Brand Matters: The Joy of Branding
Unleash your brand’s full potential
October 2007 By Andrea Syverson
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I start, much as a potential customer might, by looking for the brand wherever I can—Internet, mailbox, retail store, etc.—and reviewing closely whatever I find. Before I even meet any of the internal brand ambassadors or employees, place an order, or experience a company’s products or services, I have developed a strong sense of what to expect. A company’s collateral materials (e.g., catalogs, Web sites, signage and general presence) give me a quick glimpse into its brand personality—warm and caring, cold and sterile, or fun and innovative—as well as its point of view or positioning. This is my first impression.
Go Beyond Adequate
Sometimes collateral materials mirror the exact brand reality the company wants to project. Other times they send out a conflicting or confusing message. Most times, though, they merely communicate the brand’s essence adequately. Many companies are satisfied just to have Web sites and catalogs to offer their customers. “Do you know how hard it was to just get these done?” they ask me. These materials almost always leave lots of room for leveraging a brand’s full potential.
Customers do not remember adequate brands. Customers do not talk about adequate brands with their friends and colleagues. Only competitors love adequate brands.
The joy of my work begins with unleashing potential. As the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory and in creative action that man finds his supreme joy.”
Branding work is full of both creative action and high adventure. It is the synthesis of these two elements that help brands find victory in the marketplace. Creative action begins when the chief brand manager realizes the brand’s “story” is not fully told. Pages are missing. Paragraphs and whole story lines are undeveloped. A brand “rewriting” of sorts must occur.
High adventure begins when brands desire to take on not only the challenges of their own shortcomings, but also the desire to creatively meet the needs of their customers in new and unique ways—to fill in marketplace gaps and overcome the competition by offering a remarkable product or service.
Find Your Essence
Victorious brands have two basic things in common: They know themselves. They know their customers.
Think about four or five of your favorite brands. Kevin Roberts, CEO of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, calls these your “lovemarks.” These are products or services you interact with often, such as your favorite running shoes, purse, gadget or workout center. Take a moment to list them. Now take a moment to list why they mean so much to you. Close to the top of your list probably is a reason that has something to do with the fact the companies that created these products or services understand you in some specific way. They “get” you. They solve a problem for you. They meet a need in some extraordinary way. Lovemarks are not merely adequate.
Now, think of your own company, service, product or brand. How deeply do you know all the ins and outs of what makes it tick? Do you know how it came to be? Why it came to be? What was the spark that made this company come alive? How it is different? What is your brand’s story or heritage? What are your brand’s dreams? Can you fill out all the pages well enough to share it with others—both internally and externally? If not, this is your very first step.
The second step is to collect, verify and discuss all this brand knowledge as a group in a way that captures the brand’s true essence. A good exercise to help accomplish this goal is to start a list that says “Our brand is ...” and to keep adding to it until you cannot come up with any more adjectives or phrases. Then, start a new list of what your brand is not. Keep adding to both of these lists. Ask your customers the same questions. Like the front and back covers of a book, brands need both boundaries. It is within these boundaries that a brand’s authentic positioning will emerge.
Edit Out the Clutter
Once these brand messages have been synthesized, the next step is to edit out all that is cluttering these messages from your collateral materials. All good writers know they need the expertise of good editors. Editors know what the writer is trying to accomplish and help him get there by trimming away the extraneous words and confusing messages, while encouraging him to pursue the right word to pinpoint what he wants to communicate. Like removing the clutter from your home, office or garage, the editing process can be tedious and painful. But more than ever, in today’s sound-byte culture, brands need their many messages tightened so their true essence and positioning can shine through.
This creative action of brand exploration, positioning and message editing helps companies become more focused and intentional in all they do and say. It brings back the joy of branding as it begins to unleash the brand’s full creative potential by giving the brand room and energy to be its true self. It liberates a brand from being merely adequate and rather unremarkable. It sets the stage for the beginning of a high brand adventure!
So today, why not take a hard, customer-lens look at your brand’s first impression and see if it, indeed, is true to your brand’s positioning. Does it have zest? If not, don’t spend another dime on more collateral material until you get your story shining and your messaging clear. Your customers will thank you. Your competitors will not.
Andrea Syverson is president of IER Partners, a strategic branding and merchandising consultancy based in Colorado. She can be reached at asyverson@ierpartners.com or (719) 495-2354.
Unsure How to Integrate Brand and Direct?
In each Brand Matters column, Syverson will dissect one marketer’s branding collateral and provide feedback on how it can successfully integrate its brand message with its direct marketing objectives. To submit your materials for a free critique in this column, send no more than three nonreturnable pieces by mail to: Andrea Syverson, c/o Target Marketing, 1500 Spring Garden St., 12th fl., Philadelphia, PA 19130.
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