Top Brand Truths:
An example: Brand = Customer Care
If you want your company to be known for providing excellent customer service – having marketing do an advertising campaign with inspiring examples of great customer care will backfire if:
Brand is not just a Marketing Job.
Another example: Brand = Innovation
If you want your company to be known for innovation, and you have marketing produce an exciting video that plays in your lobby, it will backfire if you:
Brand is not just a Marketing Job.
So what should you do?
CEO’s/Companies who want a strong Brand need to:
1. Make it a priority. Realize it is the only thing your competition can’t eventually copy, and that it’s your most effective insurance for the execution of your strategy.
2. Explicitly connect your Brand and your strategy. How you execute your strategy is as important and valuable as what you do.
3. Galvanize your team to stand for something – decide/define what the company really stands for.
4. Develop and commit to “brandable behaviors” to support it, for every function in the company, particularly those that touch the outside world in any way.
5. You need to involve employees across the company, and make sure you can sell it “inside” too – or you will never get the consistent behaviors necessary to build the Brand.
6. Incent and measure the whole organization to reinforce those behaviors, so they are consistent.
7. Remember it doesn’t need to cost a lot of money to build a strong Brand. (behaviors are free)
Don’t just delegate it to Marketing (and Marketing is not free!)
Marketing is just one voice in chorus across the whole company who needs to do its part to promote the Brand once it’s defined and committed.
But you can’t just market yourself into a strong brand, you need to behave it.
And you need to behave it consistently across the whole company.
Did I mention that Brand is not just a Marketing job?
More:
Building Your Company’s Brand
Building Your Personal Brand
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