10 ways to get the best from your brand
Image courtesy of Morgan Housel on Unsplash
A strong and viable brand is one of the most important assets that any business or individual can have. A brand goes before you, it leads the way and communicates on your behalf. Carefully cultivated, a strong brand can create advocates and ambassadors. Not only that, it can make friends out of strangers and even turn doubters into believers.
However, in order to maintain the strength of a brand, you must be able to get the best out of it (ie: stimulate and optimise its effectiveness). As this blog sets out, brands are living entities and like any other living entity, they require maintenance and upkeep. Without it, they deteriorate, decline and eventually die.
Heavily influenced by some of the most entertaining movies that I have seen; here are the ten ways to get the best from your brand.
1. Recognise what you have and value it
One of the biggest barriers to getting the best from a brand is ignorance. In simple terms, the lack of conscious awareness of the strengths and unique characteristics of a brand, such a its favourability, reach, influence and impact will prevent you from optimising its benefits. The implications here are not just the danger of not knowing what you’ve got until its gone; it’s the fact that, when it’s gone, you may not have known that you had it in the first place. The corollary of the above is that the starting point has to be a clear understanding of what your brand is worth, its ‘purchasing power’ and the actions that most contribute to its ongoing appreciation in value.
2. Acknowledge where you are weak and attend to it
Notice that the sub-title includes the statement “attend to it” not “fix it”. This is because brands like most ‘living things’ require time and space to mature and grow. Like ‘living things’ brands also have strengths, weaknesses and boundless potential for further development. As such, in the context of a brand, maturity is not something that occurs through the act of fixing things, rather it comes about through the effort of attending to things. Attention requires patience, nurturing and cultivation. It also requires you to acknowledge that sometimes you will get it right and at others times, you will get it wrong.
3. Re-invent and re-imagine
Brand re-invention and re-imagination requires both confidence and courage. How do you turn a good thing into a better thing? Not just that, at what point does the effort to achieve something better from something good, become something pointless? Cue the Batman movie franchise. Whilst I did enjoy the cartoon kitsch of the earlier outings (in particular ‘Batman Forever’) the re-booting of the franchise, exemplified by the truly outstanding ‘The Dark Knight’, proved to be an absolute masterstroke. It also goes to show how if handled imaginatively and thoughtfully, the intentional re-casting of a brand can produce highly successful results. The critical learning point here is that as living entities, brands are mobile and pliable. When living things are not sustained they die, when mobility is lost there is paralysis and when things that are pliable are not worked they become rigid.
4. Boldly go where no-one has gone before
Admittedly I am a Star Trek fan and fortunately this entry affords me the opportunity to show my hand! However, there is a serious point too, which is that if you want your brand to be meaningful, then you have to make it memorable. Back in 1993, I went to see the movie Jurassic Park. Not being a movie-goer, I decided to see it on the big screen, largely due to the amazing trailers and positive word of mouth. For nearly 90 minutes I sat enthralled and entertained and by the end of the movie, I was on my feet applauding. Despite numerous additional offerings in the franchise, none in my view, compare to the first one. For all of its outlandishness and happy-ending story-telling, Jurassic Park was a ground-breaking and compelling tale. The point is this: if you are going to get the best from your brand, then put in the hard miles that are needed to get the attention that you want.
5. Treat it like an actual commodity
A commodity is a tangible product as well as something of value and worth. The imagery here is intentional because to get the best from your brand you have to see it as an asset and as such, a form of currency with which you can trade, bargain and position yourself with. Whether you know it or not or believe it or not, brands attract attention, they open doors and they close them, they can start conversations and they can end them. When brand awareness rises to the level of a commodity and is treated as such, then that awareness and appreciation can be used tactically to leverage influence and effect change.
6. Understand when you need to leverage it, but don’t over leverage it
Leverage is influence and in the context of a brand, it is a beautiful thing! When a brand is leveraged, it is triggered and put to work. To exert leverage, you do not just need to know that you have it, you also need to understand how to use it. After all, leverage is nothing without realisation. Many years ago, I remember reading an article about the actor Dwayne Johnson, whose movie, ‘San Andreas’, was opening in theatres prior to wide release. In the article, reference was made to the fact that Johnson had ‘activated’ his massive social media following, which had apparently led to an impressive three day weekend gross for that movie. Leverage, therefore is not just a beautiful thing, it is an essential resource. That said, don’t over-use it or you will risk diluting it.
7. Do not dilute it
The very act of dilution is to limit the effectiveness of or weaken something. How does that apply to a brand you may wonder? Well, one of the ways in which brands are often diluted is when they no longer stand for what they once did. Sometimes, little things can dilute a brand such as the act of comprise on essential standards or deeply held values. Think of your favourite movie franchise as a case in point; usually a strong sequel is built off the back of a successful initial outing. Yet, how often is it that a sequel fails to impress and instead becomes a showcase for lazy or uninspiring scriptwriting from studios seemingly more interested in making quick profits than building powerful brands. The impact of brand dilution is not necessarily immediate, rather it is the willingness to accept the dilution that is terminal.
8. Test the decibel level
The decibel level of a brand is not just a measure of its volume, pitch, tone and tenor. Just as importantly, it is a test of a brand’s reach and influence. Are those that hear, the ones that you expect to be listening? Are they easily able to discern the value that you are trying to convey? When others feed back to you about your brand, is the message that they convey the one that you are expecting? Does your brand impact unfamiliar audiences? Every movie studio, with a major release on their schedule, will ask themselves these and other questions as they prepare for an opening weekend. The value of testing and measuring is that it is the most effective way to determine whether your presumptions are matched by your customers expectations.
9. Manage exposure
In the brand context, saturation can be a good thing. By contrast however, over-saturation is not the best thing. Look at the circulation of money as a case in point; when there is too much money in circulation, that will cause a currency to depreciate or become de-valued and when a currency devalues, it loses its purchasing power. The same broad principle applies with the devaluation of a brand. This is because ‘devaluation’ impacts upon the perception of a brand (after all, who wants to be associated with something that is depreciating?). I remember many years ago, how one of my favourite brands ‘Star Trek’, was everywhere. Multiple offerings were running simultaneously or back to back on the small screen, supplemented by cyclical motion picture releases, on the big screen. However, even as a passionate aficionado of the brand, I thought it had all become a bit too much. Sometimes, what people look for in a brand isn’t the ordinary, it is the rarity.
10. Develop brand connectivity and proximity
Everyone who uses a Wi-Fi enabled device, will immediately understand what happens when they try to utilise their device outside the Wi-Fi connectivity range. Suddenly, access to the internet and other functionality is lost and your ability to use the device to its fullest extent, is significantly diminished. The very same principle applies to a brand that falls outside the range of its audience or customer base. A brand is not strong in spite of its audience, rather it is strong because of it. As has been stated in previous blogs, a brand is not what an individual or business says it is; rather it is what their customers say it is. Maintaining connectivity and proximity therefore, is not just necessary for a brand’s development, it is fundamental to its continued survival.
So, in conclusion, the very fact that it is possible to get the best from a brand is a clear indication that brands possess wide-ranging scope to grow, evolve and mature. With thoughtful reasoning and the right approach, good brands, can transform into better ones and better brands can become even greater. The dynamic and rewards-driven environment within which brands exist, suggests that there will always be opportunities to shape them for the future as well as a compelling incentive to learn from their past.
