Branding For Dummies. Chiaravalle Bill

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">       Brands grow from the top down and from the inside out. What that means is that your brand needs commitment and clarity from the highest levels of leadership and support from employees at every point in your organization.

       Involving your whole organization

      Whether you have a one-person team or a 1,000-person team, every person in your organization has to be involved in building and maintaining your brand. Here are the key players:

      1.

Organization leaders: Enlist the leadership and buy-in of those whose names appear at the very top of your organizational chart. Great brands are expressions of the vision, mission, and core values established by leaders, and therefore leaders need to head up the branding effort.

      2. Marketing team: This group takes on the day-to-day responsibility for advancing, maintaining, protecting, and fine-tuning the brand. From this team, name one person to serve as your brand manager and chief brand protector, choosing a top-level executive who has the authority and commands the respect necessary to oversee what, in time, will become your organization’s most valuable asset – your brand.

      3. Team of brand champions: If one person fails to uphold your brand promise – at any point from an initial inquiry to a post-purchase product or service concern – the strength of your brand is weakened. That’s why great brands begin with internal launches that achieve team understanding and support (see Chapter 9). They also include ongoing brand orientations and training sessions to ensure flawless brand experiences (see Chapters 13 and 14).

       Enlisting help from branding professionals

      Brand development requires professional expertise and effort from those within and outside your organization. Pick and choose from the following professional resources:

      ✔ Brand consultants: These firms specialize in soup-to-nuts creation, building, and management of brands. They’re experienced at positioning, naming and trademarking, logo development and all aspects of launching and managing brands. If you’re seeking to build a brand that reaches into large markets or competitive fields, the expertise of a brand consultant can be worth the expense many times over.

      ✔ Public-relations specialists: New brands are newsworthy. An experienced PR professional can help you develop the right news hooks and angles to get your story into circulation. Depending on the size and ongoing nature of your needs, a public-relations freelancer may be able to handle your task as a one-time assignment. If brand publicity is an ongoing objective, a PR firm with greater staff and media resources may be the way to go. (Flip to Chapter 12 for more on public relations.)

      ✔ Brand identity (logo) designers: If you need help only with logo development or refinement, hire a graphic designer who specializes in brand identity who has a proven track record and a portfolio of success. Ask to see samples to be sure the caliber of design matches up with your expectations. Then use the advice in Chapter 8 as you manage the logo-development process.

      ✔ Advertising agencies: Some ad agencies specialize in brand development. Others focus on creation of print, broadcast, or interactive advertising. Yet others are known for award-winning packaging, and even for their public-relations departments. Chapter 13 includes guidance for determining your needs, locating the right resources, and working with the professionals you hire.

      

When interviewing professionals, ask to see case studies to determine whether those you’re considering have the experience you seek. Many companies present themselves as brand developers when, in fact, they handle only one aspect of the branding process, such as logo development or brand advertising.

      

When selecting a firm, use these 3 Cs to help determine if they are right for you:

      ✔ Are they competent? In other words, do they have the experience?

      ✔ Is the chemistry right? Do they get us?

      ✔ Do their compensation needs fit within our budget?

       Gulp! How much does it cost?

      Branding budgets run the gamut depending on whether you’re building a brand that will face only moderate competition in a small geographic region or a brand that aims to elbow out major competitors in the global marketplace. What’s more, budgets vary depending on whether you can reach your market through digital communications and social media or whether you need to invest in traditional media and marketing channels.

       A glance at branding budgets

      Table 1-1 shows a lineup of the major tasks involved in brand development along with the range of price tags involved. Brace yourself: The high-end figures are apt to cause heart palpitations.

      Table 1-1 Professional Brand-Development Fees

      As Table 1-1 verifies, there’s a huge range between the low-end costs involved to build a professional brand that competes on a local or regional level and the high-end costs involved to build a powerful brand that can flex its muscle nationally or internationally.

      

As you start tallying up the costs to your business, avoid the temptation to strike out certain line items that you think you can handle on your own without incurring outside costs. Businesses that start with do-it-yourself logos and presentation materials achieve false savings. They economize on the front end, for sure, but they also cost themselves the benefit of a strong, competitive, professional first impression.

      If your goal is to build a brand that you can grow, leverage, and even sell in the future, invest the money required to get off to a good start. By the time you amortize your start-up expenses, the cost will be minimal in comparison to the value received.

       In lieu of big bucks …

      

In case you’re clinging to your billfold or balance sheet, shaking your head and wondering how you can build a brand on your kind of budget, remember this truth: In essence, your business is your brand and your brand is your business.

      If you don’t have the budget to develop the most powerful brand identity, triple or quadruple your efforts to design and deliver the most consistent brand experience. Follow these suggestions:

      ✔

Spend extra time and effort to define your brand and what it stands for so that everyone in your organization knows exactly the promise you’re making and keeping. Defining your brand involves creating your mission and vision statements, defining your brand promise, developing your brand definition and core brand message, and deciding on the brand character or personality that you’ll put forth with every brand communication. Chapter СКАЧАТЬ