Branding Success

What is your brand?  Is it your name?  Is it your logo?  Is it what you sell?  Is it what you tell people about what you sell?  While your brand is a combination of these things, it is really what people think and feel when they think about your business.  It is the position you take up in the real estate of your customers' hearts and minds.  This has more to do with how you do business, than with what your name is or what your logo looks like.

How do you do business?  Do you operate in a way that has your customers adore you, or do people just shop at your business as a matter of course or habit?  The Surge Group asserts that if your customers adore your business, you must be operating as an 'authentic business'.   

A business that has grown into a large corporation as a result of a strong branding program is not necessarily an authentic business, although they could be. Think of Coca Cola, Home Depot, Body Shop and McDonalds.  What comes to mind when you think about these companies?  Is it positive or negative?  Why?  While corporations may be good companies in terms of strong sales, good margins and profitability, one can question the motivation of those behind the brand.  Is the company driven by profits only?  Is the marketing message consistent with the experience? Are customers viewed as a revenue stream and treated as mere transactions?

A recession is a good test of a business' place in the customer's mind and heart.  When customers feel the pinch of a recession, will they remain loyal to your business?  How will they make their purchase decisions?  Does your branding strategy stand up to the test of more discerning customers?  Is your 'brand', in its simplest sense, something that your customers really care about?

Over the years the concept of branding has gone from being hailed as darling to being despised and back to darling again making it confusing to ascertain if branding is good or bad.  Branding, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.  However, if branding is done in a manipulative sense then the business is not truly authentic.  A brand is something that a company earns, for better or worse, for the value of its offerings, for what the business stands for and for its behaviours and actions.  While branding can create loyal customers, they may be loyal only out of force of habit or convenience.  Customers may not actually adore the company with a deep emotional conviction. In this case, the relationship-building opportunity that could exist is lost.  

If you are building an authentic business and your brand is well supported by stakeholders, think of it as acknowledgment for actually succeeding in this dimension.  Continued efforts will further develop your stakeholder community and produce profits as well.  In this respect, your brand is actually a result rather than something you push into the marketplace.  It is the result of how you do business.