How do you work with brand management?
Let’s envision a typical scenario; A company has spent the last year or two working on rebranding itself, with all that is included of work, time and money. The new corporate identity has finally been launched, and the brand appears new, fresh and vibrant. It may be tempting to lean back and relax since the work seems done and the branding project is thus a closed chapter.
I am sorry to say that this is not the case at all. Working with your brand to keep it alive and remain top of mind is an ongoing process and should always be on your agenda. We live in a time when things, technology and trends are moving increasingly fast and changing endlessly. Your brand has to move with this evolution. As long as you have a brand, it requires attention.
Always on your mind
Before continuing, let me briefly establish what a brand is. It is so much more than just a logo, colors and a typeface. A company’s corporate identity and brand include everything you do and who you are. It is the very soul and heart of your company. All too often, people forget that a brand is defined by the points your consumers interact with your brand. Everything from how your building and signage look like right down to your employees. And remember - every employee may be seen as an ambassador for your brand. The way you are greeted at the door or on the phone, how are you treated by customer service representatives to the way you communicate through your marketing materials; newsletters, campaigns, company website and social media to mention a few. Your brand is a sum of all of these things.
Like any other relationship
Having discussed what a brand consists of, it might be easier to understand that it is a living thing and not a static picture of a logo. To keep a brand alive and interesting it is crucial to nurture it. A brand should constantly be evolving, and it needs attention and work to grow and develop. I like to think of the dynamics between a brand and its customers that of personal relationships between two people. Left to its own devices it will eventually wither and die.
We all know it is much harder to regain the trust of a lost customer and to win a new one than it is to keep the ones you have. Let me illustrate this with an example from our work on the rebranding of SpareBank1 some years back. They had been going along for a while in their old set ways, and one day realized that their customers were leaving them having lost their trust in the brand. Why was this happening to them, they wondered. In case you are unsure about the answer; They had left the focus on their brand for far too long.
“Are we dying so slowly that we think we are still alive?”
Trends and technology developments are changing with an increasingly faster pace and consumers shop around more often now than before, personal banking services being no exception. People are no longer loyal to their old bank more than they are to their local supermarket. If people feel like they can get a better service somewhere else, they will move on. In the case of SpareBank1, they suddenly realized that their customers felt they outgrew their own local bank once they moved away or met a new milestone in their life. They were not regarded as a competitor, and thus their customers were looking elsewhere. Even their logo was outdated; Prominently displaying a coin is not exactly a statement for a forward-thinking financial institution since people hardly carry cash around anymore. It was time for a change. SpareBank1 was forced to ask themselves: are we dying so slowly that we think we are still alive?
Because SpareBank 1 had gone on for a very long time without rethinking their brand, once they finally did something it ended up becoming a complex and demanding process of a big evolution. This is often the case for companies that have been ignoring the signs of danger for too long and instead gone on as if a winning team always stays a winner. Although there might be disciplines where this works, branding is not one of them. Take for instance Coca Cola. Everybody knows them – hence they are possibly the world's strongest brand. Their philosophy is that an excellent handling of a brand actually goes unnoticed. The key is small gradual changes continuously. If I told someone that Coca Cola’s logo has changed many times, they might want to correct me to say that no, it looks like it always has. The fact is that Coca Cola changes its logo regularly, small tweaks and adjustments without any big launches or fuzz. If you compare the original logo with the one they have today, you will clearly see the difference.
Stay on your toes
So the key is to always improve your winning team. This is especially important if you are at the top of your game and a leader within your field. To maintain this you have to be proactive and look forward. Your customers as well as your competitors look up to you and follow your lead, and many might also want to copy you. You cannot afford to rest on your laurels if you want to keep this market position.
However, it is not always the case that you need to follow the likes of Coca Cola and Nike. Keeping you brand alive and developing can be done by other mediums and techniques as well. Many corporate identities are heavily relying on images for instance. Photos can be a powerful way of communication, but these too need to be updated as time goes on. Updating your image bank can be a very successful way of making necessary and positive changes.
Another powerful but not necessarily dramatic way to develop communication is to use color . Taking ownership of a brand color is an established practice, but sometimes color adjustments are needed. It is not necessary to change the color completely, just to change the way you use it. Use the brand color in a different way, show more or possibly less of it. Let's throw in a few more elements that should be considered, such as tone-of-voice, advertising campaigns and the ways you address your target audience. All of this is part of your brand and identity.
Treat your consumers as your fans
I once heard an inspiring speech by Bruce Dickinson, probably most known for being the lead singer of the band Iron Maiden. Bruce is a man of many talents one of them being an entrepreneur. In his speech he elaborated on how he drew parallels from his time as a rock star to running a business and establishing a brand of beer. One of his points that stayed with me over the years, is that you should think of your customers as your fans and not as your clients. Drawing from this, this will change the way your brand behaves towards your customers. In other words; open up for dialogue, allow yourself to be more personal. If you offer a piece of yourself, your customers will love you even more. By creating excitement and entertainment your customers will feel unique and appreciated. But above all, you have to genuinely care. If you don’t, it will shine through, and your customers end up feeling disappointed. But if you can manage this, your fans will be ten times more loyal to you than if they were “just your customers”.
Conclusion
We won’t mention any specific brand that is struggling out of neglect, although if your brand is doing just that you will hopefully already know it. And by now you should also know some of the things that need to be done. And here is a reminder of those:
Working on a brand is never finished
Your brand is the soul of your company
Always keep your brand in mind, and nurture it
Make improvements continuously
Treat your customers as your fans
