In the third of a series of posts on the crucial role played by branding in influencing client choice, we explore the ingredients of a successful brand.
IF YOU’RE considering rebranding your business, its products or services, or if you want to gauge where your brand stands, there are a number of key points to bear in mind:
1. The big idea: what lies at the heart of your company?
2. Values: what do you believe in?
3. Vision: where are you going?
4. Personality: how do you want to come across?
The secret of successful branding: The big idea
The big idea is perhaps a catch-all for your company or service. It should encapsulate what makes you different, what you offer, why you’re doing it and how you’re going to present it. The other ‘ingredients’ are slightly more specific, but they should all feed from the big idea.
The big idea should also be capable of holding together a variety of activities, including customer service, advertising, a website order form, corporate identity – even down to your answer machine message.
To identify your big idea you’ll have to examine your own business closely, as well as the marketplace around you, and ask the following questions:
1. How can you stand out?
2. What is your offer?
3. What makes you different?
4. What is your ‘personality’?
5. What do consumers want or need?
6. Is there a gap in the market?
The secret of successful branding: Vision
Having a vision means looking at ways to challenge the market or transform a sector. A vision may be large-scale, or, more probably, as simple as offering an existing product in a completely new way.
A well-considered vision (or mission statement) can help you to structure some of the more practical issues of putting a development strategy into action. If you’re clear on what you’re aiming at, it’s easier to get the structures in place to arrive there.
The secret of successful branding: Values
Values is what you stand for but imbuing your company’s brand with a set of values is difficult, because everyone wants the same kinds of values to be associated with their business.
A survey by The Research Business International found most companies share the same ten values:
- Quality
- Openness
- Innovation
- Individual responsibility
- Fairness
- Respect for the individual
- Empowerment
- Passion
- Flexibility
- Teamwork
- Pride
Also, it’s not easy to communicate values, and any values you portray have to be genuine and upheld in the way your organization operates.
Branding and design consultants can help you clarify what your organization or business stands for, and then they can develop ways for you to communicate that effectively.
The secret of successful branding: Personality
Once you have established your big idea, vision and values, they can be communicated to consumers through the personality of your company.
Corporate Personality traits could be ‘efficient and businesslike’, ‘friendly and chatty’, or perhaps ‘humorous and irreverent’, although they’d obviously need to be appropriate to the sort of product or service you’re selling.
For smaller companies, the culture and style of the business can often reflect the founder, so its values and personality may be the same.
This blogpost is drawn from ‘The power of branding: a practical guide’, a special resource for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) produced by the Design Council, the national strategic body for design in the UK.
Related posts
Strong branding is a client magnet
How to manage brands successfully
Sector specific branding techniques
Four vital ingredients of a strong brand
30 Oct 2009
Planet Client is the only online editorial resource dedicated to giving small to medium sized enterprises a deeper understanding of how to win clients, retain clients and understand clients.
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