Great Brands Influence Behavior - Guess What, So Do Poor Ones.

Branding – What is it?

Why do we choose one brand over another?

Traditional marketing encourages us to sell benefits, not features. 

Brand marketing goes one level deeper and connects with people’s beliefs.

When you speak to people on the level of their beliefs, you have an opportunity to connect emotionally — to customers, employees, and even investors.

The key question to ask yourself is: what do you believe and how do you attract other people that are aligned to those same beliefs? Great brands create a belief system that is both internally and externally aligned.When done correctly it simplifies the challenge of defining your brand.

Branding is a combination of a topic that ‘your’ audience is curious about and creating a brand belief system they can relate to.

To do this you need to identify an important topic or activity that your customers care deeply about and create a belief system around this topic.

I'm not a great believer of the corporate 'vision and values' nonsense. Mainly because this tends to be an outdated boardroom internalised fairy tale view. More often than not it was set up many years ago and is longer relevant or believable in relation to what today's customer actually experiences.

When buying customers are trying to satisfy a combination of emotional and belief needs.

Most of these are at a high and subconscious level

The most obvious of these is the oft used word ‘TRUST”. 

Trust is earned, and 'trust' is what can set one brand apart from others. When brands lose that trust its more often due to them losing sight of the 'why'.

One of the biggest frustrations I have as a 'change and brand growth agent' is that often I've been called into work with companies and leadership teams when the problem has become a basket case. Without a doubt this crisis has now accelerated that inevitable process for many, and created unforeseen opportunity for others.

Let's be truthful - there isn't a business or person who hasn't experienced some kind of 'transformational' impact as a result of this crisis - including me. 

Because consumer behavior has already changed I would strongly argue that Covid has been the catalyst for you to urgently get to grips with your post-Covid 'Why'.

Companies must have a strong sense of who you are appealing to if you are to build a sense of personality (brand) that starts customers on the road to buying from you. Confused companies, confuse customers, who buy from someone else. 

As with the rest of the world I've been invited onto a series of sector and industry relevant Webinars, Zoom conversations, and WhatsApp sessions. Every one of these sessions are jammed with people looking for help, advice, direction and support to help resolve their particular sector problem, something that's is the same for all of us and that problem is 'growth'.

Growth is a combination of agility, and innovation along with the ability for a company and its leaders to accept and be willing to recognise the external changes in customer behaviours and look to understand how to adjust and implement 'change'.

Just recently I've been asked to run a few online 'brand alignment' workshops to help businesses look to better understand how to ramp up the growth strategy and better understand the key drivers impacting their 'why'.

They're designed as a one day's introduction for alignment and brand context to flesh out the business direction and growth strategy for marketing. A vital part of the day is a number of hands on exercises for leaders and companies to help better understand the simple yet complex question of 'why do customers choose one brand or service provider over another'.

The key output and deliverable is to ensure internal clarity of what the ‘growth marketing’ proposition should be, this also assist in clarifying who/where/what to target for an aligned and productive growth ROI. 

So when you return to what will hopefully be your business, and your job my guess is that 'growth' in the next 2 months will be the biggest priority you and your leadership team will face because like the rest of the world external transformation has already taken place. 

Unlike the half day online workshop these face to face workshops are normally delivered to leadership teams in a classroom environment along with me assisting and facilitating the ongoing execution and deliverables where and when required. They are done via a combination of consultation meetings, one to one ones, along with the creation of agile and deliverable strategies and quick wins.

Of course just like you can't get fit by going for a one off session at the gym attending a one day (online) workshop isn't really going to lead to immediate change. But if done right with the right support and process it will have profound and a commercially positive effect on your company and growth potential

In fact the majority of my work within a brand realignment strategy can take anything up to 9-12 months - but whose got 9-12 months in the business tank today?

With 3.8bn+ people on one free to access and free to use social network or another the more internally aligned you are to the creation and execution of a 'belief system' can only help to supercharge your growth ambitions

If this is something you believe you might benefit from feel free to drop me a note on LinkedIn.