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Jumpstart Your Brand posted on Monday, 11 February 2008

Three guiding principles you can put to use now.

By Ron Miriello

Like the birth of new child, creating or refreshing a brand comes about only a few times in an organization’s lifetime. Conducting this initiative is usually done with high energy, self examination, excitement and a sense of a new or renewed company focus. But all too often, the brand can fall victim to high expectation with little or no ongoing care and support.

As shepherds of a company’s public presentation, marketers are usually responsible to guarantee that the brand’s upfront investment converts into improved business results. Branding often brings some weighty expectations and promises of everything from increased notoriety and improved customer retention to cost savings. Not at all uncommon, marketing budgets don’t include the care and feeding activities necessary to keep an organization’s public identity relevant and producing. Regardless of the resources available, here are three simple and cost-effective guiding principles that will help ensure a brand stays alive throughout the year.

Principle #1: Promote TO Within
Brand promotional activities typically are targeted to the external stakeholders – including customers, partners and investors. But a continuing effort should be made to the equally important audience; the organization’s management team and employees. It is critical to make sure internal audiences understand and embrace the company’s brand position and know why it’s valuable and important to their individual success. Maintaining understanding and an affinity can be the difference between a strong, viable brand and one that provides diminishing returns. People always enjoy being prepared and looking smart. Knowing the brand story well can help there.

Start by discussing and setting expectations early on with management as to what they can expect the brand to influence in terms of customer understanding, new sales prospects and employee recruitment/retention. Equally as important, brand managers must articulate what their organization’s public identity can’t do, such close a new deal for sales reps or overcome product issues or immediately move the stock price. Third, make sure the executive team embraces the brand and identifies ongoing opportunities to celebrate its success through various means, such as company events, newsletters and internal contests. A brand is only as strong as the people behind it. Having top management supporting the brand from the podium helps keep it applicable and alive.

Principle #2: Define But Don’t Confine
While a company’s brand position must stay true to an organization’s culture and competitive strengths, it should be allowed to adapt to changing environments. Evolving customer needs require that a brand be flexible enough to remain pertinent, especially in the current volatile marketplace. Similarly, promotion campaigns while they continue to adhere to brand principles, offer great opportunity to customize the message and delivery of the brand values, and yet still give their audience something fresh to care about and relevance to the current market.

Companies, therefore, should periodically take the temperature of their brand to find out how it’s fairing in the marketplace. This can be done in a variety of ways, such as competitive analysis, online customer surveys, select customer phone interviews, on-line blogs and simple market research studies. In addition, brand managers are smart to keep up with industry trends by regularly reading publications and online news outlets that cover their industry, and compare how their organization’s values and messages are staying relevant and in touch with the times.

Principle #3: Keep It Real
Most organizations fail to crosscheck and make sure that their new products and services are a logical fit with their existing brand’s values and customer expectations. When a company is in touch with their customers needs, wants and pain, their products and services become an extension of their keen listening. A well-cared-for brand can become a guidepost for R&D and engineering and can help guide the product map of an organization. Product managers, therefore, must review how well new offerings align to the organization’s public identity in terms of price, quality and feature/function. This will not only preserve a brand’s integrity, but also provide a good litmus test for a company’s overall business plan.

How To Know If The Brand Is Alive
An organization that retains a vibrant brand will see three things occurring:
• Employees can answer the question without hesitation and in a similar way.
• Stakeholder interest – including employees, customers, partners and investors – grows.
• Messages are being repeated back to organization without prompting – a sure sign that a company is on the right track.

A brand should be managed like any other valuable company asset; one that needs ongoing care and attention to ensure its success. Doing so cannot only reduce a company’s overall marketing costs, but enable organizations to maximize the returns from their brand development efforts.

About the author: Ron Miriello is president of Miriello Grafico, a 25-year strategic graphics communications firm based in San Diego. Its client portfolio includes adidas, HP, Taylor Made Golf and Agilent Technologies. He can be reached at ron@miriellografico.com

Posted by John Lincoln