Talking about branding is like talking about leadership. There are coaches and courses which purport to “teach” leadership, but as we all sense – that’s why we want so badly to learn it – leadership comes from character and inner qualities. It’s an extension of beliefs and values the person holds and then acts out in their life, an integral part of their personality. You can’t pick up “character” in a seminar. It comes from years of reading, work on yourself, exposure to great literature, great art and great people, and plain out experience.
Leadership isn’t going to a seminar and coming back saying, “Let’s do a mission statement,” it’s being so devoted to mission yourself others can’t wait to get around you, find out what it is, and partake of it.
Leaders lead because other people want to follow them. There’s no other reason. Not the paycheck, not the stick … just that feeling when we get with someone – “Hey, I want to go where they’re going. Count me in!”
Leadership isn’t a surface thing, and neither is branding. It’s what you stand for, your personality. It’s your soul and what you’re about.
Fiddling around with your logo and business card are superficial things. They make an impression on your consumer, yes, but they don’t have power; they only have “veto” power. No one ever booked your services because of your business card, but someone may have vetoed you because of it. There are some terrible business cards out there, and people DO form immediate and initial impressions. I’m thinking of the therapist I know who – believe it or not – has a neon fuschia business card. This is not the person I want doing therapy on me or anyone I know.
On the other hand, I never looked at an attorney’s business card – they’re all the same, even the same font – and said, “This is the man I want to represent me in court.”
The way you get your brand across is projecting your personality – who you ARE – in every aspect of your business. What your webpage looks like, the wording, the inclusion of quotes or not, graphics, the way you handle your customers, how well you deliver products, promises and services. Your products and your style. We bond with businesses the same way we do with people – through their personalities.
When I think about Dave, God rest his soul in peace, and Wendy’s, I think ‘just a comfortable place to be.’ Actually I knew Dave, our kids played soccer together, and he was just the same way in person as he was on the t.v. screen. Now THAT’S branding.
Branding means starting with your values and beliefs, projecting these into everything you do, and going forward from there.
EXAMPLE
When I went into coaching, I did so because I wanted to help people, but in my own way, according to my beliefs and values. Coaching is not therapy, but one thing that frustrates me about therapy is the tight scheduling. You can be in the middle of “And then the man put a knife against my throat…” and your session is over.
I wanted to remove this element from my coaching practice. I wanted to be known for exceptional service, commitment and connection. I wanted to be a place people could come in their warp-speed lives and know they would receive the time and attention they deserved.
How we handle “time” is an important part of our personalities. Here are some of the ways I play with time to project my brand:
Everything I produce and the way I deliver it is branded.
How about you?
BUSINESSES HAVE PERSONALITIES
Paul Temporal, author of “Advanced Brand Management,” asked people to describe two competing companies’ personalities “as if they were people” and here’s what he got.
People defined Company A as “sophisticated, arrogant, efficient, self-centered, distant and disinterested.” Company B, the competitor, they defined as “easy going, modest, helpful, caring, and approachable, and interested.”
Not surprisingly, 95% of the people said they’d rather do business with Company B, and, not surprisingly, Company B was way ahead in the competition.
START WITH YOUR VALUES & YOUR BELIEFS
When you think about branding your business, sit down and think about what’s important to you and what you want to project. Then make sure everything you do speaks of this. In other words, walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk
If it’s your intent to treat customers with respect, operationalize the term and make sure you’re actually doing it. Respect isn’t a concept; it’s an action.
Modernizing your image (logo, collaterals) “won’t effect a change in brand values,” says Temporal. “The heart of the brand remains the same – what it stands for or its personality.”
Consumer perceptions of quality, service and other intangibles are your brand, and what keeps them coming back for more. Are you approachable? Are you interested? Do you care? Do your actions show it? Your customers won’t be fooled and they have choices.
Branding used to be a fancy business word, but it is
becoming more and more used in everyday business meetings. Finally! For
decades, big corporations have used in-house, very well paid brand
managers - someone in charge of managing everything that relates to the
brand, including design, package and partnerships. You've heard
enthusiastic talks about branding, but you are still not sure if you
should get a brand management plan going for your business.
Do you need one? Any company with the intention and
potential to become or to remain a top competitor in its field needs to
develop a sound branding strategy. And that's where the brand agency comes
in. If you have a small or medium size business, you may not be able to
pay a high salary for a full-time brand manager. If that is your case, you
can benefit from working with a brand agency, and gain access to brand
management consultants, plus an entire creative team available to work in
various projects - from graphic design to web design, Internet marketing,
advertising, media planning. Instead of working with multiple vendors that
are unaware of your branding needs, you work with one single partner
dedicated to create a stronger, more valuable brand.
Can I fire my marketing team? No! Some people think a
brand agency would do away with marketing jobs. In fact, your brand agency
would not replace your marketing department, but work with your marketing
and sales people to provide them the tools they need to market your
services more successfully, while advancing your business image.
How much does it cost? Working with a branding agency is
surprisingly affordable. Think of this: how much it would cost, per year,
to have an in-house creative department, plus a well-paid brand manager?
That could easily cost your business $200K and more in payroll, equipment
and lease expenses. With an experienced branding agency you only pay a
small fraction of the costs of maintaining such a high-level team, but you
still have full-time assistance. Besides, a branding agency can save you
thousands of dollars a year in printing and production costs, through its
suppliers and partners.
To measure how strong your brand is copy and paste:
(http://brandidentityguru.com/bightml/brandmasterpiece.html). Then click
"Take the brand strength test". This is a short survey that measures the
strength of any company's brand. It's a great tool to see where you are
today.
Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru (http://www.brandidentityguru.com),
a leading brand consulting and market research firm located in Easton,
Massachusetts, USA, near Boston.
Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and
product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and
brand valuation. Over the course of his 15-year branding career, Scott
White has worked in a wide variety of industries: high-tech,
manufacturing, computer hardware and software, telecommunications,
banking, restaurants, fashion, healthcare, Internet, retail, and service
businesses, as well as numerous non-profit organizations.
Brand Identity Guru clients include: Sun Life Financial,
Coca Cola, HP, Sun, Nordstrom, American Federal Mortgage, Simon (America's
largest shopping mall manager) and many others, including numerous
emerging growth companies. Scott White is a very enthusiastic speaker and
has the gift of being able to explain the principles of branding in a
compelling and entertaining manner so that people at all levels can
understand.
Afrikaans 
Albanian 
Amharic 
Arabic 
Armenian 
Azerbaijani 
Basque 
Belarusian 
Bengali 
Bosnian 
Bulgarian 
Catalan 
Cebuano 
Chichewa 
Chinese (Simplified) 
Chinese (Traditional) 
Corsican 
Croatian 
Czech 
Danish 
Dutch 
English 
Esperanto 
Estonian 
Filipino 
Finnish 
French 
Frisian 
Galician 
Georgian 
German 
Greek 
Gujarati 
Haitian Creole 
Hausa 
Hawaiian 
Hebrew 
Hindi 
Hmong 
Hungarian 
Icelandic 
Igbo 
Indonesian 
Irish 
Italian 
Japanese 
Javanese 
Kannada 
Kazakh 
Khmer 
Korean 
Kurdish (Kurmanji) 
Kyrgyz 
Lao 
Latin 
Latvian 
Lithuanian 
Luxembourgish 
Macedonian 
Malagasy 
Malay 
Malayalam 
Maltese 
Maori 
Marathi 
Mongolian 
Myanmar (Burmese) 
Nepali 
Norwegian 
Pashto 
Persian 
Polish 
Portuguese 
Punjabi 
Romanian 
Russian 
Samoan 
Scottish Gaelic 
Serbian 
Sesotho 
Shona 
Sindhi 
Sinhala 
Slovak 
Slovenian 
Somali 
Spanish 
Sundanese 
Swahili 
Swedish 
Tajik 
Tamil 
Telugu 
Thai 
Turkish 
Ukrainian 
Urdu 
Uzbek 
Vietnamese 
Welsh 
Xhosa 
Yiddish 
Yoruba 
Zulu
