1. What do we mean by a brand?
Defining a brand is still an obtuse term.
Yes, branding can be about your name, your logo and identity, but I encourage you to see those elements as being like your signature. Your name and logo identify your business, but what your business really offers is much more complex, has more personality and substance, and is way more interesting.
See the elements of your identity, like the name and logo, as being a culmination of who your business really is and what it stands for. As such, they are the outputs of a process that involves some serious thought. The clearer you are about who you want to be, the easier the process becomes.
When I worked at Interbrand we went through a process of defining a brand with our 1,200 consultants around the world.
We came up with this definition;
A brand is a living business asset which comes
to life across every touchpoint.
If properly managed it provides identification,
differentiation and value.
This is works for me because;
1. It defines the brand as being something that is alive. We have all witnessed organisations that feel vibrant, engaging and interested in their customers. And we have felt those organisations where that clearly isn’t the case. The brand has a role to play in all of this. It should feel alive and we should want to sustain it, though for many organisations the pulse of their brand may be very weak and it’s a missed opportunity.
2. The brand comes to life across every touchpoint. This just reminds us that every experience with a brand has the opportunity to amplify its intentions or the potential to create discord and damage its reputation. The brand isn’t just a communications tool. It should lead experience design so the business delivers its reputation strategically and holistically. The reputation is an accumulation of these experiences and should be strategically managed through the brand.
3. The brand is recognised as an asset because a brand creates and delivers value for its owners. Businesses that want to maximise their value, understand their brand as an asset and they manage it accordingly.
4. It shows that brands need to be managed. Great brands aren’t static. They move with the times and contemporise themselves to remain relevant and engaging to their audiences.
5. The brand identifies a business. It becomes the short-hand so on a simple level, we know who it comes from, but more importantly what we can expect from the products, services and its people.
6. The brand shows what is different about one business from another. Brands come to show us how one business is distinctive from its competitors, what value they are offering us, what they say about us as their consumers, and what engaging with them will give us.
7. Brands create value. This can be measured, and like any other asset actions and strategies should be created to grow value. Brands provide competitive advantage and business benefits that make the effective management of the brand crucial for any successful business.
2. Understanding how your brand works for you
Think of a business you admire.
Think of why you admire that business and how you’d describe it to someone.
What is it that makes that business feel like it’s for you?
There could be any number of reasons.
Maybe you have a perspective on why their products are better than their competitors.
Maybe it’s down to their people and the services they provide.
Maybe it’s about the way it makes you feel.
Or possibly its even down to the way you think others see you because you use that brand.
Whatever it is, it is rarely simply about the logo.
Yes, the logo helps us recognise one brand from another. It maybe beautifully designed and crafted.
It could even feel like a work of art … but, it is just a logo.
So whilst we want to get our logo right, the reason why we feel we admire one brand versus another is much more complex.
Out of all of the choices we could have made, the brand we feel is for us has done something differently.
And that thing, or series of things, has beaten their competition. We have selected that brand above and beyond its competitors and have even come to admire that business. That could even have led us to say great things about that business to our friends. Maybe we even posted about it on social media.
Now that really is a business benefit, because of all the methods of marketing, getting people that are trusted to say great things about you, really if that most effective and efficient way to get more business.
Think about it. Which do you trust more, a friend’s recommendation or a piece of advertising? That’s why all this influencer business has become so huge. We’ve come to see these influencers as our ‘friends’ on social media and right now their endorsements have become valuable and become their own lucrative business.
But in the real world, getting an authentic and genuine recommendation isn’t easy.
We have to do something to earn it. And that something has to be big enough to stand out from the crowd. We have to notice it. It has to be remarkable.
It has to be planned, and defining your brand should enable you to understand how, where and when your business should be remarkable.
3. The business benefits of a brand
Think of a purchase you made recently.
Was there a cheaper option, or was it the cheapest option? Did you tghink about it deeply, or just instinctively reach for the brand.
Clearly not every purchase is the same.
There are some things we care more about, there are some things we buy impulsively or habitually and there are others where just the cheapest will do. But even when we’re buying the cheapest, we still need to understand that we have selected the cheapest versus the other options, and that that brand has beaten its competition and still needs to perform within our acceptable parameters.
Whatever type of purchase it is, if the business is well run it will be making a premium on our purchase.
That premium allows the business to make more profit. It can invest that profit back in the business or the shareholders can enjoy the benefit of the profit.
But also, when we have made a purchase that meets our expectations, or better still surpasses them, we are satisfied. If it’s really good, we may tell other people about it, creating advocacy for the brand – the most efficient and effective form of marketing.
And if we’re satisfied, we may well repeat the purchase again. That means the business has a loyal customer. Effectively that customer is less interested in competitors. That gives the business a benefit because it can see continued business from the customer.
That creates more certainty over the business’s future income streams, meaning it can feel confident of its cashflows and it can plan ahead, possibly making investments to provide further business benefits for the future.
It could even choose to borrow money for these investments. And because the security of its future revenue is more certain, it can do this with more confidence.
And because the business is feeling successful its people will feel more engaged and that makes them more productive. Employees can also become advocates and that makes the brand more effective and efficient as it grows and needs more people.
So, the benefits of branding are considerable and they provide real benefits to the business owner.
4. Some people don’t think branding is important
I’ve met many business people who start off believing that branding isn’t important for them – it’s not for their type of business, their customers aren’t influenced by those sort of things, it’s for bigger companies or it’s only for consumer business. Over time, these people have become some of my best clients.
Their starting position is an expensive mistake and it will hold the business back.
Why?
Because every business has a brand. But what is true, is that not every business manages their brand. It’s done in the way that suits them, it’s easiest for them and it seems to work ok … because no one thinks about it much.
Let’s think about that.
See branding as being the process that creates your reputation and then try saying you’re not interested in that.
We have a sense of expectation every time we come across a business and the process of engaging with a business starts to fill in the blanks for us.
On a conscious and subconscious level, these interactions start to inform and feed our sense of engagement.
Or maybe they don’t … because the business hasn’t bothered to think about their brand. Maybe the organisation feels flat, grey, beige, dull and disinteresting … and maybe that’s how their brand comes across. Maybe, where there was an opportunity to fill in the blanks, they’ve left them blank. The business fails to stand out from the crowd and floats along in its sea of sameness.
Maybe they don’t think their brand was important.
And it could be that there business is doing ok.
Ok is ok, but the real question is could it be doing better?
Of course it could!
Having a great brand is an asset for any business. It creates competitive advantage, better and more confident returns, at less risk and makes your people more productive.
Branding is as important in B2B markets as it is in B2C or B2B2C. In any capacity, it’s about understanding your customers, what their need-states and motivations are and how you can best create value for them.
5. When should I start to focus on my brand?
Whoever you are, the answer is right now.
Lots of business people have great intentions around their brand, but they remain just that, great intentions.
If you want to have a great brand you have to do something about it. You have to earn it and you have to live up to its ambitions. That’s not a passive process.
It’s easy to see it as something you’ll get around to … one day. Maybe there are other initiatives in place that feel like a bigger priority.
But really?
That’s like saying you don’t care about your reputation.
Of course you do and if you care about your reputation you care about your brand because brands build reputations.
Brands need constant management and constant health checks to ensure they are optimised.
6. Creating the right brand for your Start-Up
Starting a business is really challenging.
Typically, the founding teams are expert is their business model, resources are stretched, the business is focussed on supply, timing is of the essence and cashflow is a priority. The business needs to get itself established, stay in the game and then grow.
The priorities are clear and pragmatic.
The founding team may have blind spots. These are acknowledged, but because the skills simply aren’t within the existing team capabilities, the blind spots become deprioritised because solutions feel beyond their reach.
If brand creation or marketing is one of these blind spots, you’re taking a big and unnecessary risk that will come back to bite you.
It’s easy to see initial solutions as being good enough. It’s easy to get encouragement from friends and family that your brand is great, but they’re not your sales prospects; the vital component that will truly dictate whether your business succeeds or fails. It’s easy to think you’ll get around to focusing on your brand later, when time and resources allow. All of these temptations are understandable, but most mistakes are understandable.
It can be resolved and brands can evolve and be refreshed to suit changing markets, needs and strategies. There’s a section alongside this called ‘Using your brand to scale’ which covers this topic.
But the cliché that you never get a second chance to make a first impression is true when it comes to brands, and for start-ups that first impression is even more important as those early steps are disproportionately important.
Seeing the brand as something that can be ‘done’ later often doesn’t happen. By the time you’ve acknowledged the name doesn’t work, or you don’t really have a strategy things are already in place and they’re difficult to unpick. And these things that are in place have already started to create your reputation, and if these things that are in place, are the wrong things, or things that could be improved, by definition you’re creating the wrong reputation. Ouch!
Branding starts on the day your business starts.
It takes time to build a reputation, but little time to destroy one.
In many ways, branding is actually easier for start-ups than it is for established brands. The operations of the business are still being designed, so it easier for these operations that go on to create customer experiences, to be really tightly aligned to the strategy. The founding team will be close to the business. This makes decision-making fast and easy. There is a shared sense of commitment to the business that is pragmatic and without ego or politics, giving decisions a better chance of being right.
I work with lots of start-ups to help them distil a brand from their business strategy. These interventions aren’t expensive and they save time, rather than take time. It injects branding expertise to your start-up, setting it on the right path and giving you the best chance of achieving the ambition of becoming the business you really set out to be.