Sitting here writing a blog on branding, I am surrounded by brands. I’m working on my MacBook Pro, and next to me there’s a Sharpie pen. The Gap blazer that I wore yesterday is hung over the back of the armchair. I’m wearing Lululemon and there’s a Burt’s Bees lip balm on the table next to me. I can see Tuesday’s Guardian and Telegram which I’ll read on the weekend and a box of eco-friendly tissues next to me for my soon coming head cold, although I have no idea what the brand is.

Every time we see a brand that we recognize, we immediately paint a picture in our minds and have a positive, negative or neutral impression of that brand. In most instances your impression of the brand is largely shaped by your experiences with the brand, which is why it is critical that brand promises match a customer’s experience. I recently read that people get greater happiness and satisfaction from experiences than they do from buying and consuming products. Whether that’s true or not, it does speak to the importance of your customers’ experience with your brand, whether that’s with your product, service or as the intended recipient of strategic communications.

This is the first blog post from the upcoming series on branding. If there are any branding topics that you are interested in seeing in the series, just let us know!

Each business and organisation faces unique challenges when it comes to branding, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Unless you engage with an integrated agency to work with you to analyze your current and ideal brand positioning, you’ll have to make due with our top 5 branding aspects to consider, and add this blog to your RSS feeds to check back a few times in the next few weeks to keep up with our branding series.

1. If your brand was a person, would you be their friend?

Would you look up to them, or would you want to help them out? What kind of car would they drive? How old would they be? Would they have a big house, or live in a modern, open concept flat? Would they wear glasses? How would they vote? Although this question asks “would you be their friend”, the more important question is “would your target audience be their friend?”.

2. I have a brand. See- here’s my logo.

Tricked you! A logo isn’t a brand. A logo is often used as a visual signature, a visual mnemonic or cue that is used to represent the company. This logo is in alignment with your organisations’ brand identity and graphic standards (hopefully), which all help to create a cohesive and consistent way of communicating internally and externally. A logo is essential, it’s something to put on your company letterhead, to put on your website and something to have on your business card, but it’s not your brand. It’s important that your customers and potential customers and clients recognise your organisation visually, but each time someone hears the name of your brand, sees an ad for your brand, or communicates with someone from your organisation they are building an impression of your brand in their mind. Hopefully this impression will be exactly what you want it to be. If you’re confused, you should visit this blog every day for the next two weeks to learn all about branding.

3. Everyone in our company loves the brand.

Internal buy-in is important in ‘living’ the brand. In making important brand related decisions, it’s important that the decision-makers are trusted to make the best decision for the company. When there is a group of people making a decision, there are many different, varied, opinions involved. Once a consensus has been reached, the resulting decision usually satisfies all varied opinions. This direction, this consensus, in satisfying all parties, is suddenly a less committed version of the strategy. I’m not suggesting that consensus based decisions are not effective, just providing a message of caution. When something so important as brand is concerned, a consensus based decision is not always what’s best for the brand. Caution is good in preventing poor decisions, but not always in the case of brand strategy. Once everyone around the board room table agrees on how to move forward, suddenly your customers may mistake your direction for that of your competitors.

4. Measurement

Although not all of us are numerically oriented, measurement is an important part of branding. In order to accurately know where you want to be in terms of a customer’s perception of your brand, you need to know where you are. If you have the resources, it is important to understand how your customers perceive your brand. For advertising and future communications purposes, knowing how effective your efforts have been also demonstrates how you need to proceed.

5. Copying your competition

In the world of branding and competitive advantage, recognizing that your competition are moving in a certain direction and mimicking that direction will certainly result in your brand having a lesser-than version of your competitor’s brand. If you want your own brand, it’s important to know what your competitors are doing, and it’s important to know how your brand is different.

Stay tuned for the rest of our blog series on branding.

Tags: Brand, branding, competition, measurement, strategy

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 15th, 2010 at 8:13 am and is filed under Brand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.