Your company’s brand goes much farther than an appealing visual identity or ensuring that the logo is big enough. And you should be thinking about marketing in a far broader way than the metrics of your last campaign or the traditional view of marketing within your organization.
So what do we mean? Let’s start with Brand.
The idea of branding has been around for ages. Literally. We have always put our mark on things to establish ownership (think cattle brands). Then in the late 1880s with the growth of consumer packaged goods, companies needed a way to encourage customers to choose their products off of the crowded store shelf. Hello, Coca-Cola, Campbell’s Soup, and Palmolive Soap. Brand names and brand marks began to blossom.
hen around the 1980s, a shift began from branding being primarily about a company’s name and logo to Brand with a capital B. Brand strategy started to be seen as a critical part of business strategy, and we discovered the idea that a brand isn’t just your logo and visual identity but rather Brand is the idea of what you stand for in the mind of your customer.
In Brand A–Z: An Interactive Dictionary of 1,000 Essential Brand Terms by Marty Neumeier, brand is defined as “a customer’s perception of product, service, or company, a commercial reputation.” David Ogilvy says it is “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes.”
At The Garrigan Lyman Group (GLG), our brand development practice is moving the dial for business decision makers around the world. We view Brand as everything you do as a company, everything you deliver, how you conduct business, and how you treat your employees. It’s your retail store experience, your sales team, your customer service team, your supply chain, and even your website response time. It’s all part of your Brand.
Today, Brand is a core component of your business strategy and has inherent value beyond the products and services you sell. Organizations like Kantar and Interbrand both publish yearly listings of the world’s most valuable Brands. It’s not a ranking of the value of each company but rather what value Brand brings to each company. The lists reflect how Brand affects financial performance and its impact in driving customer loyalty and sustaining demand. No small feat for a logo (not just the logo), right?
A strong Brand defends pricing. When two companies offer similar products or services, the one with the stronger Brand is able to maintain and even elevate its price. In an organization that is driven by a sales team, a well-defined Brand aligns the team with a singular focus. A strong Brand powers B2B companies by assisting in the awareness and consideration phases, decreasing time to sales, and instilling a sense of trust.
And most importantly, I believe, is that a great Brand inspires employees and attracts top talent around a vision for the company. It is the north star. It shows employees how they are a part of that vision. It is also a promise of how the organization treats people and a guide for how employees should behave. And when a company is looking for great talent in a competitive hiring market, a well-communicated Brand can attract more qualified talent and reduce the time to hire.
Do you have a logo, but you’re unsure about the rest of it? Do you have a clear brand promise? Are your employees unclear about the vision of your company? It may be time to think beyond just your brand style guide and discover the totality of what your Brand is communicating to your employees and your customers. At GLG, our brand development strategies have helped companies of all types discover and express their Brand. We would love the opportunity to discuss ways to start uplifting your Brand and show you how to create strong brand positioning in your market.
