BRAND MANAGEMENT

Captures the company’s business history and situation, long-term vision, nearer-term mission, cultural values and business goals, and its intrinsic personality.

Describes the products and/or services the company offers to its customers, and the architecture-existing or planned of its brand relationships between company, product families, products, partners, ingredient brands and so on.

The brand promise states what the company/products provide and the benefits that customers can expect to enjoy from them. The ideal brand experience paints a picture of the takeaway impressions you want to create with every customer interaction.

Establishes an understanding of customer groups and other key audiences, such as investors, employees, trade press and sales-channel employees. In addition to demographics, which help you learn who your audiences are and how and where they can be reached, psychographics provide an understanding of their needs, desires, goals, beliefs, habits and culture.

Identifies the industry, category and segments in which you compete, your competitive differentiation, and your positioning within that competitive arena expressed as a position concept the single differentiating idea that you intend to own in the minds of your customers.

The name of an organization and/or product offering. Depending on the brand strategy and architecture, different types of names could be appropriate: descriptive (of functions or places), eponymous (named for some person), suggestive (recognizable and relevant), arbitrary (a known word taken out of its normal context) or fanciful (unique fabrications).

Expressive characteristics that help breathe life into a brand and give it a distinct presence-behaviorally, graphically and verbally. In addition to specific attribute descriptions, some methods for characterizing personality as a package include brand persona (describing the brand in terms of a person who serves a specific role to others), brand archetype (a classic personality type rooted in psychology and mythology), and brand personage (typically a well-known individual who serves as a real-world model for the personality and behavior of the company or product).

A company’s or product’s logo can be thought of as its “flag”: distinctive, memorable, and signaling value and allegiance in the brand it represents. Types of logos include logo marks (graphic symbols), logotypes (symbol and name combined in a specific arrangement) and word marks (consisting primarily of type, focused on typographic style and emphasizing the name rather than graphic symbolism).

The organized system that creates your recognizable and repeatable “visual identity”-includes a distinctive color palette, typography (choices of typefaces and how they are applied), secondary graphics (these are characteristic graphic objects that pull together layouts, and also specific styles of illustrations and/or photos), and structural grids, which determine the distinctive arrangement of elements in different design applications.

Planning focuses time and resources into specific decisions and priorities for reaching audiences-identifying the opportunities, budget and time for the best-possible delivery of your messages. Planning ideally builds from the organization’s overall business and marketing plans, then breaks out to specific program-, product- and project-level plans, both for launches and ongoing activities. Plans can also address the processes and means for building and managing the brand within the organization.

A key aspect of brand management is paying attention to the faithfulness of branding efforts, and also working to understand whether the efforts are resonating with audiences. Both sides of this equation should be monitored and assessed on a regular, ongoing basis to understand what’s working, and what’s not. Activities can include reviews of materials in development, brand audits and customer research.

For branding to achieve maximum effect, the organization’s leaders, employees and partners must all understand and deliver the brand-and better yet, become engaged and live it as part of the corporate culture. Internal brand launches, employee brand training programs and engagement exercises, promotional items (such as branded gifts, clothing and screen savers), and attention to brand alignment during hiring and reviews can make a tremendous difference. They enhance a brand’s clarity and authenticity, and they help keep the business focused in serving its customers.

While one goal of branding is cohesiveness, it’s also critical that branding evolve, both to reflect changing business priorities and to strengthen your connection with your customers. With learning gained through personal interactions and monitoring and assessment activities comes the insight to evolve branding efforts, and the brand itself. This may include adjusting, replacing, or adding to any of the elements described in the framework to optimize branding impact and cost-effectiveness.

The design and function of your product and service offerings are crucial elements of the brand experience you create: they represent the embodiment of your brand. To contribute to the strength of your brand, they should faithfully incorporate your company’s values and identity attributes, and above all deliver on your brand promise.

Anything that provides surroundings for your audiences can be considered an environment; these include physical spaces such as retail and office environments, vehicles on the street, and event venues and activities. Virtual environments can be delivered through electronic media, including websites, and even the multi-sensory impressions that can be created in radio, film, video and television. In each case, if the environment is aligned with your brand messages and is clearly identified with you, it can help create a compelling and memorable brand experience.

As with products and services, interactions with people representing your organization stand out vividly in the minds of your customers, employees and other audiences. These interactions range from how you answer your phone, to the behavior of your sales and support staff, to discussions with your executives in meetings and public forums. It’s critical to attend to these interactions and optimize them to reflect your brand values, deliver your messages and, ultimately, to help customers form trusted relationships and affinity with your organization.

Public relations efforts that result in attention for your brand and offerings in media coverage, public events and business forums provide the opportunity for your brand to be extolled by others, rather than requiring you to do all the promotional “lifting” yourself. Just as important, PR and events can create shared brand experiences they have the potential to build a community and following for your brand, helping it take on a life and momentum of its own.