Don’t let your brand fire smother and die – follow our top four tips to stay ahead of the competition; ensure your brand thrives long-term; and keep your brand-fire burning.
1. Be Cohesive and Consistent
To keep your brand alive, you need to consider whether your brand presents itself as a cohesive, connected and managed performance, or if it’s merely selling a logo.
Does your brand have consistent, visible structures that create a dynamic you can present to the marketplace – a dynamic that is connected to every element and performance within your brand?
If your brand is seen differently in different places, and there’s no common thread linking your visual identity to your language, brand promise and culture, this can severely erode the value of your brand to the point where it literally flat-lines.
In order for a brand to burn bright, there needs be rigour and consistency in the way you communicate with and for your staff, your market and your clients.
2. Know your Brand Story
To move from bland to brand, it’s important that everyone within the business understands the brand story, and can communicate this story in the same way.
Your business card should act like a script for your employees, in the way that it is designed and laid out, to tell the story of your brand with a consistent rhythm. The brand should speak for itself through the card, because of the ideas and intelligence of the components that come together to present it. Why choose particular colours? What is the meaning behind the logo? How is the history and background of the business reflected in the business card? What is the story it allows you to share?
Something as simple as a business card can become the script for your entire organisation, a tool through which your employees can understand and present your brand story consistently to others. You can use many different tools to deliver it, but know your story and be willing to share it.
3. Build a Branded Work Culture
Understand how to weave your brand promise into the culture of your organisation. It’s important to find avenues like processes, or even shared stories, through which you can prove how deeply passionate your brand is about delivering to your brand standard, and delivering on your brand promise.
Every action, behaviour and outcome should reflect the brand promise you deliver to the market. If you understand your brand promise, you can create a culture of performance through which you can measure and prove the impact of that promise. Bringing your people together to create this impact allows you to build a cohesive culture that delivers consistently on your brand promise. A good way to create a branded work culture is to give it a name and understand its personality.
4. Live Your Brand Promise as a Performance
Embed your brand promise into every action, from how you welcome people into your business; to how you treat them during the engagement process; right down to how you nurture your connection with them after the transaction. Your brand promise needs to be a living, breathing thing that you believe in passionately – it’s not a visual you put on a wall, it’s something you carry in your heart and share with integrity.
Creating a culture is very important, but living that culture through sustainable, consistent and cohesive behaviour is key to keeping a brand alive. You have to build the systems and processes that ensure you and your employees are always performing on script to your brand standard, and delivering on your brand promise. When you can achieve this beyond any individual in your business and make it teachable, repeatable and scalable, you have a significantly valuable brand and business.
