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Is your brand showing off in the right places – or is it constantly turning up at the wrong party?
Every day, you work with a colleague who does more than anyone else in your company to promote your business, reinforce the strengths of your products and service, and encourage more prospects to cross the line and become loyal customers. Unfortunately, this colleague of yours has been doing the job for years, and you tend to forget he’s even there. You’re complacent about his performance to the point where you just assume he must be doing a good job. He hasn’t had a pay rise in years and now you come to think of it, the last time you saw him, it crossed your mind he looked a bit old fashioned and a bit down-at-heel. But hey, he hasn’t been sacked, right, so he must be doing OK.
You might think this level of neglect could never happen in your company. But it’s the way many businesses treat their brand. There it is, out there 24/7/365, slaving away for your benefit, trying to do the right thing to build business, talk the right language and attract the right perceptions. But it can only do that if you’re treating it right, and giving it the proper tools to do the job.
So, when you expect so much of your brand, it’s worth asking the question - are you upholding your end of the bargain? If you can develop a winning relationship with your brand, your brand will thrive, and enjoy winning relationships with your customers.
The Dynam team members are experts at developing and strengthening your brand. We can even resuscitate it if things are really bad. It’s worth it, because a powerful brand makes your company stronger, and more able to tough out the bad times by increasing the value of your business.
Dynam understands that when customers choose to invest in a brand, it’s a big deal. It really means something. A brand is all about perception and customer emotion. They pay more for a perceived better product and that makes them feel good about themselves. They trust its ability to do the job better than another product and become its ambassador, believing in its quality and reliability.
So if you start to cut corners on your product or service, it will be noticeable and it will hurt. Your customers get just as emotional when high standards begin to fall short, and your brand will be the first casualty. Make sure your brand stays in synergy with high quality, or it will start to stand for something smaller, something that falls short.
The thing about a failing brand is that it doesn’t make a lot of noise. It just quietly fades away as people stop noticing it, responding to it, acting on it. And if it’s because your quality standards are wasting away, your customers won’t just be lethargic about it – they’ll actively reject it. While everyone in the office runs about in a panic trying to identify what’s broken, the obvious is staring them in the face. Better to pay your brand the attention it deserves before it starts to slide towards anonymity, debt and just being plain uncool.
Are you spending enough? Take a good, hard look at your brand. Does it look like a survivor, an ambassador for the modern world? Does it have the credibility to face down the competition? Have you groomed it, so it goes out dressed to kill? Are you showing it off in the right places – or is it constantly turning up at the wrong party?
But as every marketer – and customer – knows, beauty is only skin-deep. As well as looking drop dead gorgeous, your brand has to be fit for purpose. Is it speaking the right language? Sending out the right messages? Is it speaking for the highest quality of product and service? In short, is it speaking for your business as it should?
Think about the people to whom your brand has been introduced. As far as your business is concerned, a brand is – well, at the business end, chatting up prospects, reassuring current customers, reminding the competition that you are a force majeure in the market place. Back at the office, it helps you compete effectively; better candidates want to work for you, and you attract better business opportunities. Short story long, your brand is gold dust – so shower it with critical attention, respect, resources – and use it!
If you can’t see your brand anymore because you’ve lost sight of its objectives or it has lost market energy, Dynam can be a real help. We can analyse your brand from a dispassionate viewpoint, by organising focus groups to check on current perceptions and brand values, and using a powerful tool, The Brand Wheel, to create a complete picture of your brand where it stands, and where it could be going.
A clear-thinking session with the Dynam brand team can bring out the strengths in your brand, build market stamina and create the wow factor your customers love. Your brand shouldn’t be a Cinderella – working hard, unappreciated and forgotten, but a champion for your business, good looking, well-dressed, articulate, intelligent and attracting the right people for all the right reasons.