Posts Tagged brand identity platform
Your Brand Image
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Image on August 20, 2010
Your brand image. It’s how people view your brand. It’s what they think about it. It’s things like trust, value, quality, features, performance, assurance, status, service, and more. It’s not static, but ideally it’s not constantly changing either. It determines whether prospects become your customers, or move on to the next guy. It holds the key to your success. It’s important.
But do you know what yours is? Are you proactively managing it?
Think about your personal brand image: it’s formed by your family, friends and associates as a direct result of how you conduct yourself in their presence, and by the things they see and hear about you directly and indirectly.
It’s the same for business brands. Customers and prospects will form an impression — an image — about your brand based on their direct and indirect experiences with it. These experiences are your brand touchpoints — individual instances of interactions with your brand that lead to the formation of an image of the brand.
A couple of weeks ago, a local heating & air conditioning company service truck almost ran me off the road. I swore to myself I’d never do business with that company, given the driver’s carelessness which I assumed would carry over into how they serviced my system.
Like many, my image of BP was completly changed as a result of the cavalier attitude of that company’s leadership during the gulf oil disaster.
While BP or the local heating & air company can’t tell me what image I should have about them, they can control how they deliver their brand touchpoints which lead to the formation of a brand image by people like you and me.
How you deliver your brand touchpoints is prescribed as a component of your brand identity – a strategic platform which is created to define how you want your brand to be presented to the world. This includes:
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Vision and values statement where you define your core, unshakable view and values for the brand
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Value proposition where you define the benefits of your brand on multiple levels
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Brand positioning platform where you define how you’re decisively different from your competitors
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Brand messaging where you define the core brand messages you’ll actively reinforce to your audiences
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Brand touchpoint plan where you identify, prioritize, and then proactively manage the various brand interactions so they’re aligned with and reinforce the brand identity
The final step is to maintain a constant pulse on your brand image. Depending on your business this may involve monitoring social media sites and reviews, conducting formal research, utilizing sales personnel to report on the word on the street, and many other tactics.
If you have a handle on how you want your audiences to view your brand compared to what the actual brand image is, and if you have an effective management plan to ensure the delivery of your brand touchpoints are consistently aligned with that desired view, then you’re in tall cotton, my friend.
“Influencing” Brand Touchpoints Are Vital For Your Business, Too.
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Touchpoints on August 18, 2010
I’ve written in the past about pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase brand touchpoints — all those interactions that take place between the customer and your brand before, during, and after the sale.
In the world of brand touchpoints, there’s a special category of equally important interactions, although they’re less direct. Influencing touchpoints are the interactions with your brand that indirectly drive business to or away.
An annual report usually isn’t used as a tool directly in the sales process, but prospects might review this document to gain a sense of stability, progress, leadership, etc. Or not.
Referrals, reviews, testimonials, and other word of mouth and social media interactions are influencing touchpoints. So are your event sponsorships, speaking engagements, community involvement, and goodwill.
Each of these touchpoints — and more — are indirect brand interactions that don’t actively promote your brand messaging, but still serve a vital role in supporting your brand identity and pushing the formation of a brand image. And, in many instances, these interactions are not something that can be effectively controlled or managed.
What you can do, however, is carefully craft your brand identity (which includes identifying the standard by which all of the brand brand touchpoints you identify should be delivered) and then actively manage this brand identity to promote the formation of the desired brand image by your target audiences.
For example, by providing the level of service, product quality, pricing, product features and benefits, warranty service, packaging, etc. that is prescribed within your brand identity platform, you cultivate positive associations that will carry over into your influencing brand touchpoints like consumer reviews, event sponsorships, community involvement, and the others you’ve defined in your touchpoint management list.
You wouldn’t stand up and actively discuss why one should buy your brand during a local United Way fundraiser, but the associations listeners have about your brand will follow you up to the podium.
The prevalence of social media tools widely being used now enables customers to become active brand advocates — for or against – with non-users. Product reviews, user testimonials and recommendations, forums and blogs: each and all have become major elements of the indirect selling process for b-to-c and b-to-b brands.
Each and all are driven by how the brand performs on its other touchpoints.
Identifying, prioritizing, and managing all of your brand touchpoints is simply the best way to stay on top of things, whether you have direct control or not.
A Brand Vision Statement You Can Live With
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Identity on August 16, 2010
As a new parent many years ago, I remember gazing into my newborn’s scrunched eyes and painting a detailed picture in my mind of where he’d be many years later. What he’d look like. How he’d act. The kind of education he’d have. What he’d be doing for a living. How he’d live.
Some parents even write this out and create a plan to follow in raising their children. For better or worse, I wasn’t that disciplined, but I did resolve to do my best to ensure he’d be happy with his life.
If you have kids, you probably visualized their future like this as well.
In many ways, this is what a brand identity is all about: how you want your brand to grow up in the real world. And the starting point for any effective brand identity platform is a brand vision statement.
A brand vision statement is simply this: how you see your brand down the road — five years, ten years, twenty years, whatever. It’s the destination for your planned cross-country trip. It’s what you envision for your grown child. It’s your goal.
And, while flexibility in today’s business world is a necessity — particularly for small- to mid-sized companies – keeping an unchanging brand vision statement in sight at all times will become the path to keep you from getting lost in a maze of distractions. It provides the standard for operations, the litmus test for future opportunities and temptations. It’s a valuable component of your brand identity. And, ultimately, it will guide the formation of a business-generating brand image in the marketplace.
So. What do you see?
How to Compete Against A Goliath Competitor
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Identity, Brand Touchpoints on August 13, 2010
Most of us in small business are looking up at a Goliath competitor. That big, dominant player which seems to effortlessly steal away our rightful market share, or keep us pent up as an ankle biter. Damn them.
The reasons they’re so dominant could be many:
- They were the first
- They listened to the wants and needs of the market and then addressed them better
- They have better, differentiated products or services
- They have a broader selection, better quality, better pricing, and/or better distribution
- They have better customer service
- They have a better warranty or guarantee
- They spend more on marketing and are more aggressive and sophisticated
- They have higher market awareness and preference
- They have deeper pockets
- They’re bigger
- Their breath smells better . . . or many more reasons depending on your perspective
If you’re faced with this kind of competitive dominance, you are a “challenger” brand. Being a ”challenger” suggests action. And, as a challenger brand, there’s plenty of opportunity for action on your part.
Keep this in mind as you plot your competitive course: as a challenger brand, what do you really have to lose by taking measured risks? The pressure’s on Goliath not to do anything that would jeopardize their market advantage, right?
So, what exactly do you do?
You may remember the classic challenger campaign waged years ago in the rental car market. The industry Goliath back then was Hertz. One ankle-biter challenger brand was Avis, and Avis set their sights on going toe-to-toe with the Hertz Goliath. Their branding campaign was simple: as the #2 player, we have to try harder to earn customers’ business. Avis committed themselves to offering the best cars, keeping them extra clean, ensuring the gas tank was full for pick up, and more. They also were able to promote their shorter lines — a result of being a less popular rental car brand. It was a great campaign which leveled the competitive battle field.
Like Avis, the key to successfully battling nose-to-nose with your Goliath lies in developing an effective brand identity platform that’s destinctive to your brand.
The process of developing this forces structured thinking about your brand strengths and weaknesses and those of your Goliath. It results in the formation of uncompromising brand mission and values statements that fuels the right business attitude. It enables your defining a clear and laser-focused brand positioning platform where you tell customers why they should do business with you rather than Goliath. It details your brand value proposition, the multi-level benefits users of your product or service will derive. And it defines the standards of performance when develivering the various brand touchpoints.
Dell, Virgin, Southwest Airlines, Apple, Hyundai, any popular musician or group — they were/are challenger brands. And each found just the right stone to throw at just the right place to knock down their Goliath. It wasn’t luck, it was considered planning and effort fueled by a challenger mindset.
You can do this.
Brand Identity & Brand Image
Posted by Mike Paffenback in Brand Identity, Brand Image on July 27, 2010
It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.
That timeless chestnut sums up the difference in the oft-confused branding jargon of “identity” and “image.”
Brand identity is how the business defines what the brand is all about. It’s what the company defines and says itself about the brand.
The brand image is formed out in the real world marketplace by customers, prospects, and influencers based on their various experiences and interactions with the brand on varioius levels.
Developing the brand identity platform is a considered process, often involving many — and sometimes all — managenment functions behind the brand: R&D, operations, marketing, sales, finance, etc. It’s where the brand vision and values are carefully defined. Where the competitive positioning and value propositions are crafted relative to targeted audiences and their wants and needs. Where the messaging points for the brand are laid out. And where the graphic system is developed. All of this is the “say” part equation. And, it’s all vital because it helps to ensure consistency in the way the brand is presented.
The brand identity is brought to life — and the brand image formed — through the various brand interactions — touchpoints — which should also be methodically considered, prioritized relative to their ultimate role in driving the sale (new or repeat), and proactively managed to ensure delivery that is aligned with the brand identity. Delivery of these brand touchpoints is the “doing” part of the equation.
And it’s this doing that will provide the interactions that will lead your audiences to form their image of the brand and determine whether they ever buy from you (again) or move on to a competitive solution.
If sales are not what they should be, maybe it’s time to take a long look at your brand identity and actual brand image.
Is the brand identity in sync with your audiences’ wants and needs? If not, rethink the identity platform and make the changes needed.
Is there a disconnect between the brand identity and the actual image? If so, look closely at the various brand touchpoints to see where the problem is.
Brand identity is what you say. Brand image is formed as a result of what you do. Master both, and you’ll master success.