Insert [your brand] here
A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak on a panel.
That event was a little different for me.
Close to home on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
Small room. Small business owners.
Small crowd too. Just fourteen to be specific.
Just a few days later, I took to the stage at a very different kind of event.
To give a speech to a few hundred employees of an ASX 100 company.
In a big auditorium. Big stage. Big business.
In reality, all brands work just the same: whether working at the so-called big end of town or making an equally big difference for small business.
So, I thought I’d deliver a version of that speech here…
Feel free to [insert your brand], copy and paste and share with anyone who might need to know what it means to build a brand, not just change a logo.
Once upon a time, brands were designed to conform.
Banks looked like banks. Big. Safe. Secure.
Airlines promised the luxury of travel – to one exotic destination after another.
Telcos offered to connect you to your loved ones – if only quite literally.
What existed of most brands was simply a promise that they would do what they said on the tin: they would conform to those conventions, nothing more, nothing less.
Soon after, the role of a brand evolved to offer a sense of identity as a means of distinguishing a company from its competitors. The logo became more than a literal symbol, it became symbolic of a brand’s personality, whether through the creative use of a graphic device, colour or even an imaginative name.
Designed not to fit in, but to stand out.
Think Apple. Orange. Virgin.
Nowadays, the advent of technology has ushered in a new era of brand utility. It’s not only how you might identify and recognise a brand through its distinctive brand assets, but also how you might use that brand to guide the customer experience.
In that context, a logo can only go so far, and brand tools like brand language become all the more valuable. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that brand language is the one and only tool that everyone in an organisation can use, including all of you in all the various connections and conversations you might have with customers and colleagues. Your tone of voice creates perceptions and expectations of how you might behave as an organisation. Not only in terms of what you say and do, but also how you make people feel.
What’s more, we all now live and work in an environment characterised by ‘liquid expectations’. We no longer compare banks only with other banks, but we compare and contrast our experiences irrespective of sector: we naturally compare our experiences transacting via a trading platform with airport check-in with the customer service we might receive when making an insurance claim.
Yes, in our everyday lives, people may very well compare [insert your brand] with any of those brands mentioned above and many more besides.
Which is all to say we’ve all come a long way since the advent of brands. So too, your brand is now more than a name or a logo.
In that overarching context and the shift from brand conformity to brand identity to brand utility, what is the role and value of your brand?
Let me start by saying that it’s actually quite simple.
Yes, you may well hear people talk about brand as an intangible asset, as goodwill that sits on the balance sheet.
But at its simplest, your brand is symbolic of your reputation.
What you say.
What you do.
What others expect you to do.
What’s more, it’s one of the drivers for how people make choices.
Choices about whether they buy from you, that’s to say they have a commercial relationship with you. Or whether they work for you.
Your brand is not the only driver of choice – think price, product features, service levels, quality of people, and so on. In fact, it’s not necessarily the most important driver of choice. But your brand will inevitably form some percentage, more or less, of why people might choose you. And, in those cases where they may not in fact have a choice per se, the brand will inform how they value that relationship and reflect on your reputation.
That’s the business case for a brand.
You can, of course, ignore your brand – and have that value remain hidden, or the stories that reinforce your reputation left untold – but that would be to leave your brand to chance rather than choice.
When we keep our understanding of a brand to something that simple, we also make it all the more useful.
When everyone can 'use' your brand, and when your brand plays its role as a driver of choice and reputation – building confidence, earning social license, providing a buffer in challenging moments, and supporting long-term strategy – then to refresh your brand is to leverage a valuable strategic asset for competitive advantage.
So that more people choose you, more often.
So, let me close by being as explicit as I can be about how you might tangibly, practically, already be ‘using’ your brand?
That might be how you and your colleagues ‘use’ the brand to curate the [insert your brand] experience – for your customers, and for your own employees too.
That might be how you ‘use’ the brand to inform what and how you communicate with all your customers – your brand’s voice, so to speak, in terms of both content and tone.
That might be how you ‘use’ the brand to inspire how you show up through visual merchandising in retail environments, or office workspaces, or via thought leadership at industry conferences and events.
That might be how you ‘use’ the brand to design and deliver your products and services, or even to innovate new ones too.
The new [insert your brand] logo is not a change of symbol, it's a symbol of change.
It's tangible. It's simple. And, all of you help make it real.
I hope that’s helpful for you and your teams, marketers and non-marketers alike.
Suffice to say, sharing our insights and ideas like this is no one-off, it’s something we regularly do. The operative word being ‘sharing’, something we feel goes hand-in-hand with our B Corp certification and the discretionary effort we often invest in guiding and following our clients’ brands into the world.
If you’re interested in us sharing more with you, please feel free to hit ‘reply’.