Your brand is probably your company’s most valuable asset. It is what provides you the opportunity to make money based on strong relationships.
Your brand makes advocates out of customers which means that they in effect become salespeople for you.
Being an advocate for a brand, makes it a pleasure to recommend that company to your network of contacts.
Paying close attention to the environment in which your brand exists will reward you at times when you find your brand in a bad place or subject to sloppy practices.
Because your brand is essentially your reputation, it is therefore, dire that you always defend its integrity. Here are 7 critical areas where you should police your brand:
ONE: Corporate Logo.
Your corporate logo is the face of your brand. It is what the public sees and identifies as your company. Every logo has associated with it a color palette and distinguishing features. Even the space your logo occupies is valuable real estate. Explain the rules for reproducing your corporate logo. Be sure to have an RGB, Hex, Pantone, Process Color, Black & White and Gray Scale version of your logo. DO NOT compromise on your palette/real estate. Once you drop the ball once, your audience will be confused. Consistency is powerful magic.
TWO: Type Style.
Choose fonts that accurately represent the personality of your brand. Use these fonts in everything you do. Apple has gone to the trouble of designing a font expressly for their use. Fonts like other graphic elements set a tone that can be recognizable over time.
THREE: On-Brand Thinking.
This one is over-looked at times. Be sure that your entire staff has a keen understanding of your brand statement or unique positioning strategy. If staff is allowed to define what you do, you stand a good chance of jumping into the sea of sameness along with the competition. On-brand thinking portrays an image of confidence.
FOUR: Internal Communications.
Internal communication is a sub set of on-brand thinking. Keeping your organization current with company news and direction, helps to eliminate communication by rumor. Rumors are often wrong and typically negative. It eats away at your brand from the inside and contributes to the erosion of business.
FIVE: Poor Corporate Behavior.
We only have to cast our eyes upon Wall Street to quickly see how well-established brands are destroyed overnight when greed rules the day. Once your brand has been trashed by your corporate officers, it is often nearly impossible to recover. Brand trust is what makes you money.
SIX: Exit Strategies.
If an individual represents your brand as it’s icon, do you have a plan in place if they should suddenly disappear due to natural or other causes? Mascots or spokes people are a double edged sword for your brand. Done well they can cement a relationship with an audience, but the trick is to make them larger than life – something beyond themselves. Great ones are Colonel Sanders, Ronald McDonald and Dave from Lenox.
SEVEN: Risk Planning.
Utilizing Compliance Branding and having a plan in place help offset an unplanned event that threatens your brand. A case in point: Martha Stewart. How Martha responded to the situation she found her brand in, resulted in a secure brand once the event was over. Determining how the company should react to any negative publicity and who should speak for them is important to weathering a storm.
Policing your brand is an ongoing effort. Your competition is only too happy to see you fall. Unless you take the proper steps to protect it you stand a great risk of not only allowing the competition to define your brand but it puts you in the undesirable position of reacting constantly to events that didn’t have to happen. Ignoring your brand takes money directly out of your pocket. The suspect in this crime is in the mirror.
Photo Courtesy of Paul Keleher
This was good info. I like how you broke down the different aspects of branding and how it could affect your business in the future…..
Hi Ed, this is really a great article on how valuable your companies brand really is. Thank you so much for this in-depth article.
Thanks Love. (sounded British there for a moment) I’m glad that you got something out of it.
Your right your companies brand and image is the most important aspect of your business. if people don’t trust your band then they will not buy your products.
Excellent post! I think that I would add an 8th element though. “Listen to what people are saying about you and respond when necessary.” If you are engaging in honest discussion about your brand you will look stronger, wiser and more caring.
Always have a problem with my brand.
There are so many impostors around during christmas time that cannot keep up with me 🙂
Anyway, very good article with lots of interesting points I think I need to discuss with my real world supervisor.
Thanks and have a good weekend.
it is very nice points for making the company a brand and it is true that without having a strong relation with public cant be more successful.
I use ego feeds to monitor our online brand, they are very effective at alerting you to mentions so that you can respond.
A mastermind group I met with yesterday also mentioned this. I’ll be doing this as well.
Thank you.
Santa,
As much as the imposters are riding on your good reputation, your brand year over year appears to be able to withstand that kind of tarnishing. It is testiment to the value of a strong brand.
I paid a lot of my company logo. My brand made a lot of money and for that investment we would not regret the money.
I’ve noticed a recent trend here in SA of different companies trying to piggy back on the established reputation of another company by using a brand ID (logo, etc) that is almost identical…
I think this is not only reprehensible behaviour from an ethical stance, but it is also very short-sighted.. There’s a limit to how far your brand can grow when it depends almost entirely upon the original brands success in order to earn recogntion
I can’t imagine any good rational for going the copy-cat route Musically Me. Can you imagine the lost cash when at some point the original company forces them to step down. I’ve seen it happen. Even for the unethical, starting over is no fun.
What a wasted effort.
You also spot some sites trying to hijack search results by creating pages about your site, using the same keywords etc so they just come up behind you in the search engine results. More often than not these will be without your permission, so keep an eye on your search engine results!
Wow, I never thought about the risk of having a person represent your icon, that if that person dies or leaves for some unforeseen reason, that you’re in deep trouble.
Although, I’m still seeing Colonel Sanders’ face on buckets of chicken even though he is no longer alive. So they solved the problem by using an animated version of him. Interesting….
Number three reminds me of what we used to call Mission Statements. The sentence that could summarize the company’s focus.
Good article about branding police. Brand is essentially reputation of company and image in the marketing. I learn new points of branding. Thanks.
Hey ! Thanks for sharing such a nice article about branding police. Brand is probably your company’s most valuable asset. It is what provides you the opportunity to make money based on strong relationships.
This is not a victory. eBay now has even less incentive to check for fake items. So long as eBay gets paid for the auction, they really don’t care what you sell.
Thanks for all these tips. I had not stopped to think of all the way that a business portrays its brand. It is not just what they put on their website or deliver in their marketing. Nearly everything a company does can have implications on its brand. Once you do have a strong brand established, the benefits are endless.
Thanks for your comments. Recognizing the importance of policing your brand will go a long way in keeping opportunity knocking at your door. All of us benefit from brand strength.
I loved this article. At SEP Networks we understand the important essence of making sure your brand is not stretched or altered. This is our core reason behind out software “NETGEN” and our motto “profit through compliance”. I will certainly share this and other articles on this site with clients and potential clients.
Thanks. Brandon
Thank you Brandon. Given your slogan, you might be interested in my Compliance Branding Blog: http://www.compliancebranding.com It’s a small blog, that I add the odd article to on the subject.
All the best.
Hi Ed, Have a look at http://imagi.es and tell me what you think about its ability to to be used to safeguard your online brand image?
Look forward to your reply.
Shawn, I had a look at Imagi.es and it appears to be a good solution to inconsistent use of your brand image. It would no doubt be a welcome addition to any brand usage guidelines documents, if it can deliver on it’s promise.
The Imagi.es seems like a very robust piece within a network. Our software Netgen has a component very much like this. I encourage you to take a look at our website if you are wanting to control your branding image and much more. We can give you total control of all your digital assets while giving tools to your field. Please visit our website http://sepnetworks.com for more information or contact me via email.
Have a great holiday!
Good show guys, you’re passing on some good resource examples here. Good for everyone.