctive orange brand colouring, paired with plenty of stunning product photos. Etsy frequently and consistently cross-posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, and makes full use of Pinterest with dozens of organized boards arranged into product categories.

Rule 2: Be Active

Simply being on social media will not help your brand. In order to drive social branding, you need to have an active presence on the platforms you use, and interact with your audience frequently. In fact, having an inactive social media page can turn potential customers off, because your brand will be perceived as not interested in hearing from your audience.

For this reason, it’s important to choose the right platforms for your social branding strategy. Many companies make the mistake of thinking that the more social networks they join, the stronger their social marketing will be – but creating accounts on dozens of social platforms and ignoring most of them is actually detrimental to your brand.

Instead, look for the networks where most of your target audience is, and focus on building a strong presence on those networks. Facebook and Twitter might be totally suitable for some brands and a lot less relevant for others. Your chosen social platform is driven by what is most appropriate for your core target audience and where they interact most. LinkedIn is very effective for professional and B2B brands. If your brand has a strong visual component, Pinterest is an excellent platform.

Once you’ve chosen the right platforms, get active. Post frequently – but don’t make all your content about marketing. The goal of social media is not to sell, but to build relationships. Your social media posts should entertain, inform, inspire, or interest your audience.

Taco Bell has a highly active social media presence that gets results. With a brand platform dedicated to fun and delight, and frequently posted content that focuses on customers, the restaurant chain’s Facebook page has more than 10 million fans, and 1.37 million follow them on Twitter.

Rule 3: Be Engaging

An important part of Taco Bell’s social media success, and many other brands that understand how social works, is engaging the audience. The best brands on social media don’t broadcast – they have conversations. They post content that invites audiences to participate, and encourages them to share with friends for even more visibility. From simple questions to elaborate contests, these brands make followers feel like part of the brand experience.

In 2012, Domino’s UK ran a Twitter campaign called “Tweet for Treats” that engaged audiences in a very direct way. For a time period of two hours, they invited followers to tweet with the hashtag #letsdolunch, and stated they’d knock a minimum of £0.01 off the price of their pizzas for every tweet sent that day for lunch. The campaign knocked the pizza price from £15.99 to £7.74. Anyone who followed Domino’s UK on Twitter or liked their Facebook page could order pizzas at the final discounted price through the Tweet for Treat Facebook Tab between 12:00 – 15:00 GMT on their Facebook page. The campaign gained the brand lots of interaction and hundreds of new followers, and helped them sell a lot of pizzas.

Rule 4: Be Social

Another highly effective strategy for social branding is to make it social – in the name of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Practicing good CSR boosts brand perceptions and brand awareness, and social media is an ideal channel for spreading the word about your brand’s social consciousness.

Brewing company Molson Coors Canada uses social media to leverage CSR and increase reach for their responsible drinking initiatives. The company’s social media team focuses not only on selling beer, but also connecting with communities for their programs that include responsible drinking education, the TaxiGuy program that provides cab rides for people who’ve had one too many, and covering the costs of public transportation for drinkers on New Year’s Eve.

Your brand can’t afford to ignore social media. Effective social branding doesn’t have to be complicated – when you maintain consistency. Focus on the best platforms for reaching your audience in terms of what is relevant to them, keep an active brand presence, and engage audiences with informative, interesting, entertaining, or interactive content that meets their needs.

When done strategically and consistently social media can amplify your brand visibility and boost your bottom line.

What do you think?

• How many social channels is your brand on? Are any of your pages inactive?

• Have you integrated social media into your brand strategy or rebranding strategy?

• Which social networks are most likely to attract your target audience?

• Is your brand displayed consistently across all of your social platforms?

• Are you using a consistent brand tone and voice for social media?

• Does your social presence reinforce your brand messaging and values?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

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

September 9, 2014/0 Comments/in Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding /by Lorraine Carter

Just as people can be larger than life, a brand’s personality can take on a life of its own. Creating a brand with an authentically strong character is central to your branding strategy success and effectively the decider between just another average price fighter or a truly magnetic and profitable brand.

And the good news for smaller brands – who frequently think branding is purely the remit of deep pocketed big national or global entities – it’s entirely within your grasp too, if you develop the right ‘know-how’. With a solid brand profile and the right brand strategy in place, your brand can punch above its weight and become bigger than another mere product or service, and consequently generate tremendous brand impact and instill an unshakeable brand loyalty in your target audience.

Here’s how you can be a small player with a big heart—and big profits—by using brand profiling and amplification strategies to create an magnified personality that brings your brand to life and makes it truly compelling to your primary target audience.

Note: These tips are some of the magic sauce we use coupled with our ‘Personality Profile Performer System™’ when working with our clients to help them develop their brand profiling.

Key Ingredients for a Compelling Brand Personality

What goes into a great brand profile? Brands with compelling, customer centric personalities are able to reach out to, and engage their target audiences in ways that elicit strong emotional responses.

An effective brand profile provides the direction for creating a customer centric, brand resonance or affinity with your customers through the emotions your brand endeavours to elicit in them, whether it’s gritty and real, sophisticated, entertaining, decadent, or simply warm, feel-good pleasures. Regardless of the overall effect, brands with strong personalities share characteristics that include:

A Compelling Brand Story: Delivering an incredible brand story gives your core target customers a foundation for engagement and loyalty, and adds depth to your brands’ embodiment.

Clear Brand Values: When your brand stands for something that matters to your target audience, your customers can feel like they’re part of something bigger whenever they engage with your brand.

Evocative Emotions: Funny or poignant, lighthearted or dramatic, brands that make customers feel strongly about something that matters to them are far more memorable, referable and engaging than the bland, boring or just another ‘me too’ average. People buy with emotion and justify with rationale!

Your Big Why? Your Brands’ Mission: Coca-Cola wants the world to be happy. Apple wants everyone to enjoy and intuitively use their cutting edge technology and enhance peoples’ lives. What does your brand want to accomplish? A great mission statement is an authentically lived experienced which encapsulates the DNA or core essence of your brand and not only generates buzz and excitement for your brand but gives it substance and depth. It’s not something clinical and stark living on the corporate wall gathering dust or buried somewhere in your annual report or on your website. It’s an integral part of the way you fundamentally do business and interact with the world around you and most importantly it’s about what you do, with or for your customers and how you want them to feel.

Absolute Consistency. Developing and sustaining an incredible brand profile requires consistency across all aspects of your brand, throughout every channel and touch point. Each customer interaction should reinforce your brand personality and keep your brand promise.

1. Building an Emotional Response

Strong emotions are central to a larger-than-life brand personality. The most effective brand profiles are developed to evoke a specific feeling that your primary customers value and experience each time they choose to buy that product or service from you.

An effective brand profile is also developed in order to amplify the brand’s difference and set it apart from all the other pretenders competing for wallet share. And this is the fundamental core of the work we do with our clients in helping them build their brands.

Many companies believe an emotional brand is customer-generated, and therefore unattainable—but successful brands understand that emotional responses can be evoked through creating a strong brand personality coupled with strategic brand engagement. Successful branding is a two way interaction between the brand and the customer.

It’s a shared ‘meaningful’ exchange that the customer values. In short its a humanly emotional engagement where the customer electively participates in the exchange because it positively enhances their lives in some way that they value. And this is what brand profiling is all about – using systems like our ‘Personality Profile Performer™’ for creating the character of your brand and then developing the ‘road map’ of how it will be brought to life.

Image via www.besamecosmetics.com

Such is the case with Bésame, a niche cosmetics company with a powerful brand personality rooted in the glamour heydays of the 1920s to 1950s. This entrepreneurial business set out to develop its brand profile from the beginning, and intentionally created a nostalgic brand with old-fashioned values that evokes wistful memories of a bygone era.

Image via www.besamecosmetics.com

Gabriela Hernandez, the founder of Bésame, was inspired by the vintage original cosmetics of her grandmother. Prior to launching her company, she decided that her brand’s personality would be very feminine, romantic, nostalgic and elegant in a traditional sense, while delivering very modernly efficacious products.

Image via www.besamecosmetics.com

Every aspect of the Bésame brand was developed to amplify this glamorous and nostalgic personality to create differentiation in an incredibly busy category noted for the billions spent on selling hope and aspiration to its largely female audiences!

Image via www.besamecosmetics.com

The company’s distinct packaging design uses very tactile high quality materials including rich fabrics, metals and colour palettes designed to stand out from the oceans of plastic containers. Consistency across all brand channels, a distinctive experience from start to finish, and internal branding that extends to the way the company’s phones are answered and staff interactions all contribute to underpinning this distinctly nostalgic brand profile. Collectively it’s what makes Bésame a highly successful brand that’s carried in major department stores around the world.

2. The Bold and The Brave

A strong brand personality, even if it’s controversial, can elevate your business to success. The key to this strategy is to start out bold and stick to your guns, regardless of any potential criticism or public outcry from a small minority. Taking a stand—preferable a defensible one—can help you define a brand profile that outshines your competition consistently.

Image via www.benjerry.com

For specialty ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, that stand is irreverent fun. The entire company, which began with founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield selling homemade ice cream from a renovated gas station, is built on the idea that if you’re not having fun, you shouldn’t be doing it!

Image via www.benjerry.com

The small brand made a big impact early on with its whimsical and cartoonish packaging, outrageous flavour names like Cherry Garcia and Wavy Gravy, and a high-demand strategy of selling only pints instead of half-gallons, offering exclusive batches and retiring flavours. In fact, the Ben & Jerry’s website maintains a Flavour Graveyard that showcases “de-pinted” flavours throughout the company’s history.

Ben & Jerry’s has never shied away from controversy—it’s all part of the fun. The company has embraced such controversial flavours as Black and Tan, named after an alcoholic beverage but perceived as associated with a paramilitary police force, and Schweddy Balls, named for a Saturday Night Live character and decried as “too explicit for grocery store shelves.” Ben & Jerry’s consistently bold stance has earned their ice cream an outrageous brand personality and a strong, loyal customer base.

3. Redefining a Niche

Finding a new twist on an old industry standard is a fantastic strategy for building powerful brand profiles. This involves highlighting and amplifying one or more aspects of your brand differentiation, and turning those amplified characteristics into a brand personality that can stand on its own.

Image via www.poopourri.com

An incredible example of this comes from an FMCG brand making a huge stink, namely Poo-Pourri! Founded in 2006, the odour control company has already made a huge impact by turning the usually discreet nature of bathroom odour product marketing on its head and flaunting the fact that its product deals with poo!

Image via www.poopourri.com

The secret blend of essential oils and other natural compounds eliminates bathroom odors by creating a protective film on the water’s surface. More than 4 million bottles have been sold, according to the company’s official website. When I first wrote about this brand a few years ago they were already making waves but take a look at what they achieved now – and they’re not a massive company!

Image via www.poopourri.com

This brand has absolute clarity over who their target market is, namely glamorous, silk robe wearing, youngish women and they’re not afraid of who they might offend. They’ve developed their whole brand personality around suiting this target audience’s needs and they never waiver from it. Yes they have other secondary products aimed at men, parents and even pets with Pooch-Pourri, but their primary audience is a very particular kind of women and everything is geared to engage her in a certain way!

Image via www.poopourri.com

Take a look at how their brand personality extends onto their product scent names:

• Hush Flush – A fresh Floral Blend of Wildflowers in the Spring, Before You Go, Give the Bowl a Spray, the Air Stays Fresh as a Spring Bouquet

• Deja Poo – A Soft Sweet Blend of White FLowers and Citrus, You’ve Been Here Before But Now With a Scent You Adore

• Party Pooper – A Fresh Crisp Floral Blend of Mandarin, Tangerine, and Lily, When Glasses CLink, Don’t Ruin the Party With a Stink

• Poo La La – An Elegant Blend of Peony, Rose and Citrus, Embrassing Odors… Say Adieu

• Sh*ttin Pretty – A Delightful Fresh Blend of Rose, Jasmine and Citrus, It Ain’t Awesome Till Smells Like a Blossom

And this is just a small sampling of a pretty extensive list!

Poo-Pouri’s marketing has a very definitive brand voice that features loads of toilet humour woven throughout its website, commercials, and other brand collateral. The brand’s very first social media marketing campaign, featuring a video called “Girls Don’t Poop,” went viral almost immediately with over 6 million views within a week, doubling Poo-Pouri’s Twitter following and increasing Facebook fans by 70 per cent in just a few days, not to mention their bottom line!

And while this advert might be ranked by USA Today as one of the worst adverts of 2013 it’s got 29,334,105 views and counting, with 67,298 likes and only 3,572 dislikes. They don’t give a ‘crap’ about anyone else – other than their primary target market!

Brand Amplification Strategies for Spreading Your Brand Personality

Once you’ve defined a distinctive and larger-than-life brand personality, there are multiple ways in which to leverage your brand profile through brand amplification strategies. When your brand has an attention-grabbing personality that stands for something your audience cares about, amplifying that brand message will get you noticed in a crowded market place. However you must consistently deliver on that personality and brand promise in everything you do.

Brand consistency is critical to any amplification strategy and especially effective for smaller brands too. Being truly consistent with your brand means ensuring that your website, packaging, brochures, vehicle livery, social media accounts, brand collateral etc. and all customer-facing touch points congruently mirror your brand profile and echo the same ‘exaggerated’ characteristics that infuse personality into your brand and everywhere it lives or interacts.

Your company’s public relations should also reflect your brands’ personality and the stories associated with it in the media. Community activities and corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns are also an important part of your brand strategy, especially for brands with feel-good, give-back mission statements and socially mobile brand stories.

When it comes to brand personality, the size of your brand truly doesn’t matter. Larger-than-life brand profiles help you rise above the noise and breathe life into your brand, so you can capture the imagination, emotions and ongoing support of your primary target customers.

What do you think?

• What kind of personality does your brand have? Does it match the profile you envisioned for your brand?

• How can you differentiate your brand and amplify those differences into a brand personality?

• What emotional response do your customers expect from your brand?

• Are you delivering your brand personality consistently across all channels?

• Does your brand packaging reflect a larger-than-life personality?

• Which aspects of your brand platform fail to capture your brand personality? How can you change that?

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

Brand Promises: Are You Consistently Delivering Yours?

February 20, 2014/0 Comments/in Brand Champions, Brand Experience, Brand Loyalty, Brand Personality, Brand Profiling & Positioning, Brand Promise, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Brand Values, Brand Voice, Branding, Rebrand, Rebranding /by Lorraine Carter

A brand promise is what your company or brand commits to delivering for everyone who interacts with you. Your brand promise is a pledge, an assurance, or a guarantee that identifies what your customers can expect each and every time they connect with your company—whether it’s through your people, your marketing materials, or your products or services.

What makes a brand promise compelling? An effective brand promise must create distinction for your company’s offerings, and connect your purpose, positioning, and strategy. It must describe what customers can expect to receive beyond your product or service. It is more than a purchase—it is an experience, engaging your customers emotionally and allowing you to differentiate from your competitors. When working with our clients to help them develop their brand promise successfully we use our ‘Personality Profile Performer System™’.

Your brand promise presents a compelling reason for customers to buy from you, to return for repeat business—and most importantly, to become brand ambassadors, spreading the word about your company organically and enthusiastically.

Image via www.virgin.com

What Your Brand Promise Should (and Should Not) Be

Organizations often make the mistake of conflating brand promise with marketing. At one end, they may trot out clinically dry descriptions of products or services, on the premise that a brand “speaks for itself.” And on the other, they might make grand and ultimately meaningless statements, replete with abused superlatives such as “best practice”, “world class”, and “market leader.”

However, what truly works as a brand promise is not something in the middle, but rather a presentation that takes an entirely different approach to your offerings. A strong brand promise describes how people should feel when they interact with your brand, how your company delivers its products or services, and what sort of character your company embodies.

Image via www.nfl.com

To illustrate this idea in action, here are some powerful brand promises from highly successful brands:

The NFL: ‘To be the premier sports and entertainment brand that brings people together, connecting them socially and emotionally like no other’

Virgin: ‘To be the consumer champion while being genuine, fun, contemporary and different in everything we do at a reasonable price’

Apple: ‘To make insanely great, imaginative, cool, easy-to-use, cutting edge products that enrich peoples lives’

Coca-Cola: ‘To inspire moments of optimism and happiness’

Typically, a strong brand promise will achieve three key objectives:

It must convey a compelling benefit and emotionally resonate
It must be authentic and credible
The promise must be kept…every time

Any brand can create a compelling brand promise. However, the best and most successful brands will also demonstrate a proven track record of delivering on those promises. A powerful brand does not simply “talk the talk” — it “walks the walk,” consistently and reliably.

The Brand Promise At Work

McDonalds is the brand heard ’round the world. With over 33,000 restaurants in 119 countries, the company has to be doing something right—and the core of their success is their brand promise. They are the first job for many, involved with local communities and always seeking new ways to improve what they do best. When customers see the Golden Arches, they know what they can expect: simple, easy enjoyment with great service, cleanliness and value.

This is the brand promise McDonalds stands behind. Their more recent slogan, “I’m lovin’ it,” is a simple phrase in itself, one that can be translated easily within every international market the company serves. The McDonalds brand promise is effective, because the company consistently delivers uncomplicated fun with value and service to customer after customer.

Image via www.mcdonalds.com

Effective brand promises aren’t limited to the inexpensive and widely available, either. Successful luxury brands are also making a promise—that customers are paying a higher price, and in return receiving exceptional quality, value, and prestige.

European hotelier Kempinski has a stated purpose of “serving guests who expect excellence and value individuality.” As Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group and a five star prestigious brand, Kempinski promises more than lodgings—the company delivers an unforgettable experience for each and every customer by providing “luxurious hospitality in the grand European style.” They believe life should be lived with style!

Start Where You Want To End Up, and Watch Your Brand Take Off

If your brand is already successful, chances are you’re already clear on what you promise your customers—and you’ve managed to consistently keep your brand promise.

On the other hand, if…

You’re in the process of redefining a flagging brand
You haven’t started your branding process yet or developed a strong brand strategy
You want to know more about the reasons behind your successful brand, so you can maintain that success in the future

…then its time to conduct a brand audit, do a little research, and or re-evaluate your branding strategy.

It’s essential to define exactly what your brand promises to your customers. This process begins with research into your market, your target audience, competitors, and business environment. What do your customers really want? How are they getting it now—and how can your offering add even more value to those desires?

Your brand promise should deliver something your target audience really wants, but can’t get elsewhere. Remember, you’re creating an experience for your customers. When you define a unique brand promise first, and then consistently deliver, you’re making it easier for your business to keep that promise and realize branding success.

Earning Your Brand Promise

Once you’ve defined your brand promise, you need to focus on ensuring that you’re delivering on that promise—every time. Every aspect of your business should reflect what you stand for in your brand, from marketing to employee-customer interaction.

A brand that keeps its promises is virtually unbreakable. This is what kept Microsoft from knocking Google off the search engine throne with its “Bing It On” campaign, which attempted to convince consumers that real people choose Bing’s search results over Google.

The campaign failed to make a dent in the search engine giant’s market share—because Google’s brand promise is too strong. Their search engine consistently delivers what people want.

You Don’t Have to be Huge

Many smaller businesses make the mistake of thinking that only large corporations have the resources to consistently keep brand promises. The truth is, great branding is powerful enough to carry any business model successfully—when it’s done right.

Take, for example, The Ginger Pig. This London artisan butchery uses the brand promise of quality meats that taste great due to the care and effort they put forth in raising farm animals. The company emphasizes this brand promise through The Ginger Pig website, which opens with a brief and intriguing story about how they came to be—and their philosophy that well looked-after livestock simply tastes better.

Image via www.thegingerpig.co.uk

Is your company still looking for that perfect branding strategy? Prepare for success by taking the time to really think about your brand promise—and to ensure that you can, and do, deliver. Whether you’re a brand new start-up, a local supplier, or a national or global business, decide what will make your brand distinctive and memorable—something that’s worth talking about—and focus on delivering every time.

When you deliver on your brand promise, you build customer trust. This translates into brand loyalty that markets itself. Word-of-mouth, particularly through social media, will carry your brand promise to an ever-widening audience. As new customers realize they’re actually getting what they were promised, you’ll find more brand ambassadors out there recommending your offerings, all of which will help increase your profitability.

The earlier you establish and maintain your brand promise,

the more successful your branding will be.

What do you think?

How is your brand walking the talk?

Can a brand exist without brand promise?

Is your brand promising something you can’t deliver?

How can you communicate your brand promise to your customers?

Share your thoughts in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you.

YouTube : The 2nd Biggest Search Source After Google, Is Your Brand On?

August 14, 2013/0 Comments/in Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Branding, Customer Engagement, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Online Marketing, Smart Phones, Social Media, YouTube /by Lorraine Carter

In announcing its daily traffic flow back in 2010 the video channel YouTube revealed they were the second biggest online search source after Google. That put it higher than Firefox, Bing and even Yahoo. The YouTube report said it received 2 billion views a day. That’s a statistic that put YouTube in front of all the major US TV channels combined.

Three years later nothing has changed audience-wise, except the site has increased in popularity. There are now four billion visitors a day and 60 hours of video uploaded on to the site every minute.

Meanwhile Google rates it even higher in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). YouTube videos show up separately so your page gets listed for the text and the video separately, effectively like two for one! Another interesting statistic is that eCommerce stores which show their products via video have much better conversion rates (says Google owned YouTube) then those that don’t.

Brands Can Have Their Own Online Channel on YouTube

Now the online video search source (bought early on by Google) has come up with an even better opportunity for brands, with the resources to invest in video content, with their own branded video channel.

Called One Channel its part of a redesign for YouTube which involves allowing content developers to start charging subscribers for viewers. To date there are 50 paid channels on YouTube including National Geographic Kids (US) and Samsung UK. Switching to One Channel means more tools to add and curate content, better graphics/art work and the ability to produce a trailer which can be targeted at non-subscribers – all of which greatly enhances to your brand’s marketing activities.

All this of course requires some upgraded skills, not to mention resources and agencies are already offering comprehensive packages to big brands.

The Benefits of a Brand Channel

Regularly uploading content and engaging with customers makes it easier for a company to build brand loyalty through cultivating an ongoing relationship – which is exactly what YouTube is hoping for.

Earlier this year YouTube made a huge leap towards its future strategy model. No longer is it simply a site where people upload videos. Instead it’s now a true social media site in terms of providing a platform where brands can engage with consumers in a dynamic and entertaining fashion.

Video Is More Effective Than The Written Word

Even if your brand isn’t at the One Channel stage yet, videos are still more likely to get your message across than a blog post or press release in isolation. That’s because they require less effort and time to watch, tend to be more entertaining and attractive to look at and give a stronger, more personalized sense of what the brand is all about. It’s a platform that really helps ‘bring your brand to life’.

Image via Business Insider

Online US eCommerce store Zappos has a YouTube video option for 50,000 products on its site with ‘real’ people talking about and reviewing their shoes. This ‘humanizes’ the brand and provides a sense of trust for consumers when they see that the person they’re watching is ‘just like them.’

Video Can Help Educate Consumers

‘How To’ videos have always rated highly on YouTube and this is where many smaller brands selling unique products – or those involved with DIY and crafts – can really excel.

US firm Homedepot show how to customize a pathway using the QuikRete WalkMaker they sell. Potential consumers who were perhaps ambivalent about buying the product because they weren’t sure if it was for them can now see how easy is it to use.

Video Can Enhance Customer Engagement

Tip-ex demonstrated brilliantly how a YouTube video can engage consumers. Its bear/hunter video received one million views within the space of just 36 hours and 100,000 shares on Facebook.

After 100 days the video had picked up a total of 35.5 million views in 217 countries. Brand exposure was estimated to be around five minutes per person. European sales went up 30 per cent.

The reason it was such a hit was because it asked viewers to come up with an ending to the script which involved a hunter who didn’t want to shoot a bear. The company went on to film what they regarded as the best endings.

A clever aspect of this campaign was the number of viewers who returned to see the different endings played out. Meanwhile, by giving consumers the opportunity to create their own ending, it made them feel as if they ‘owned’ the video and by association, the brand.

Other Reasons Your Brand Should Be Using YouTube

It doesn’t cost much money to produce video content now, thanks to improvements in editing software and camera equipment. In other words, a video production company with an editing suite isn’t necessary unless you are producing high value video content. Video ‘blogs’ or ‘vlogs’ can be produced and uploaded using your smartphone.

You Tube is available on Smartphones and iPhones – just about anywhere that the internet can be accessed. Videos are easy to embed and share too.

Just like PPC adverts on search engines or advertising on Facebook, YouTube has a means of advertising via keywords. Advertising on YouTube is just as effective as the aforementioned but with one big difference – it’s less expensive.

Engaging with customers via a two-way process is one step away from encouraging them to become brand ambassadors through building brand loyalty. Video is such a mainstream activity today that companies which aren’t on YouTube can seem rather behind the times – particularly with a younger audience.

One Channel for brands makes it easier to bring together all forms of social media, while Google is putting particular emphasis on video when it comes to SEO.

Providing your brand’s story in an entertaining fashion and quick-to-digest format is more likely to attract visitors – and therefore customers – to your products and services.

• How are you using, or planning to use, online video to promote and grow your brand and connect with your customers more effectively?

• What type of video content could your brand upload onto YouTube – educational, informative, comedy?

• Have you investigated how easy it is to film your own videos as part of your brand strategy?

Socially Empowered Employees: Are They Key to Building Your Brand Online?

May 29, 2013/0 Comments/in Brand Champions, Brand Experience, Brand Reputation, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Branding, Business, Customer Engagement, Facebook, Google+, Integrated Marketing, Linkedin, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Social Engagement, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube /by Lorraine Carter

The demand for Community Managers has steadily increased over the last five years and, with the rise in social media as a business driver, it’s not hard to see why. As brands began waking up to the power of collaborating with online social communities, the role of the community manager was seen as the strategic backbone to a social business.

Community Managers not only manage the online voice of the brand through social networks, they are equally responsible for being the voice of the community to the brand. Their role combines building brand awareness, adoption and customer relationships through online conversations, with careful collection and analysis of customer feedback and online habits.

Some companies have been employing community managers for years, others are exploring it for the first time, but a trend is emerging that might make the current role of community managers slightly less significant.

Socially Empowered Employees

Big brands have become more noticeably proactive over the last twelve months in encouraging their employees to be active on their own personal social networks for the benefit of the brand (they are employed by). The theory behind the strategy is that every employee can become an ambassador for the brand. If you are asking why you would allow or encourage your employees to openly represent your brand, read on…

Top 5 Reasons for Leveraging Your Brand Through Your Employees Online

1. More Eyes, Ears & Hands

Online content that gains attention and drives traffic is hard to create. In many cases the best content just has to be done in the right moment. Look at what Oreo achieved by tweeting their Superbowl message at the just right time. Having one community manager limits the time and potential reach of your brand. There is not always time to seek approval or listen to the concerns and feedback if the responsibility is left to just one person and an opportunity can pass by within minutes. Empowered employees can not only represent the brand online, they can connect with customers at the right time and collectively build online communities that drive meaningful brand equity.

2. Humanize Your Online Brand

One of the most integral parts of social business are the employees in the company itself. In an offline world, employees often humanize the brand experience. They make the customers feel like they are doing business with someone they can relate to, and not just a company that wants their money. Having multiple online representatives extends the brand personality online and gives social business an authentic voice.

3. Trust Is The Real Social Currency

Trust is one of the hardest attributes to come by in the business world. Building strong relationships has become almost more important than transactional communication. If trust is the social currency of the social media age then building strong relationships between employees and the marketplace at large can make a real impact on sustainable sales. Employees who are empowered to represent the brand online can be valuable effective participants in building trust and enhancing brand image.

4. Your Online Brand Deserves A Real Voice

Authenticity and transparency are key to building a strong online representation of any brand. Using automated social media engagement tools instead of actually conversing with customers online can kill the value of social business and negatively effect offline sales. The benefits of socially empowered employees to represent the brand and act as brand advocates can’t be underestimated.

5. Your Employees Are A Reflection Of Your Company, Your Brand

If you are afraid of what your employees would say about you online then you need to question if the real problem lies not with the employees but with the company itself. Are there internal issues that would reflect badly on the brand? Have you a poor corporate culture? Are you hiring the wrong people? In that case the problem then is not what the employees might say, but what the company does.

Community Managers will still have a role to play in a future of socially empowered employees. Their guidance is needed to direct, measure and strategize how the general workforce is and should be using social media to reach the customer.

In order to achieve a tangible business objective, socially empowered employees need to be trained and motivated to represent the best interest of your brand online.

When this is achieved, employees who are trusted with the responsibility of your brand’s online reputation can create greater online content that inspires, that informs and that ultimately adds value to the conversation and consequently your brand. Mobilizing rather than muffling your employee’s online activity might be the key to growing your business in the year ahead.

• Have you considered how you could adapt and leverage your employees social reach for your brand online, within your social business or online marketing strategy?

• Do you need to audit your company’s social media policy and train your staff, with clear guidelines, in how best to represent your brand online?

Evaluate Your Market and Define Your Brand Position and Purpose

1. Fit for Purpose

3. Commercially Viable

4. Translates Regionally, Nationally or Internationally as Required

Three Examples of How Effective Packaging Design Can Influence Customer Brand Perceptions and Buying Decisions

Conclusion: Plot Your Unique Brand Path Then Journey Down It Fearlessly

You may also like:

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

• Rebranding: How to Make it Through a Rebrand and Emerge Stronger

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

Top 3 Tips for Developing Your Brand’s Voice

1. Who Do You Think You Are?

2. Making Your Brand Voice Personal

3. Choosing the Right Channels and Keeping Them Consistent

You may also like:

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

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

• Brand Stories: Top 7 Tips for Creating a Great Brand Story

Top 10 Tips for Branding Success

1. Evaluate and Develop Your Brand Message

2. Define Your Brand Vision

3. Get Your Employees Involved

4. Research and Develop an Intimate Knowledge of Your Customers

5. Evaluate, Benchmark and Rate Your Competition

6. Review Your Brand Concept for Usefulness

7. Design a Distinctive Brand Identity

8. Let Your Passions Shine

9. Develop and Commit to Your Brand Promise—and Never Break it

10. Maintain Your Brand Consistency

• Brand Differentiation: 30 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand

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

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

Top 7 Tips for Creating a Compelling Brand Story

1. Know Your Brand’s Big “Why”

3. Tie into Your Provenance

4. Build a Brand Hero

5. Keep Your Brand Promise Consistent

6. Be Authentic

7. Make Your Brand Story Shareable

You may also like:

1. Know Your Market

2. Define Your Brand Personality

3. Create Distinction for Your Brand Profile

4. Develop or Refine Your Brand Story

5. Develop a Strategic Direction

6. Maintain Brand Consistency

Top 4 of today’s most important rules for social media branding success.

Rule 1: Be Consistent

Rule 2: Be Active

Rule 3: Be Engaging

Rule 4: Be Social

Key Ingredients for a Compelling Brand Personality

1. Building an Emotional Response

2. The Bold and The Brave

3. Redefining a Niche

Brand Amplification Strategies for Spreading Your Brand Personality

What do you think?

What Your Brand Promise Should (and Should Not) Be

The Brand Promise At Work

Start Where You Want To End Up, and Watch Your Brand Take Off

Earning Your Brand Promise

You Don’t Have to be Huge

Brands Can Have Their Own Online Channel on YouTube

The Benefits of a Brand Channel

Video Is More Effective Than The Written Word

Video Can Help Educate Consumers

Video Can Enhance Customer Engagement

Other Reasons Your Brand Should Be Using YouTube

Socially Empowered Employees

1. More Eyes, Ears & Hands

2. Humanize Your Online Brand

3. Trust Is The Real Social Currency

4. Your Online Brand Deserves A Real Voice

5. Your Employees Are A Reflection Of Your Company, Your Brand

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