Brand Strategy Articles
Brand and Deliver
If you had two minutes to describe your brand, what would you say? Do you even know what your brand stands for and whether it delivers on its key promises? Brand strategy consultants recommend that you should be able to confidently say yes to these questions. Global financial crisis or not, successfully identifying what your brand stands for and ensuring your brand is well managed is important to position your business to take full advantage of a market upturn.
Taking advantage of tough conditions by building brand loyalty
There’s no doubting that Australia has largely dodged the GFC. On the whole, our economy continues to recover, thanks largely to iron ore demand from China. And whilst life is rosy in the mining sector, many other industries are struggling to recover. Recent interest rate rises and falling consumer confidence is causing many businesses to be cautious.
Tough market conditions do however present opportunities for all businesses. Whilst many companies are retreating away from investment, smart companies are increasing theirs.
Using Social Media to Build trust and drive your Brand
Today, if an Internet user types the name of any leading brand into a search engine, the top five results will includes not only the corporate webpage, but also the corresponding entry in the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The emergence of internet-based social media is making it possible for one user to communicate with thousands of other users about brands and companies. Hence many companies are diligently establishing themselves Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms in a bid to listen to and steer these conversations.
Understanding Your Pricing Competitiveness
The price of a product or service represents more than just a figure on a tag. Price comes in many forms and performs many functions. Wages, commissions, rates, rent, fees are all examples of the price we pay for a product or service. But most importantly of all, prices are seen as a major determinant of buyer choice. Today, we as consumers and businesses have greater access to market research and price information and this in turn means we are much more informed than we have ever been. Consumers put pressure on retailers to lower prices by “shopping around” for the best deal and businesses look to their supply chains to find ways to make cost savings and gain a competitive edge. The common theme is that price is used as a powerful tool for evaluation, assessment and comparison.
Australia’s Banks and Telstra – A real need to revisit their Brands
Strategic branding should precede marketing; it is the foundation of any organisation – its DNA. Branding sets the path and base for future marketing strategies and tactics. It is strategic whilst marketing is often very tactical and promotion based.
Strategic branding involves differentiating your business, product and/or service in the most compelling and significant way possible. Handled correctly, this involves an ‘inside-out’ approach, first by internally determining the company’s organisational values (what is valued, how staff conduct themselves). These are powerful enablers of your brand.
Why Brand Alignment is so important
True brand alignment results from having the brand in line with the customer and employee perceptions of an organisation and the activities and level of commitment and intent demonstrated both internally and externally by that organisation.
Differentiated sustainable brands invariably are founded upon strong organisational values. True strategic branding, we believe, must be an ‘inside out’ approach. After all, employees are the primary brand audience, the ones who will deliver the brand to customers. Brand Alignment between the internal and external is the lifeblood of brand-based organisational culture. If your people accurately know and understand ‘what your brand stands for’, this begets appropriate customer expectation.
Congruent Brand & Culture
With globalisation, Brands are so much more than just products and logos. They’re channels of self expression which transcend the label of ‘commodity’. Avenues through which most people express their personalities, attitudes, likes, dislikes and association to certain groups and communities. Brand is strategic, a long term imperative requiring Leadership to carefully consider and manage it across the entire organisation. This usually takes a collaborative effort involving both the HR, and Marketing Departments, which is best achieved through forming a Brand Steering Committee which can strategically understand the whole of business requirements.
Employee’s Perspective on Successful Internal Branding
Companies whose employees possess a strong knowledge of their brand have a competitive advantage. However, many organisations are still failing to provide the right information and support their people to deliver their organisation’s brand experience to customer.
In a recent article, Internal Branding: Exploring the Employee’s Perspective, the authors discuss internal branding from an employee perspective. The focus of the paper is on factors that were considered to be necessary for employees to successfully deliver their organisation’s brand promise.
The link between brand, culture and customer experience
Making the link between brand, culture and customer experience is not a new concept. However, effectively managing the link between these three concepts continues to challenge organisations. In the recent article Customer experience, organisational culture and the employer brand, the authors explore employer brand management and how you can use your employer brand to ensure your culture is aligned with your desired customer experience.
Characteristics of successful Employer brands
There has been a great deal of discussion on employer branding in the last decade. Organisations from a diverse range of industry sectors have formally defined, and are strategically managing their employer brand (eg Siemens, Honeywell, Accenture, Deloitte, Coca-Cola, Roche, Yahoo, Johnson and Johnson, Starbucks). Cultivating a unique employer brand experience is one method these organisations have chosen to attract and retain the most sought after talented employees; those who will enable them to generate success and secure ongoing profitability. In a recent article, Characteristics of Successful Employer Brands, the authors explore the perceived characteristics of successful and unsuccessful employer brands and construct a typology that organisations can use to assess their employer brands.