How do you know when your brand is working for you?

“What is a brand?” and “What is its real impact on your business’ success?” are two of the most important questions organisation owners and operators can ask.

Having a business that has a logo, does not equal having a brand. But having a brand – one that is working, active, refreshed, and authentic – does equal having a business.

This is because it takes a long time to build credibility, awareness, recognition, and basically an understanding of what you stand for in the world. It takes time to build what your stakeholders, including your staff, can expect (and not expect) from you.

Fundamentally, your brand is a long-term relationship that you have with your people, customers, market, suppliers, media, and sometimes even government.

And like all relationships, it can take years to develop and minutes to destroy.

A definition of brand

A brand is the full expression of your brand promise, your value proposition, your values, who you are, what you believe and what you’re setting out to be in the world. And so, your logo – an image and a couple of words – can’t possibly carry the load of telling that full story on its own. Your logo is the tip of the pyramid of a brand, and should be considered as such.

So, what makes up the other components of the brand pyramid?

First, it’s about values. What do you stand for? When we look at the big brands in our life, either the ones you’re wearing, watching, or wishing for, these tell us what we can expect.

So, if you were to ask yourself honestly, what does your business stand for? What can people truly expect from you? And then look at your brand, are they saying the same thing? If not, this is a sure sign that you need to look at your brand.

Is your brand what others say about you?

A simple definition of reputation is what others say about you. A brand is related to reputation; but your brand is what you can say about yourself. So, often people will say “I have a great reputation. I have a great brand”. The two are very closely connected but are different things. Brand is something that we can control. We can control our channels, our website, our images, we can tell our staff what behaviour is expected. But how that lands with others, is the building of your reputation.

Bring brands to life

Our actions around brand need to be deliberately designed and managed and sometimes hard decisions made – often requiring courage to pursue. It is easy to state what your brand is, it is much harder to live it in the cold reality of business life.

However, the doing is everything.

If you’ve ever heard “they say one thing and do another”, that is a break in brand promise.

It’s not enough to say you’re ‘innovative’ and ‘cutting edge’, you have to be those things. Being an innovative company is not about having an innovative logo. It’s about living and breathing innovation. In everything that you do. From the way that you structure meetings to your client communications, your staff celebrations to how you develop product and take it to market, etc.

Brand and purpose

Purpose has become a key component of corporate and business life. Much research has shown that more and more, employees are willing to trade a little bit of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning at work. And we know that the younger generation coming through are very purpose-driven; they want to be contributing to making a difference and making change.

How do we express that in brand? For example, many companies had a scattergun approach to their corporate social responsibility, giving money as it was asked for to everything from local sporting clubs to Rotary and lotteries, etc. But now many organisations are taking a much more strategic and sophisticated approach and aligning themselves charities or priority partners whose core values complement their own, and focus on family, children, education or literacy.

However, it goes further than that. If you promote your brand as being environmentally friendly, this needs to be reflected throughout – procurement, client Christmas presents, vehicle choices, etc. If you don’t, it opens companies up to an expectation and reality gap.

In a nutshell

You can study brand for an eon, but for me, brand very simply is who you are in the world, and what stories you wish to tell. Most importantly, it’s about having integrity; doing what you say you will and acting in line with your values.

Why build a brand? Why bother?   Brand is as fundamental to your business success as your sales and product. It is the way you communicate to the world and your customers who you are and what you’ll do for them. Brand is foremost about your relationships with people – your customers, industry, and staff. It is ultimately the creation of your organisational identity, and needs focus, attention and care.