Is your brand sick and weakened from a lack of attention?
A thermometer is a simple device, used in a checkup to help you decide if someone is ill. It provides a clear reading to help detect a temperature. A brand needs a similar instrument to help diagnose if it is becoming weak, sick and out of sorts. How can you stay true to the spirit and essence of your brand without compromising what makes your brand special?
It helps to have a well-defined set of criteria that everyone who works in marketing for your business can use as a yardstick. Every brand needs a filter to help judge if some activity fits the ethos of what your brand represents. Whether it’s a new promotion, ad, event or partnership, your brand team has to be able to have a guide by which it can judge tactics. Without this criteria, you may dilute your brand making it weak.
What tool do you use to take your brand’s temperature? Marketing consultants can make this very complicated. I prefer a simple approach. Think of these guideline questions like taking your brand’s temperature, checking it’s blood pressure and measuring it’s heart rate.
There are four basic questions for building consistency in and around your brand.
First, what qualities does your brand stand for? Brands can’t be both daring and cautious, they can’t be intense and calming – you have to choose. Try writing a simple sentence that describes the qualities that your brand represents.
Red Bull represents the daredevil attitude of someone unafraid of risk. Red Bull isn’t going to get involved in a sponsorship when there isn’t an element of exceptional excitement. They won’t do a partnership that softens or weakens this dynamically adventurous image. They are the brand who jumps out of airplanes and free falls for miles. If they are considering doing some new promotion, it has to be aligned with this core quality. It is the spirit of risk taking that helps to define the Red Bull brand.
Second, what words would you use to describe the feeling that comes from being in your brand’s community? Think beyond the obvious functional things you do and move closer to emotions.
The essence of Harley Davidson isn’t about transportation. It is about living life the way you choose. The Harley community is filled with the spirit of adventure and freedom to choose, so you won’t find a lot of prescribed activities you must achieve to join their club. They are more libertarians in spirit and their focus is on choice. And they pay attention to the benefits a biker derives from their experiences and they downplay the horsepower of their machines.
Third, what is the opposite of your brand? Brands need competitors but they also need examples of things that are repugnant to their very essence. Hardees see vegetarians as helpful in defining their brand.
“Sorry vegetarians. You may want to close your eyes” is the type of copy you’d find in the Hardee’s ads along with images of over sized, overstuffed burgers flowing in bacon and grease and triple meat. Their opposite helps to define who they are and what matters to them. They don’t hate vegetarians but they know that burger chomping red-blooded young males do have some antipathy toward those who don’t eat meat. So, they define their brand, in part through the use of the opposite.
Fourth, a brand has to make a promise. What is the promise that your brand makes to its customers each and every day? And, where is the line that indicates you have gone too far?
When Ford tells us that quality is job #1, what happens when they have recalls? Are they admitting failure or living their promise that if they have a problem, they own up to it and fix it. What does a recall do to their brand mission when they rededicate their themselves to correcting the situation? Brands don’t get weaker when they make mistakes but when they don’t follow through with the promises they make. Ford’s real job #1 is making good on the promise of quality.
Brand Aid
How do you protect your brand’s image in the marketplace? Every choice you make either supports or damages your brand. Whether it is the colors on your website, the photographs in your promotions, the language in your emails, every decision affects what the brand represents.
[tweetthis]Without a clear and simple set of guides, you can’t build a well-defined #brand. [/tweetthis]
And a weak brand means that customers see you more like everyone else in your category and you have less pricing power.
Create a simple document that outlines the qualities your brand represents, the feeling a customer has when they engage with you, the opposite of your brand and the promise you make. Defining a brand is a dynamic activity that keeps evolving. A one page document that defines your brand can be one of the most valuable tools vaccinating your brand from getting sick and weak.
Can you think of any other critical criteria to add to this list?
