7 Guide Posts for Brand Thinking...
Hey!
Last week, I gave you some of my notes on strategy and that seemed to be a hit with folks.
In that vein, I figured I’d do the same for how I think about branding.
So here are some of my guideposts for brand thinking.
Diagnosis is key: You need to spend time figuring out the right question to ask. You also need to get an understanding for what the market wants. But you need to find out who you are by looking at your past, your founders, and the ideas that express who you are.
The brand is the accumulation of all the experiences, good and bad, that the market has with you: It is that simple. Good or bad, it counts. Just know that the good stuff adds up slowly and the bad stuff can tear you down much more quickly.
Balance long-term and short-term thinking: Long-term is typically brand building, emotional stuff. Short-term can usually be classified as sales activation.
Brand position is about us or them, but a little of both is the best: You can fight against the competition. You can stand up for yourself. Or, you can do a bit of both. The caution, you don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere and mushy. You have to be for something, even when it is against the competition.
Know your codes: Brand codes are 4-6 symbols that you use to mark your territory. They might include your logo. They might be a distinct smell like the lobby at the Four Seasons Brickell. They could be a color like the Tiffany blue bag.
Your brand strategy needs a through line: This means that you need to develop a certain amount of consistency over time. The best brands have a consistency to their focus. Simply, this means that your tactical delivery can and, probably, should change from year to year, but the organizing principle of your focus should have some consistency because the results of that focus may take time to show up.
Great marketers kill products while bad ones are always make new thing: I am always reluctant to create a new product. It happens because the data and the decision making leads you there, but the in too many cases marketers only want to create a new product when killing off the bloated products would be a better choice. As an example, think about the way that as the iPhone got more popular Apple killed off the iPod.
This isn’t everything, but a starting point.
Do you have thumbnails that you use for your brand thinking?
Let me know.
Dave