8 Common Errors of Branding

The key things most companies do not consider as part of their branding

Many companies tell me they understand the value of branding but after 30 years of working in the industry, it is my experience that the vast majority of business people do not truly understand the breadth and scope that the term ‘branding’ fully encompasses.

Many choose to work with a graphic designer, who has created a few logos that the CEO, or maybe the marketing manager, likes - we hope they have at least done this little bit of basic research into their chosen design partner first! But an effective brand is so much more than a logo. 

Common Error Number #1.

A brand is much more than a logo

Brand design is far more complex than simply creating marketing materials or designing a logo. A logo is NOT a brand after all. It’s merely a symbol of or the face of the brand.

If you’ve engaged an experienced designer they will tell you it’s even more than merely creating an identity system to underpin your logo. That still does not address the kernel of the issue.

Your logo is the very tip of a very large iceberg. Sitting under it is the visual identity system - which will create robust communications materials and a consistent presentation of your company. And below that sits the less tangible elements of your brand - a cohesive brand strategy, your values, customer experience etc.

As I’ve stated hundreds of times in countless brand consultation sessions - Design without strategy is merely decoration. 

A defined strategy is the single most important element of any brands arsenal. 

If a brand is truly going to connect with, and engage, it’s target audience then every piece of communication and every customer touchpoint needs to be considered. Which means much, much more than simply applying the same look and feel, and tone of voice consistently across your business cards and marketing materials.

‘Unless you have absolute clarity of what your brand stands for, everything else is irrelevant’. 

Mark Baynes, Global CMO, Kellogg Co

Common Error Number #2:

Touchpoints

Most people do not consider the different touchpoints of their brand in sufficient detail.

If you have a physical office, physical products or a shop then they are obviously all customer touch-points with your brand. They represent your brand just as much as a logo, a business card or a marketing leaflet.

But so does every member of staff, every email through to how your receptionist may answer the telephone.

Every interaction with something or someone that represents your business, or carries your brand name, should embody your brand values.

If you have an up-market, luxury brand - then having a cheap, plastic, promotional pen is not going to resonate or reflect the face of the brand you wish to project to the world. It will form an incongruency and so create a disconnect with your target audience.

Let’s use a well-worn example (simply because we all understand it).

The Apple brand carries associations of innovation, technological advancement, exceptional design standards and possibly most importantly ... ease-of-use. 

The Apple Macintosh was noted for the groundbreaking drag & drop interface coupled with the innovative ‘mouse’, meaning it was very quick for a new user to become familiar with the machine. It was also the first desktop machine to have a colour monitor.

Innovation and being different were part of the brand strategy - embodied in the “think different” strapline. The famous ‘1984’ advert, first played out during the Superbowl final, projected Apple as the little guy fighting the suppression and might of ‘big brother’. People tend to like aligning with a plucky underdog.

When the iPod was launched it made huge waves in the music industry. Highly innovative again. There were other mp3 players on the market but the iPod brought simplicity to the user experience and interaction with the hardware that was an instant hit.

When the iPhone was launched it also had an immense impact, for similar reasons. 

When Apple Stores arrived on our high streets they were a world away from the usual shopping experience. Apple stores were more like cathedrals to the Apple design ascetic.

Spacious, bright, clean with high ceilings and lots of light wood and glass. They felt as much an architectural experience as a shop, more in-line with the top hotel chains than our usual shopping experiences at the time.

But Apple doesn't have it all its own way - it can be a ‘marmite brand’.

Do your friends and family use apple products or are your friends & influencers advocates of android and open-source technology? The prevailing atmosphere and thinking in the environment you inhabit will influence you. If you know an old school IT technician well then you are likely to view Apple with a degree of negativity as they usually don't like the closed nature of the Apple OS.

There's no right or wrong in this. It just depends where you sit on the brand engagement continuum.

We’ve all seen the way Apple fans will camp-out & stand in-line for days, to get their hands on the latest iPhone release. That kind of loyalty and enthusiasm has big value.

Every interaction with every aspect with the Apple brand informs how we feel about it.

Some of the other brand touchpoints are more personal. Were the store staff polite, helpful, attentive? - or were you ignored? Have you had a good experience of their customer care and after-sales care? Did the Genius Bar sort out your technical issue swiftly - or did you have to wait in line for hours first? Did the iTunes app sync as seamlessly as you’d expected? Did your iPhone screen crack after a relatively small knock? 

You may have possibly read stories or seen one of the films about Jobs and Wozniak, the Apple founders & the company history. If so you may view them as rebel geniuses? or possibly out of control, arrogant or even naive. Did you react well or badly to some of the more extreme behaviour that was exposed in those narratives? (Possibly you feel a combination of all of the above!) 

Brand touchpoints are everywhere and are as complex as any interpersonal relationship - as nuanced as dealing with any real human being. 

Given all this, it’s not surprising that any experienced brand strategist, or brand designer, knows that all brand touchpoints are equally important. They must all align and coherently build into a totality that is consistent and unified. 

To achieve this a good brand designer will incorporate some basic human behavioural psychology to help develop your brand strategy.

Put simply every interaction any individual has with your brand will have an impact on their response. If they are in your target audience profile then every effort has to be made to make those interactions & their response to your brand positive.

Common Error Number #3:

Taking your customer loyalty for granted

Did you grow up in a family that faithfully bought the same breakfast cereal or brand of teabag?

If that company delivered on its brand promise - if their product does what they say it will do, at a reasonable cost, then the likely hood is that a customer will stick with them. There is no reason to change.

But that loyalty only holds until they have a bad experience - or until a viable alternative arrives, that also delivers a comparable product at a comparable price. 

Reports have indicated that the modern consumer is likely to switch brands more often than any previous generation.

One recent survey suggested that a whopping 97% of millennials would switch, to a comparable brand of similar quality, if the new brand also had a policy of active civic responsibility. To the new generations of consumers contributing something extra and giving back to society are very important factors.

Having a bigger vision and purpose, than merely being a successful company who makes a good profit for the shareholders, is becoming of increasing importance to modern consumers and therefore of any modern brand.

Knowing who YOUR customers are is crucial too. 

Any firm can have much more focused messaging and communications with its customers when it knows who those customers are and what they value. 

‘You can be promoting yourself every minute of every day but if you’re talking to the wrong people you are wasting your time’.

Trevor Linch, Marketing Strategist

Common Error Number #4:

Believing you are in control.

You may think you are in control of your brand but you are never fully in control.

In fact, a modern company has less control over its brand than ever before in history. 

The huge growth of social media has not only changed how the conversation between brand and consumer takes place but has also changed who controls the brand message. 

The general public now has as much say over how your brand is perceived than any communications you send out to the world yourself.

It’s not lost on most firms that the sphere of influence your client moves in has a huge impact on their perceptions of your brand. And social media is now one of the biggest factors which direct and influence the stories which capture the publics’ attention. 

If the twitter-sphere, for example, starts to share stories of bad customer service, rude staff or poor product quality then there is very little a brand manager can do to affect the story. It is likely to spread swiftly and relentlessly.

But a savvy company can engage with and ‘manage’ the story to some degree.

Usually, I’d advise brutal honesty. If you happen to find you are on the wrong end of a social media storm - hold your hands up, own your mistakes and take it on the chin.

Then clearly and quickly state what you are doing to do to address the issues. Transparency & speed of response is key to upholding brand integrity in the modern world. As is taking swift and decisive action to rectify the problem.

People who feel an affinity with the brand are more likely to give you some credit - so will stay on board. Not everyone will be your target client, ‘your tribe', the haters are gonna hate. But decisive action, repentance and taking steps to rectify the situation are generally a proven strategy to minimise any adverse effects.

The business strategist Jeff Bezes stated it like this:

“Branding is what people say about you when you are not in the room”.

The biggest rooms in the world now are the various social media forums - every brand should make a concerted effort to be present in those rooms and to engage in the conversation. Not doing so is like leaving a lamb in a cave full of wolves.

But I'd state a small cavitate here too. Having a poor presence on social media and not using the different platforms in the right way can also be extremely damaging to a brand. If it feels overwhelming and you can't have a dedicated person/freelancer then my advice is to concentrate on the 1 or 2 key platforms that are most appropriate to you and your target audience - and make the best impact on those platforms you can in the time you have available.

Common Error Number #5:

Underestimating the human factor

Most of the business managers I’ve encountered in my career have some understanding of the importance of brand values and a company mission statement - and of how they should inform the decisions they make in their working day.

But I’ve also been surprised how many times that understanding of brand values does not permeate into operational decisions throughout the organisation.

Ask yourself; ‘Does your receptionist or your salespeople even know your companies brand values and mission statement?’ and more importantly ‘do they answer the phone or conduct themselves in an appropriate way to embody them?’ 

And this should not just mean teaching a script. It’s not easy but get your employees to own the values your stand for, believe in them, support them and take on personal responsibility for how those brand attributes are expressed to the outside world. It is important - and when achieved this ownership can have impressive effects.

Let me share a couple of client stories to illustrate:

As is our common practice we started work with a new client by conducting a brand and communication audit.

This firm historically used a virtual receptionist/PA facility.

On conducting research with their customer base we were told that the experience of dealing with this service (from the customer's point of view) was far from ideal. 

The customers felt as if they were not valued. It was evident that the person answering the phone was stalling them. Some felt they were being lied to and that the receptionist didn't care about their enquiry. Probably the worst comment was that the experience of ringing and never getting through directly, the receptionist obviously not knowing when people would be available, all made the customer doubt the validity of the company. They said "it felt like dealing with a tin-pot organisation", "made me feel this was someone’s part-time gig or a 'side hustle' - I definitely didn’t feel this company was their main focus and therefore I didn’t believe I was their priority".

Working with another client we discovered that they used agency staff to fill the majority roles in their warehouses. The warehouse team did not have any contact with the general public first hand and very little contact with the management team either. They were not a ‘front line service’ and were not viewed as that important but rather were seen as a fairly lowly cog in the service delivery chain. As such there was not any company 'on-boarding' process for any of the warehouse staff. Why would there be, they were agency staff, and as such had a fairly high turnover rate?

But this firm was as a personal & corporate storage provider. The warehouse staff were literally ‘hands-on’ with their customers stock or their private belongings. The fact that they are mainly agency staff with little loyalty to the firm and no personal investment in up-holding the companies values was having a massive impact.

The firms managers told us they were 'very good at customer service'. One of their stated values was even ‘exceptional customer service’, ‘treating all the goods they handle as if they are their own possessions’.

Simply looking at the number of insurance claims for damages indicated that those brand values were not invested through the entire organisation ... definitely not making it to the attitude and care taken by the warehouse staff.

A pretty easy fix and an easy win for the firm too. 

Common Error Number #6:

Putting shareholders, efficiencies and profits before customer experience. 

Too often in the past companies implement structures and systems to help streamline their businesses with little or no regard for the impact on customers. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of having endless, often repetitive forms to fill out or the experience of being passed around different departments on a phone call - with each department having it’s own entirely separate call-queuing system. These are systems that serve the company but infuriate the customer.

If we are to be truly customer-focused then our focus should be about creating ‘paths of least resistance’. Our clients should find it easy to deal with us. They should feel valued.

Tony Hseih, when CEO of the online apparel store Zappos famously said:

‘Your culture is your brand’.

In other words, how you do business is an intrinsic part of how people experience your brand.

Common Error Number #7:

Thinking the work is done - when it’s actually an ever-changing continuum

The best brands are aiming to create a feeling of trust, or an emotional connection with their consumers even. It’s a relationship and relationships take work (as any married couple will testify!)

If people like you they will listen to you but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.

Zig Ziglar, Motivational Business Author & Speaker

But the world we live in is ever-changing and continues to alter at an exponentially faster and faster speed. Consumer behaviour changes, political situations change, customer attitudes alter.

In this landscape, all companies need to be continually monitoring their communications and brand effectiveness. Ensuring that they are still connecting, still a trusted partner.

An ongoing methodology of testing and research should be a key component of a company who want to create longevity.

Common Error Number #8:

Not thinking wholistically

Michael Eisner, former CEO of The Walt Disney Company stated it like this,

A Brand is a living entity — and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.

If we align the brand at all it’s touchpoints, through all it communications material, with its brand values - and ensure that it delivers what it promises, matching brand experience with the brand promise, then we have a solid brand strategy.

Your brand is the gut feeling response someone has after encountering you/your business.

Howard Schultz, in his book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time states;

“Authentic brands don't emerge from marketing cubicles …They emanate from everything the company does.” 

My personal favourite quote about this is not even about branding or business. It comes from author and activist Maya Angelou, and I’ll leave you with her succinct eloquence ...

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.