Why is branding important? Let me answer that with a question. What are some of the thoughts that occur to people across the world when they see the American flag?
1. Place of individual freedom
2. Land of riches
3. Baseball caps
4. World’s police
5. Fat arrogant people
6. The puritanically repressed
7. Isolationist tendencies
8. Ice cream
9. Apple
10. Hot dogs and Hamburgers
This is all happening in people’s minds just when they see the flag. The flag is not our brand but it is charged with years of impressions…much like a company logo.
Why is branding important? Its important because it conveys a positive or negative charge that heralds your value or follows you like a dark cloud…forever.
WHAT BRANDING IS NOT
1. Your logo
2. “store-front”
3. website
4. Business cards
5. Stationary.
All these things are only symbols of your brand. Your brand is something much more difficult to grasp. And it’s yours to make and mold…or it will be made for you.
WHY IS BRANDING IMPORTANT TO YOU
Why is branding important to you? Because your product, the service around your product, the support after your product, and the innovation before and after your product is the level of excellence that you wish people to know you by. A positively charged brand is the energy behind the upward moving arrow on the productivity charts.
In essence, your brand is an impression in the minds of individuals.
WHY IS BRANDING IMPORTANT TO YOUR CLIENTS
Why is branding important to your client? A clear and forward leaning brand implies capacity, direction, focus, trust, and integrity…and not a little excellence. It’s the spark, the fire in the belly of the company that your clients need to see. It inspires excitement and anticipation. And it creates repeat customers.
Or conversely:
Your brand can convey shoddy workmanship, nonprofessional behavior, visionless management, a profit-only orientation, and disrespect of your client base. In short, an obvious desire to fall into the abyss of mediocrity.
This is not the essence of your company and its certainly not what you want your company to be known for.
WHY IS BRANDING IMPORTANT TO YOUR STRATEGY
Would you appreciate others dictating what is meaningful to you, what your values are, what represents you as a person? Naturally not!
You take great strides to manage and maintain your reputation in the workplace and with your friends and family. In short, you are the architect of your success and future.
Why would you allow others to dictate the brand image others have of your company and product? You shouldn’t…and you wont!
Your brand extends the entire spectrum from CEO to lobby receptionist and from the innovation in R&D to the packaging of the product finally in your customers hands.
Your brand is vision, action, service, communication, product and image. It is just as much a product of your company as anything coming off an assembly line. More importantly, it is the key lever of sustained and long lasting success.
You must manage it as a conductor would manage an orchestra. Like the music they play, your company is dynamic and its brand must be tweaked and re-engineered to ever better performance.
IN SUMMARY
Your brand is important and vital; it isn’t simply a logo or a website. Your brand is the global perception of your company’s capacity and intent to fulfill expectations in your commercial segment. The lobby receptionist is just as responsible for brand as the CEO. Your brand is a “living function” that changes with time and must be managed and improved to keep pace with dynamic commercial expectations.
I’d like to refer you to an excellent article that goes into more depth on branding. Neil Patel’s article “Ten Powerful Branding Insights” is clearly written and run’s straight to the heart of why branding can be everything!
You may also be interested in reading Darren Rowes article on Branding “Why Your Brand is Everything”
If you enjoyed this article, please follow/like me now! If not, as always, please comment and tell me how I can make things better! Thanks!—–Dean
About Dean
Blog Post Comments: What Good are they Anyway?
April 18, 2012 By Dean 2 Comments
Blog post comments have taken a beating of late, or at least I have seen the subject coming up more often. Usually, the discussion or comment revolves around either the chore of writing them or the effort taken to get them. It’s a Valid Bitch(s): They do take effort to write or receive and, at [...]