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Re-Imagine Your Brand, Part II: Critical Components
February 27, 2008
By Jeff Schmitt
Yesterday, we looked at branding basics, along with ways to measure the pertinence and vitality of your brand to create a stable brand image. The next important part is delivery.
You can meticulously construct your brand image, but you must also deliver on your promise every time. Your customers' feelings are formed, altered or supported with each interaction. If their perceptions don't align with your image, your credibility erodes.
Let's take a deeper look at branding using the various elements of your operation:
1. Your Customers
Before you re-imagine your brand, you must first get inside your target's hearts and minds. For example, Starbucks positions itself as an escape from daily stress. This is illustrated by their commercial featuring a young professional walking through an office. During her trek, she encounters various hassles that she figuratively carries on her back until she reaches the break room. There, she drinks a bottled frappuccino and her stress dissipates.
Through this commercial, Starbucks displays sympathy towards its target, while showing how their product provides relief from daily hardship. It demonstrates understanding, while inviting a relationship.
Here are additional questions to help you better understand your customers:
• Describe your target's lifestyle. What are their aspirations? What concerns, motivates and entertains them? What products do they use? How would your solution be rewarding to their lives? What tone or emotional appeals would resonate with them?
• What are their expectations? How do they currently view you? Has anything changed?
• What words or images would they use to describe your product or service?
2. Your Message
After you have studied your target, use these insights to craft your message. In particular, ask yourself these questions:
• What are your arguments for choosing your solution? What makes them compelling? Order these arguments from most-to-least important based on your earlier customer profiling.
• Is your message distribution still effective? Are you advertising in the right channels and the right amounts? Is the message relatively consistent across all channels?
• How are you creating immediacy? Are you showing customers how to take action? Is this action portrayed as easy?
• How are you publicizing your brand in the media?
3. Your People
It is the great paradox of business: employees with the least experience and training often have the greatest contact with customers. You can fashion a brand identity through creative, but it is your people who bring it to life. What are you doing to select, develop and retain people who personify your brand? Ask yourself these questions:
• List the personal traits that epitomize your brand. Provide examples of these traits in action. How do you reward and reinforce these behaviors?
• How well do your employees understand your brand? Do they buy into it? Can every employee give a 30-second pitch about your brand? Can they sum up what differentiates you in 15 words or less? How do they apply this awareness?
4. Your Look:
Have you ever heard the cliché, "The clothes make the man?" In branding, every element of your physical space also reflects your brand. Step back and observe your environment. Do the architectural and artistic choices express your unique personality?
Similarly, examine every element of your design, including, layout, graphics, colors, typeface, images, paper, logo, product and packaging. Does it visually attract your audience and evoke your brand identity?
5. Your Experience
Consider the experiences of visiting your location, buying your solution and using it. These moments must become special to the customer. In reimagining your brand experience, ask yourself these questions:
• What makes this experience memorable? Why would they want to experience it over-and-over again?
• What emotional needs does your experience fulfill?
• What can you do to heighten the experience? How can you convert it from an experience to an event? How can you go above-and-beyond expectations? How can you add an element of surprise?
• How do you show your gratitude to your customers?
Imagine the Possibilities
Reimagining your brand is about knowing what you do best. It is understanding your customers and how you fulfill their yearnings. It is recognizing the qualities and sensations that people associate with your brand—and delivering consistency and continuity. But most importantly, branding is about imagination. It is identifying who you could be and investing the time and sweat into turning this vision into reality.
Editor's Note: Be sure to check out Part I, "Re-Imagine Your Brand: Catering to Emotions," on salesandmarketingmanagment.com.
Jeff Schmitt has spent 15 years in marketing, consultative sales, project management, client relations and editing. His e-mail is jschmittdbq@mchsi.com.
This article originally appeared in The Tri-State Business Times, a monthly business magazine published by Woodward Communications (www.wcinet.com) and has been reproduced with theirs and the author's permission. This article has been edited for length from the original.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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