In the every-increasingly digital world, it seems that many core marketing communications practices have been getting pushed further and further to the wayside. Branding is one such foundational marketing tenet that more and more marketers only pretend to practice. The fact is that branding isn’t just a buzz word. It’s a discipline that, needs to be practiced, honed, tweaked, and constantly improved.
A strong brand and brand strategy should act as a business marketer’s true north, guiding all marketing communications investments. Critical components of a business marketer’s brand such as brand positioning, brand promise and brand personality will act as a much needed common thread that becomes a beacon for all of the marketing communications decisions that get made, particularly online.
Too often, marketers forgo branding and skip directly to one-off tactics. Absent an effective brand strategy, the likelihood for success in any marketing tactics you execute is greatly diminished. In lieu of more direct branding investment, our staff at Canyon works tirelessly to police our clients’ brands from project to project. While this practice can do wonders to maintain some consistency over time, it really only acts as an ‘adhesive bandage’ (Band-Aid® is of course a protected brand) for a festering problem.
If you haven’t been giving your brand(s) the attention it deserves, then getting an objective opinion about the state of your brand is a critical investment for 2011. Doing so will enable you to create a strong and durable brand path to follow, and it will help you be more nimble when making decisions when difficult questions pop up along the way. The experts at Brand Strategy Insider offered these instructions on when marketers should consider getting objective counsel in to be proactive about properly maintaining their brands:
When should you seek the counsel of a brand consultant?
- Your company has acquired or merged with another company
- You’re launching a new product, service or company
- A competitor has mounted an unexpected attack on your brand
- Your profit margin or market share is shrinking
- Research shows that your brand is not understood by your audience
- Customers don’t see a difference between your brand and your competitors
- You’re having difficulty knowing what to brand and how
- You need to decide the relationships between parent and sub brands
- There’s a noticeable gap between business vision and customer experience
- Your brand expressions don’t fit your brand strategy
- Your brand expressions lack excitement or relevance
- Your brand expressions are confusing with too many product names, sub-brands, logos, taglines, etc
- Your brand’s touch points lack consistency across media or cultural borders
- Your creative partners need to better understand your brand
- You need to get executive buy-in for brand programs
- You need to completely understand your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
- The meaning of your brand fluctuates as executives come and go
- You want/need to educate your organization on the benefits of building a strong brand
- You want to extend your brand into new product or service categories and would like to know which categories have the highest probability for success
- You want to set up brand metrics against which to measure the success of branding endeavors
- You want to make your brand more relevant to certain customers
- You want to bring the brand to life at each point of customer contact
- You want to take your brand global
- You need to revive your brand
- You need to ‘sell’ the brand internally
- You need to build a stronger emotional connection to your brand
- You need to build a ‘Category of One’ brand
The primary take-away from this list should be that branding plays a vital role in every aspect of your business. It is a common thread that is too important to overlook, and it can’t be practiced in concept alone.
When was the last time you audited the state of your brand(s)? Are you ready to ‘refresh’ your company’s most valuable marketing asset?
Without energy to move, I devoured The Now Revolution – 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social. I read it cover-to-cover within 24 hours. In fact, I dog-eared a good part of shifts 4-6, asking myself why I waited a whole 7 days to dive in.
While skimming my favorite catalog from 
