How to take your brand REALLY seriously
Do you have any idea how many companies develop a nice logo and tag line, and think they’ve done sufficient re-branding work?
It’s quite literally scary.
Aside from the much ballyhooed rhetoric, it seems these firms are actually trying to do branding the easy way. “Let’s make our web site and materials better looking, and throw our tag line around as much as possible, and get everyone ‘on board’ and motivated!”
Hmmph! That’s it, huh? Not nearly good enough, IF you take your brand 100% seriously.
My upcoming book, “Verbal Branding and the New Business Simplicity” goes into full detail on this, but here’s the starting point:
Your brand is incomplete unless it begins with brand positioning, making a differentiated offer to the market (in plain, conversational language, not “slogan-speak”), drives nearly every operational function within the enterprise, and informs management on how to make C-level decisions.
The secret to all this is, making a suitable, fully differentiated OFFER to the market. Without this, your brand is guaranteed to under-perform at best or be a complete waste of time and money at worst.
Future posts will go into the components of “taking your brand seriously“, but for now, take a shot at figuring out what you do that’s actually different (and better) than anyone you compete with.
Sound easy? It isn’t!