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Business development

Brand Development

Name it, dress it up nicely, and give it something brief but eloquent to say.

Have you served many thousands of clients over many years? Have you just been in business long enough to serve a few customers once each? In either case, do not let anybody tell you that you do not have a brand. Do not listen if they tell you that they can create a new brand for you. Do not let anybody tell you that your visual identity (logo, wordmark, colours, textures) defines your brand.

A simple, lasting impression in the mind. That is a brand. Brand is market perception.

Effective brand management requires both authenticity and focus on a moving target: market perception. As customers, suppliers, and staff form experiences and develop expectations of an organization, they gauge its key messages as weak or strong, compelling or forgettable. This could be in or out of sync with their basic impressions of the organization and its purpose.

A company that does not consciously manage its brand might not need to, if people's experience is consistently positive and aligned with the promises made in advertising and public relations. Even then, marketing the brand effectively to more of the right people could remain a challenge.

When the market's experience of a brand is inconsistent or out of sync with expectations, then a new focus on authentic, meaningful key messages can help to realign brand management and achieve success. Without this, marketing such a brand could simply spread the perception of dishonesty.

From well-established companies to new sole proprietors, those prepared to learn and monitor the answers to these questions about their brand position can shape their brands effectively:

How strong is your market's awareness of you?
To what extent does your core value proposition differentiate you from competitors?
What are you best known for among your clients?
Why do customers, suppliers, and staff like and trust you?

Effective brand management is the purposeful stewardship of market perception. It follows from understanding the answers to these questions, and it depends on simple, distinct, authentic key messages.

Once an organization recognizes its brand as it is, then that organization can:

claim its truth.
express it with candor.
develop its strength effectively.

Articulate Consultants help to discover how people (past, present, and future clients, suppliers, and staff) feel and what they think about your organization. Then, Articulate Consultants can distil and articulate key messages that authentically reflect and influence the thoughts and feelings of the people you deal with and could deal with.

After all, authentic key messages are the heart of effective brand management and successful marketing. Getting these right can render a new logo and colours - plus printing new stationery and revising the appearance of websites etc - superficial and unnecessary.

For people who seek the help of an experienced brand consultant for expert guidance through a proven process, Articulate Consultants offers strategic brand consulting, research and writing, and graphic design. Helpful coaching and project management maintain client involvement and keep it all authentic.

Click here for an article on brand loyalty. Call or click on the e-mail link or to enquire today.

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