Branding goes beyond colors, writing, website layout, fonts, or mascots. Branding is a concept way deeper than just the aesthetic side of things. Very often, people when they create a product or they start a company or business, they start focusing on certain aspects of the branding process. The first thing that comes to their mind is the logo. As I mentioned, branding is much more than the aesthetic side of things. Imagine that every time they talk about you, they only talk about what color your skin, or your hair, how tall are you, your fashion, or even how your name is spelled. How would you feel?
“Your brand is your Facebook profile developed in a profound way so the people who work and support your “team” get to know you on a deeper level to transmit one message and purpose.”
These last couple of years I’ve been reading some books for me to be better as a professional and a person to reach my goals. One of the books I read was The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary. I recommend this book 100%. This book explains how to reach success in the easiest way you can imagine. When I say success, I mean any type of success, spiritual, monetary, health, family, career, inner, and any other that comes to your mind. It helps you to create the correct mindset and approaches to reach all your short and long-term goals. In one of the chapters, the topic is about how purpose, priority, and productivity are the formula to achieve extraordinary results. Those three elements are linked to one another. The way that the authors, Jay Papasan and Timothy Miller, present it is like an iceberg in a pyramid form above the water where the purpose is the base, priority is the second level above, and productivity is the last part of the pyramid, the apex. The purpose is the guiding force in determining the priority that drives actions that generate results. If there’s no purpose, priorities won’t be clear, and they will not be productive to achieve the goal.
Guess what? When you create a brand, it needs to contain a similar concept as the above other than the aesthetic side of things. Your brand needs a purpose that will define areas from it like policies, practices, and products or products. With these three areas based on your purpose, you can build a company or business that is interconnected with its people, processes, and the audiences that serve the customers. You can develop or define a brand purpose by using the following principles.
- Connect the brand purpose to the value system of the top leaders.
- The leaders of the companies need to understand and resonate with the purpose. If they don’t, they won’t believe in the purpose and the decisions they can make won’t satisfy that purpose. Make sure that the people you select to be leaders meet the core values of the purpose you want to intend.
- Develop the brand purpose to drive policies, practices, and products.
- When you see, experience, and purchase anything from any brand each one of them needs to be connected. There are brands like Ben & Jerry’s that took their product out of certain countries because it doesn’t meet the brand’s core value, so it doesn’t align with the brand’s purpose. Make sure that everything in your brand is coherent. A good example is that if your brand is a happy one, your employees should portray happiness along with the policies of buyers and employees, activities, ads, and the product itself among others.
- Develop the brand purpose to be communicated to all constituents.
- Employees, customers, suppliers, family, or anyone who works or knows the brand need to know what it stands for as an announcement to the world. Whatever you are standing for (your purpose) needs to inspire your team to develop creative solutions based on what it is and what is not acceptable.
Creating the brand purpose will help you to make the right decision based on it. As I explained above, will help you to know what’s the priority and how exactly should be approached. It will help you create the right or new policies for your company along with the practices. The “how” and “why” of everything around the brand will be easier to develop and will also be aligned with each other. Creating the brand purpose will not only help you with the practices, policies, or the development of the product. It will also help you with the productivity of your team. This is very similar to the iceberg image I discussed previously. How will this help you with productivity? Will help by creating motivation for your employees at all levels. Each employee will understand the reason behind their work and their roles to reach the company’s goal. I’ve been in a position where working in a company feels nonsensical or that this is in vain even though I’m doing a lot of work with no motivation. I felt that more than twice before working where I am now, and it was now that I understood why. Branding should be treated as someone, at a demographic and psychographic level. A Brand should have a personality, language, way of thinking, tone, core values, and/or a way of being. It is like another human and each person is completely different in all aspects. Be unique, be committed, and be clear with your brand to go beyond boundaries.
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