Build a Brand in 30 Days E-Book

Simon Middleton

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 380

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

You don't need a marketing degree or intensive training to build an attention-grabbing brand; you just need this book - and 30 days.

Simon Middleton shows you how to create, manage and communicate your brand profoundly and effectively, in just 30 days, by following 30 clear exercises. How you work through the book is up to you, the result will be the same: an authentic, compelling, and highly distinctive brand that will attract and engage customers and fans. You will learn how to:

• Establish your brand values and positioning
• Get the all-important name right
• Bring your brand to life
• Turn your customers into your advocates
• Manage your PR and use your marketing budget wisely
• Inspire your staff to live the brand too
• Deal with problems when something goes wrong

Branding isn't about funky logos and expensive advertising. Your brand is what your company means to the world. Getting that meaning right is the most important thing you can do in business.

'Passionate and persuasive, Simon Middleton has a natural instinct for uncovering the Wow! factor in every brand.' Dawn Gibbins MBE, Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year and Star of Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Praise

About the author

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

How this book works

Day 1 - WHAT YOUR BRAND IS AND WHAT YOUR BRAND ISN’T

Day 2 - YOUR BRAND BENCHMARK TEST

Day 3 - FINDING YOUR AUTHENTIC PURPOSE

Day 4 - AMBITION AND DESIRE: WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT FROM THIS?

Now, who will be your brand champion?

Day 5 - FROM PERSONAL AMBITIONS TO RATIONAL INTENT: BRAND STRATEGY

Day 6 - TALENT: RECOGNIZING IT AND DEVELOPING IT

Day 7 - ESTABLISHING YOUR BRAND VALUES (THE THINGS YOU WON’T COMPROMISE)

Day 8 - PUTTING YOUR BRAND IN CONTEXT: FINDING OUT WHAT’S OUT THERE

Day 9 and 10 - USE YOUR IMAGINATION

Day 11 - WHO DON’T YOU WANT TO SELL TO?

Day 12 - EXPLORING YOUR BRAND THROUGH THE SIX-LEGGED SPIDER

Day 13 - REFINING YOUR UNIQUE BRAND ESSENCE

Day 14 - UNDERSTANDING BRAND ‘POSITIONING’

Day 15 - CREATING THE NARRATIVE

Day 16 - YOUR BRAND NAME: HOW TO GET IT RIGHT AND HOW TO AVOID PITFALLS

Day 17 - CRAFTING THE INTERNAL BRAND POSITIONING STATEMENT

Day 18 - SHAPING THE EXTERNAL BRAND POSITIONING LINE

Day 19 - NURTURING YOUR GREATEST RESOURCE: YOU

Day 20 - DO-IT-YOURSELF MEDIA RELATIONS

Day 21 - HOW NOT TO WASTE YOUR ADVERTISING BUDGET

Day 22 - MAKING YOUR BRAND COME ALIVE ONLINE

Day 23 - A BRILLIANT BRAND AT EVERY TOUCH-POINT

Day 24 - DESIGN MATTERS

Day 25 - YOUR PERSONAL BRAND BEHAVIOUR

Day 26 - HOW TO GET YOUR STAFF TO LIVE YOUR BRAND

Day 27 - WHY CHEAPER ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER

Day 28 - WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR BRAND GETS THINGS WRONG

Day 29 - BRAND EXTENSION: OPPORTUNITIES AND DANGERS

Day 30 - NEXT STEPS

REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING

REAL BRAND STORY AND EXPERT VIEW CONTRIBUTORS

BRAND STRATEGY GURU SPEAKING AND CONSULTANCY

INDEX

This edition first published 2010

© 2010 Simon Middleton

Registered office

Capstone Publishing Ltd. (A Wiley Company), The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

9781907312427

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in Meridien Roman 10/14 by aptara

Padstow, Cornwall

Praise for Simon Middleton

“Simon Middleton has years of experience helping companies understand more about their brands. He is extremely creative in his approach.”

— Jay Chapman, Head of Communications, Pret A Manger

“Simon has a great knack of asking the right questions and a terrific talent for getting to the essence of something, persevering to cut out all woolly thinking until you are left with the great ‘aha!’ moment.”

— Fiona Reid Wilson, Head of UK Intranet, AVIVA

“Simon has a passion for great branding, great customer experience, and excellence per se. His recent work on ‘brand purpose’ is at the cutting edge of what organisations need to be engaged in.”

— Darren Cornish, Head of Customer Experience, AXA

“Simon is a rare breed - a genius and a superb communicator with an infectious enthusiasm for his subject matter.”

— Gordon Maw, founder MAW Communications

About the author

Author photograph by Claudia Gannon

Simon Middleton, The Brand Strategy Guru, has worked with world-class brands including Barclays, Aviva, pharmaceutical giant Merial, and sandwich ‘superbrand’ Pret A Manger. As a specialist independent brand adviser he has advised numerous businesses, charities and public sector organizations and is currently helping Hemsby, one of Britain’s smallest seaside resorts, to put its brand profile on the world tourism stage.

Simon writes and presents The Brand Effect, the first TV series to look in depth at brands and branding on British television. Simon presents master classes and keynotes in the UK and beyond. He is a regular media commentator on all things brand related, and in 2009 he became the first Brand Leadership Fellow at the University of East Anglia.

Simon trained as a primary school teacher but found himself instead as a writer and business magazine editor, then a PR executive. He retrained as a nurse, working with people with severe learning disabilities, and spent almost a decade in the NHS. After a second career as an advertising copywriter and creative director, he launched his own brand and creative consultancy practice in 2005.

When he’s not advising on brands, Simon fuels his creative energy by writing for and fronting acoustic Americana band ‘The Proposition’.

To Sheila, obviously.

Acknowledgements

It’s been a long time coming, this book, and many of the people who have influenced it may have slipped from my memory (at least at this uncomfortable moment of trying to remember all those to whom thanks are owed). Forgive me if you’re not on this list.

First, thanks to all the entrepreneurs, business and organization leaders and specialist experts who gave their wisdom and experience in these pages (some of whom I’m proud to count as clients as well as friends):

Andy Wood of Adnams, Bea Hatherley of Mr Site, Brian Horner of Voluntary Norfolk, Caroline Rust of WorkShopsWork, Chris Murphy of Balloon Dog, David Keeling of bpha, David Knights and Robert Spigel of Anthony Nolan, Fiona Ryder of StreamExchange, Gordon Maw of Maw Communications, Jay Chapman of Pret A Manger, singer-songwriter Jess Morgan, Mark Cook of Further, Sarah Pettegree of Bray’s Cottage Farm, Scott Poulson of Special Design Studio, Simon Egan and Tom Blofeld and John Lyle of Bewilderwood, Stephanie Diamond of Digital Media Works, and Aviva corporate storyteller Tracy Kenny.

Thanks to those who contributed to making this book happen, including my agent Seamus Lyte, my publisher Emma Swaisland, my editor Jenny Ng, and Scott Poulson for the cover.

Thanks to those people who have played a role (probably larger than they realize) in helping me to understand what branding and, indeed, entrepreneurship are really about, by allowing me to prattle on to them, interrogate them, work with them, argue with them and be inspired by them over the years. They include: Jay Chapman, Chris Murphy, Steve Turton, Alison Brown, Scott Poulson, Lucy Marks, Paul Thomas, and Fiona Reid Wilson. Thanks to Nik Coleman for enabling me to get some of my ideas on the telly. Thanks to James Gray in Hemsby for helping me start a new journey into destination branding. Thanks to nation branding expert Simon Anholt (il miglior fabbro) for the best advice I’ve ever received. And thanks to Alan Weiss for setting the bar so very high and inspiring me from the beginning of the solo journey.

Thanks to those close to me who, though wise enough to know that there is more to life than branding, have nevertheless always supported me in my obsessive interest. Top of the list are my wife and best friend (and my best personal brand advisor) Sheila, and my proudly individual children Paul and Alice. Next my Mum, whose intelligence, fierce zest for life and unbridled energy have always been an inspiration. And to my Dad, a writer, painter and hopeless romantic who knew that it isn’t what you sell that counts, but what you struggle to create.

Thanks also to my irreplaceable compadres of so many years in ‘The Proposition’ and other musical endeavours, Nigel Orme and Steve Clark. Also to Liz, Maddy and Sheila again, for letting us play at being rock stars for nearly two decades.

“God made man because He loves stories.”

Yiddish proverb

INTRODUCTION

How this book works

Do you know anything about brands or branding? No? That’s perfect. Know a little or a lot about branding? That’s fine too.

This book is designed to work whether you are starting completely from scratch (i.e. you know nothing at all about branding and you have zero background in anything to do with branding or marketing) or if you’re already something of a brand expert. This book takes a stripped down, no-nonsense, non-academic approach which I hope you’ll find stimulating, enjoyable and useful.

This book is both a general introduction to the powerful, exciting and effective craft of branding and a process which you can follow, one day at a time, for 30 days. Follow the programme, and by the end you will have transformed your understanding of branding and how it works. And along the way you will have created a powerful and sustainable brand for your business or organization (or even for yourself as an individual).

To sum up, you can use this book to:

• Educate yourself fast in the art of branding

• Actually build a proper brand for your business or for any of its products or services

• Build a brand for a charity or public sector organization

• Build a brand for your team or department within a bigger organization

• Build your own personal brand in order to enhance your career

And to explain the ‘30 days’ of the title: each chapter represents a key stage of the branding process, and each of those stages can be initiated and achieved in a single day.

Some of these days will be more intensive and longer than others, of course. But if you are able and willing to commit 30 days of thinking and doing, then by following the steps in this book you will create a proper brand which will be more powerful, more effective and more sustainable than you could possibly have hoped to achieve by virtually any other means.

I’m not suggesting for a second that you start on the 1st of the month and finish with a loud “Hurrah!” on the 30th. You won’t want to do every stage back-to-back. And I wouldn’t advise it. You’re much more likely (and more likely to be successful) to spread the 30 days over, say, three months. The exact timescale is up to you. But don’t rush it. Brands, like puppies, should be for life, not just for Christmas. At least, if not for life, then for a substantially long period of time, so nothing is gained by rushing the process.

Each ‘day’ is designed to take you through an important stage which requires some reflection. And on many of these ‘days’ you’ll come across a challenging ‘Brand Builder Workout’ (an exercise which demands some self-examination and active thinking). Interwoven between the days and their workouts you will also find inspiring Real Brand Stories from people who have created successful brands both large and small, and Expert View pieces on a range of specialist topics from search marketing to employee engagement.

So, 30 days of reading and thinking and ‘exercising’, but spread over a longer period (I recommend about three months, but it all depends on your style and your schedule). And three months or so from now you will have created a brand which will outperform anything that could have been built without the knowledge in this book.

Day 1

WHAT YOUR BRAND IS AND WHAT YOUR BRAND ISN’T

There are lots of misconceptions about brand and branding and what these terms actually mean. For some people these terms are veiled in a kind of arcane mystery, as though ‘brand’ was exclusively the province of specially qualified executives in huge and complex companies. For others the words ‘brand’ and ‘branding’ are inseparable from other specific aspects of marketing, such as advertising, logos, and slogans. Yet others think of branding as a dark, mysterious and probably evil art, practised by the hidden persuaders of capitalism.

But brand isn’t really about any of these things. Brand isn’t a subset of advertising (it’s actually much more important than that). Brand isn’t your logo. And it shouldn’t be complex or mysterious.

Brand is serious and important to your business: but it’s also very simple in its essence. Brand is about meaning. In short, your brand is the sum total of all the meanings that all your possible audiences carry around about you in their heads and in their hearts.

In other words, your brand is everything that your customers and prospective customers think, feel, say, hear, read, watch, imagine, suspect and even hope about your product, service or organization.

Take the British store John Lewis. Ask any group of people in the southern half of the UK what John Lewis ‘means’ (and I know because I’ve asked numerous workshop audiences over several years) and you will discover that most people share a fairly small number of ‘meanings’ for John Lewis.

Regardless of background, level of affluence, and whether they shop in John Lewis or not, the following meanings are always mentioned within the first minute or two of starting this exercise: quality, service, value, partnership, middle class.

This is not to say that these are the only words used. Of course not, but no matter how often I repeat the exercise these five meanings are the dominant ones: in fact they are the ‘headline’ meanings under which almost every other idea about John Lewis can be put.

Some people will say “John Lewis staff are always polite”, which of course falls under Service. Others will remember the store’s longstanding slogan “Never knowingly undersold”, which reflects the brand meaning of Value.

Interestingly, most people are familiar with the fact that John Lewis is a partnership organization: in other words that each of its staff ‘own’ a little bit of the business. Materially this doesn’t matter to us, the shopper. But philosophically, somehow it does. I think it’s because we feel somewhere deep inside that if this store is in partnership with its employees then that indicates a value system which will in one way or another translate into a better relationship with us. We become a kind of partner of John Lewis too, just by shopping there: which is not the feeling one gets in most stores.

Not all the meanings that groups throw up in this exercise are positive. ‘Middle class’ is descriptive and neutral in and of itself, but is actually loaded with value judgements, most — though not all — on the negative side.

The negatives for John Lewis under the Middle Class headline include descriptions like: boring, stuffy, old fashioned, a bit posh. Some people go on to say “it’s not for me” and “it’s not really a family store”, and “it’s expensive”.

But alongside these interpretations, John Lewis is also seen as aspirational and appealing, even to those people who call it stuffy, boring and posh.

The point overall is that John Lewis as a brand has a definable meaning which is almost all positive (quality, service, value) and that even its few negative meanings actually have a positive aspect. After all, even ‘boring’ is a reassurance that things will be just as you expect, every time. John Lewis is therefore much more than a name or a logo, or a number of big stores with certain stock. John Lewis ‘means’ something.

One more example. Draw the Nike logo (which, curiously, everyone seems to know is called the ‘swoosh’) on a piece of paper and people instantly respond with a whole new set of meanings. Nike headline meanings usually amount to the following: achievement, sport, design/technology, fashion, quality, expense, high-profile sponsorship figures (exemplified by Tiger Woods), hip-hop culture, child labour/sweatshops.

Nike has somewhat more complex meanings than John Lewis for two reasons. First, it’s an international brand with a massive advertising and sponsorship spend. Second, it works across cultures to many different audiences.

Once again, you’ll see on the list one brand meaning which is obviously not a desirable one for Nike. The interesting thing about ‘child labour’ as a brand meaning is that it is historic rather than current; however, it is a very powerful meaning, and one that Nike will have to live with for decades to come regardless of their actual labour practices.

Nike is a fascinating case of brand meaning. One might say that Nike is a brand and nothing else. The fact that Nike can be simultaneously so successful and yet so insubstantial as an organization is the most powerful evidence in retailing of the power of brand as meaning. And the fact that it is so multi-faceted as a brand (even though it markets a fairly narrow range of goods) demonstrates that brand is not a static thing but an ever-changing and dynamic one.

Why does this matter? Why does brand meaning matter so very much to Nike, to John Lewis, to any other brand you can name? And why should it matter to you?

Well, the answer is that without ‘brand’ John Lewis would be just a department store, and Nike would be, well, not much really. It is brand that gives these two businesses a personality and presence in the world. It is brand that enables us to understand them, and allows them to communicate with and sell to us.

Brand is a kind of shorthand. A way for a business or a product to introduce itself to people (customers and potential customers). But brand is also a kind of tool for those customers to use when making buying decisions.

When we choose a pair of trainers or decide which department store to shop in, we don’t make the choice rationally, at least not completely rationally. That would be impossible, because the world is too complex. And even an apparently simple decision like which department store to visit when, say, looking for a new fridge, is fraught with difficulty.

Do we really have time to compare every single feature and benefit of every make and model of fridge in every different store? Let alone to cross reference that information with prices, guarantees, special offers, delivery charges and so on. And what is our ideal fridge decision anyway? How do we know when we’ve made the best rational choice?

The fact is that we don’t have time or head-space, or even the information processing capacity to make these decisions rationally. So instead we use a system of signs and meanings that have come to be known as ‘brand’.

If we’ve registered John Lewis in our internal system as a brand that we trust to give us quality, service and value, then we don’t have to make anywhere near as many difficult decisions. Plus, of course, we remember the John Lewis promise of being ‘never knowingly undersold’, which overcomes our anxieties about them being expensive.

Funny thing about this slogan, too. When John Lewis say it, we believe it, because they are a trusted brand. It wouldn’t be difficult to name a dozen retailers from whom we wouldn’t trust that statement.

There’s one more crucial element to remember from the beginning about brand: it’s not about size. It is perfectly possible to be a brand with just a few dozen loyal customers. You can be a local chip shop and be a great brand. It’s not the absolute numbers of people who know about you that make you a brand, but the relative coherence of what they think, feel and believe about you.

If you have 100 customers who share a set of meanings about your business then you’ve got a strong brand. If you’ve got 10,000 customers who don’t have a shared set of meanings then you have a weak or non-existent brand.

“So what,” you might say, “I’ve got 10,000 customers. . . so who needs a brand?”

Good question, but the answer is simple. Ten thousand people might buy from you this week or this month, but if you haven’t engaged them as a brand (given them some meaning), then there’s no particular reason for them to buy from you again. They might do. But they might just go somewhere else.

But if you have a strong brand, a strong set of meanings, then your 100 customers will come back, again and again. Because your brand helps them to make their buying decisions easier. And not only will they come back, but they’ll tell others about you too.

Brand gives you stability, growth potential, loyalty and longevity.

Consider the alternative. If you don’t have a set of meanings that works for customers both rationally and emotionally, then where does that leave you? You might say it makes you a commodity. Just a set of functions rather than a set of meanings.

You can survive in business as a commodity. Lots of businesses do. But it’s tough. Because if you’re a commodity then you had better be cheaper, quicker or more convenient than your competitors, because that’s what you will be judged on. As a brand, however, cheapness, speed and convenience are much less critical factors because, as a brand, you tap deeper into human psychology. As a brand, you go beyond a functional ‘transaction’ with your customers, and they start to buy from you because you somehow fit in their world and what it means to them.

It’s a very powerful and enviable place to be. Big business understands it (although sometimes they get it terribly wrong). Many small businesses don’t apply themselves to building brands anywhere nearly as much as they could or should. But you can, and I’m going to help you.

This book can’t make your business into John Lewis or Nike. Because they are unique and so are you. But what it can do is guide you through the process (and the state of mind) of brand and branding, so that you can develop a set of brand meanings that are positive and attract people to come to you, to stay with you and (the ultimate brand benefit) recruit others to come to you, too.

Whether you’re a flower shop or a financial adviser, a designer or a gardener, a charity or a voluntary organization, a local council or a wedding planner, a chip shop proprietor or a car mechanic, if you follow my steps you can become a powerful and sustainable brand.

Brand Builder Workout

Bearing in mind the concept of brand as sets of meanings (e.g. Nike and John Lewis), try to list the meanings of two of your favourite brands here.

Brand name:

Brand name:

Now, here’s your first big brand challenge: repeat the exercise with your ‘brand’ as it stands now. And for this to be valuable, you need to be very honest. Don’t write down a meaning that is just wishful thinking on your part. Try to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. If you can’t (or won’t) do that, ask a friend whom you trust, and insist that they are brutally honest. Better still, ask a customer!

Your brand:

This is just the start. We will revisit this exercise later on, and if you follow the steps in this book you’ll be amazed at the difference in results.

Day 2

YOUR BRAND BENCHMARK TEST

We’ve established an idea of what a brand is, and what a brand isn’t. Remember, it hasn’t got that much to do with your logo! Before we go any further, let’s take a look at your brand as it stands now, to try to establish whether it’s yet become a brand and, if so, whether it’s one that is working effectively.

The simplest of all benchmarks of your brand is to think about how it performs on two measures: strength and positivity.

Take a look at the diagram below. It’s one of those simple four box grids created by two axes.

Measuring brand positivity and strength.

The horizontal axis is a measure of the strength of your brand, from weak to strong. Far left of the axis is where the weakest of brands sit, far right is for the strongest. But what are the characteristics of weak and strong brands?

Weak brands are characterized by any combination of the following:

• few people know about the brand

• few people understand what the brand is about or there are mixed messages and mixed perceptions about the brand

• brand knowledge is limited to a small geographic area (i.e. smaller than the business requires)

• people can’t remember the name

• you have to explain at length what your brand is about before people say “Oh, right, got it now”

• your business has changed emphasis (speciality, positioning, products, services, pricing, ownership, personality) but your old customers don’t realize

By contrast, strong brands are characterized by any combination of these elements:

• a substantial number of people know about the brand (the definition of ‘substantial’ will vary according to your circumstance: if you own a neighbourhood chip shop then ‘substantial’ for you will be different in size and scope to someone running an online kids’ clothing brand)

• the majority of the people who know about the brand will share a common set of meanings and perceptions about it (they don’t all have to think exactly the same, but there will be general agreement)

• brand knowledge is widespread (right across the neighbourhood for the chip shop, or widely spread amongst parents wanting to buy kids’ clothes online)

• people remember the name (and lots of them remember the positioning line, i.e. the ‘slogan’)

• you don’t have to explain over and over what your brand is about, people just seem to know

• if the brand has changed its emphasis, the perceptions about the brand have changed also: new customers are catching on quickly and old customers have kept up with the changes and understand what you’re about today

Of course, most brands won’t sit at one extreme end or the other of the strong-weak axis: it’s a spectrum. I don’t know your brand, of course, so only you can decide where to place your brand on this axis. Have a think for a moment, but don’t settle on anything yet — we’ll come back to it shortly.

Strength and weakness represent only one measure of a brand and if you look at that measure alone you could easily deceive yourself about the real situation.

So you’ll see that the diagram has a second measure, positivity. The vertical axis ranges from negative at the bottom to positive at the top. It is very common indeed for people in companies to mix up positivity and strength. They are not the same thing and we need to treat them quite differently.

Just by way of example, think about countries as brands. Take the two Koreas. North Korea has a very strong brand, based on our criteria above. People all over the world have an idea of what North Korea is ‘about’, and can summon up a number of visual images and impressions as well as words and descriptions. Sadly, for the time being at least, those brand perceptions, whilst strong, are not positive. They include the perception that the nation is poor and isolated from the world community, and the people repressed by a totalitarian government. We can picture images of enormous statues of ‘the great leader’, and TV coverage of elaborately choreographed military parades. South Korea, by contrast, has a much more positive brand image, but arguably a much weaker one. Unless we have visited there we are likely to be much less clear in our minds about what characterises South Korea as a nation, although we are also less likely to carry ‘negative’ brand perceptions around in our heads about the country. In the West, South Korea is seen as much more developed and affluent than North Korea, and a democracy into the bargain. But most Westerners don’t have a clear picture in their minds of what South Korea looks and feels like (compared to perceptions of Japan, for example).

But enough about countries for the moment. Let’s think about whether your brand sits at the top (positive) end of the vertical axis or at the bottom (negative) end.

Negative brands are characterized by some very simple (but not very good) characteristics, as follows:

• people are more inclined to complain than to praise (but watch out for this one, by the way: the old cliché is true that people are more likely to tell you when they’re happy and others when they’re not!)

• when your brand comes up in conversation that conversation is generally focused on what your brand gets wrong

• you get little, if any, repeat business unless you are competing aggressively on price or convenience or are maintaining a very high profile through advertising (simple example, if you’re a very conveniently placed shop or hotel with competitive pricing, then you may well get lots of customers; you could be deceived into thinking they all like you, but you may just be either ‘cheap’ or ‘handy’)

• no matter how hard you try with advertising or other marketing efforts you don’t seem to be attracting repeat business (or even that much valuable new business either, come to that)

• customers are not recommending you to others and you rarely, if ever, have new customers say to you “my friend Sam recommended that I come to you”

By contrast, positive brands will be characterized by some combination of the following:

• people spontaneously thank you or compliment you on your service, product or some aspect of their experience of dealing with your brand (this one is a bit like being in love… you’ll know it when it happens!)

• your brand is always praised and celebrated when it comes up in conversation (“Oh yeah, those guys are great, you have to try them”)

• you get lots of repeat business and those repeat customers start to buy a wider range of products/services from you, and they return more frequently

• you’re not spending heaps of money on advertising, but you seem to have created some kind of ‘pull’ and new customers seem to appear from nowhere

• when you ask them, it turns out that a substantial proportion of your new customers have had a recommendation: “Oh yes, my friend Sam thinks you’re great and said I should come here”

Just like the weak-strong axis, the negative-positive one is not a black-and-white or cut-and-dried issue. It’s a spectrum, and only you can decide where your brand currently sits along it.

Brand Builder Workout

Before you try placing your brand in the right place in our quadrant, try placing some other brands that you know about.

John Lewis looks to be very well placed.

You can see where I’ve placed John Lewis and Nike, and where I’ve put North Korea and South Korea.

I’ve also put in two Chinese restaurants from my city (I haven’t named one because that wouldn’t be fair). You can see that one, Baby Buddha, is not just a strong brand but also a very positive one, and the other is weak but positive. They have above-average service and very good home-produced Cantonese-style food. But one of them is, sadly, frequently empty and only known by people who happen to live near it, whilst Baby Buddha (a small family-run restaurant) is causing a real buzz: people are telling other people about it, commenting on it, praising it and returning to it. Heck, it even gets a mention in a branding book!

It’s important to remember here that this way of measuring brands is not absolute but relative. Which is why Baby Buddha can have a similar place on the chart to John Lewis. And that’s why this method works for your brand, too.

Think about where you would instinctively place the following brands on the grid:

Your local convenience store Your favourite pub or café McDonalds The (not so new now) New Mini Manchester United F.C. The National Health Service The BBC Sainsbury Tesco

Now I recommend that you try this same exercise with your competitors. Whatever kind of brand you’re building, you have competitors, and they may not always be the ones you think. I was recently outflanked by a completely unexpected competitor. A prospective client came to me and asked for a proposal for a substantial piece of brand strategy consultancy. The brief was exclusively about ‘strategy’ and was to involve a deep and extensive examination of the organization’s brand ‘meaning’. My ideal client, in fact. Several meetings and one detailed proposal later, the organization appointed a design company instead. And that’s what I mean by your competition coming from unexpected quarters. So never fall into the trap of thinking that you don’t have competitors. For now, though, just try to place your competitors on the grid. And think about how they sit in relation to one another even if they are in the same quadrant: is one a little more positive than another, or a little weaker perhaps?

Now it’s the turn of your brand.

But because it’s your brand and therefore you know everything about it, you can afford to be a little more analytical. You also need to be ruthlessly honest with yourself.

So before you place yourself in the grid (in fact, we’re going to use a new grid with numbers, just to be a little more methodical), ask yourself these questions and score yourself 1 to 10 (10 being a brilliantly positive answer to the particular question, 1 being an honest admission of a negative answer).

Give your brand a strength score and a positivity score and plot it on the grid.

Ask yourself these simple brand strength/weakness questions, and give yourself a score for each one.

• Do sufficient people know about my brand (10) or is it pretty much unknown and/or invisible (1)?

• Do people always remember its name (10) or does it frequently get confused or forgotten or just doesn’t seem to have registered with people at all (1)?

• Do the people who know about it understand thoroughly what the brand is about (10) or am I always having to explain it to people (1)?

Now add your scores together and divide by 3 to get an average score out of 10.

Average score

Now plot your brand somewhere along the horizontal axis line of the previous grid using your average score. For example, if your average score from the three questions is 8, then you’ll be about half way along the right-hand side of the horizontal axis. If your average score is only 2, then you’ll be almost at the far left of the left-hand side of the same axis.

Now for the positive/negative scoring. Again some simple questions:

• Do I hear mountains of compliments and praise about us and what we do (10), or does it feel like people are constantly griping and grumbling (1)?

• Are people always telling me that they’ve heard good things about my brand (10), or do I not get any feedback like that at all (1)? (by the way, lack of feedback equates to negative feedback, because your friends don’t like to give you bad news)

• Do I get a lot of repeat customers and new people seeking me out (10), or does it always seem such an expense and effort to attract people (1)?

• Are people always saying that their friend recommended me to them (10), or does that just no t happen (1)?

[Again, add your scores together, this time dividing by 4 to get an average score out of 10.

Average score

This time, plot your brand somewhere along the vertical axis line of the grid, using your average score. For example, if your average score from these four questions is 6, then you’ll be just above the horizontal line, whereas if you get a high average, say 9.5, you’ll be very close to the top.

Whatever your average score, you’ll end up with two marks, one on each line. So to find your proper place in the grid, mark an X where the two marks meet, as shown in the previous example.

Now think about where you sit on the grid compared to your competitors that you placed on the previous grid. Do you look good next to them? Or are you a bit disappointed or downhearted? Don’t be, we’re only on DAY 2!

The important things to remember about this exercise are:

• for it to be of value you have to do it honestly, but don’t beat yourself up unnecessarily

• trust your instincts: this can never be scientific and whatever you intuitively feel is right is more than likely to be so

• don’t rely entirely on your own view: try asking others (friends, family, employees, shareholders, customers, even complainers) to give their scores of your brand

And before we close this chapter, a final word about why this strength/positivity exercise is so important for small (and developing) brands. Imagine that your brand is both strong and positive. Maybe it already is, which is wonderful. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. You’re going to be fine. Now imagine that your brand is (for reasons which you don’t yet fully understand) apparently pretty negative. Lots of complaints, difficulty retaining and attracting customers, etc.

If you’ve got a negative brand image, think about this: would you rather it was a strong-negative image, or a weak-negative? Well, no prizes for guessing which one I’d say is the most challenging. Strong brands are great when they’re positive, and a major hassle when they’re negative, because people’s perceptions are hard to change, and the more people involved, the bigger the problem.

So you need to know, right off the bat, where your brand sits in the quadrant. And once you know, here’s a shorthand guide to what needs to be done:

• Strong/Positive (top right-hand quadrant): keep on truckin’.

• Weak/Positive (top left-hand quadrant): people really like you, so tell more people.

• Weak/Negative (bottom left-hand quadrant): put the negatives right first, before you do anything on the ‘more people’ front.

• Strong/Negative (bottom right-hand quadrant): oops, you’re in the toughest place of all, but don’t panic, just keep reading, we can sort it out!

Day 3

FINDING YOUR AUTHENTIC PURPOSE

People who spend time with me know there are two words that I am prone to use more than any others, and these are: brands and purpose.

The brand word won’t surprise you at all, of course. But perhaps purpose is a little more oblique. I’ll explain where I’m coming from with purpose (and that’s the last time I feel the need to put it in bold), and why it’s so important to your business or organization and your brand. Come to that, why it’s so important to you as a human being, let alone as an entrepreneur.

When I say purpose, I’m talking about the motivation behind what we do. The reason we jump out of bed in the morning wanting to make something happen that’s different to, or better than, or an exciting development of, what we made happen yesterday. Nobody goes into business just to make money. Well, maybe they do, but that drive to make money will usually yield up a deeper purpose or drive when it’s examined in any detail. Not that there’s any shame in making money. At least in part it’s what business is about: by definition. But there is something beyond the money.

But the big question is: what’s your business here for? What is its purpose?

Answering this existential question is a core part of the process of building a brand: what’s different about it that makes it more compelling, more sustainable and more successful than your competitors? Answering this will help you create something infinitely more robust and more effective in the marketplace than any amount of advertising, or PR or any other marketing tool or activity alone.

In future chapters we’re going to explore purpose from different angles, and we’ll go through a number of steps to help you identify and build upon your purpose. Every single step will help you make a better brand. In this chapter I just wanted to introduce you to the concept of purpose and to explain briefly each of its eight special elements.

You’ll meet each one again as you read on through the book. Remember though, this isn’t a hierarchy or a linear list. The elements of purpose are all interdependent, all equally important to your brand. I call them the eight building blocks of brand purpose.

1. Ambition and desire Ambition and desire are about what you personally want from this endeavour. They’re about your emotional needs and your need for personal fulfillment. They might include material desires, of course, and I’m always worried when I meet start-up business people who say they’re not interested in making money. Frankly, that’s a dangerous thing not to be interested in when you’re starting a business. But it’s unlikely to be just material or status needs that drive you. Most people have needs relating to a host of other aspects of their humanity. Think about what your ‘personal’ needs are in setting out on this brand journey. In fact, don’t just think about them, feel about them too.

2. Talent Talent is important in many ways but it’s important to clarify what we mean by talent. I absolutely don’t mean that you have to have an exceptional skill or a ‘gift’ in order to be a successful business owner and brand-builder. Talent for our purposes does include an honest assessment of your skills and abilities, but it also refers to the people whom you will need to gather around you (either as employees or occasional helpers). Talent refers also to your own personal development needs. You may need to up-skill in certain areas, for example. Most importantly of all, though, talent is about creating a business and a brand that suits the person you are: a brand which somehow expresses and utilizes your mix of abilities and interests.

3. Rational intent In contrast to the emotional aspects of your personal ambitions and desires, your brand purpose also needs a big healthy dose of rational intent; by which I mean an understanding and a clarification of where you’re planning to go with this enterprise. It’s closely related to the well-worn concepts of goals and objectives. But rational intent focuses on what you ‘decide’ to do rather than just making lists of things you ought to do. You can’t make a business or a brand without rational intent. You can have dreams all right, but without applying the rational then dreams they will remain.

4. Values The principles and concepts that guide your behaviour and your decision making, values play a vital role in developing your brand. Values are the things you won’t compromise. And if there’s nothing you will not compromise, then you will never make a brand that is distinct, compelling and authentic (and great brands need to be all three of those).

5. Context Simply a word to describe what’s going on around your brand in the wider world. It includes your obvious competitors, of course, but it also includes whatever is competing for your customers’ attention and spending which might not seem so obvious. Context includes the spirit of the time, whether optimistic and outgoing, or pessimistic and inward looking. Your context is also a function of geography, politics, history, ethnicity, social structure and other factors. Complex though it is, context is a huge influence on the success or otherwise of a brand. All brands exist in the context of the world in which they operate. There is no such thing as a pure brand operating in a vacuum.

6. Creation and imagination