Avoid the Confusion
Art, Science, and Common Sense. Successful brand alignment is a combination of art and science with a major infusion of common sense. When I reflect on five decades of leading thousands of branding initiatives, if I could only use one of the three to create or revitalize a brand, I would choose common sense every single time.
Common Sense Branding
Common sense is at the core of every great brand. Every physical, visual, audible, mental and spiritual connection with your customer from the very first moment they encounter your brand needs to make immediate sense. Common sense. If it doesn’t make common sense to your customer, it doesn’t work. You can’t explain it away. Customers don’t have the time or tolerance for you to explain your brand.
If any part of your brand; product, service, naming, packaging, marketing, advertising, social, etc., does not make immediate sense, it creates a friction point and you will not maximize your ultimate potential. It needs to make sense, it needs to be natural and it needs to easily flow without excuses. As my High School Hall of Fame basketball coach father put it to his players, “You can give me a win or you can give me excuses. I don’t want your excuses.” He won a lot. You can win a lot too if you don’t make excuses for your brand.
Marketing People Make Branding Seem Complex
Marketing people are usually the ones responsible for making brand alignment complex. By the time I sold my first brand strategy firm in 2000, business schools were finally beginning to talk about “brand” in a meaningful way. From the 2000’s on, the modern era of branding took off and we witnessed an explosion with the expansion of the internet, an increase in students majoring in marketing, extensive job growth in marketing related fields, and a surge in brand terminology. In fact, the rapid explosion of brand ultimately gave birth to the branding nomenclature overload we experience today. Check out total brand confusion:
Total Brand Confusion
Brand. Branding. Brand Activation. Brand Agency. Brand Ambassador. Brand Archetype. Brand Architecture. Brand Assets. Brand Attributes. Brand Audit. Brand Authenticity. Brand Awareness. Brand Beliefs. Brand Delivery. Brand Dilution. Brand Discovery. Brand Equity. Brand Experience. Brand Extension. Brand Gap. Brand Guidelines. Brand Harmonization. Brand Hierarchy. Brand Identity. Brand Image. Brand Integrity. Brand Intention. Brand Management. Brand Logo. Brand Mark. Brand Map. Brand Mission. Brand Personality. Brand Perception. Brand Personas. Brand Pillars. Brand Positioning. Brand Preference. Brand Promise. Brand Purpose. Brand Salience. Brand Standards. Brand Story. Brand Strategy. Brand Valuation. Brand Values. Brand Vision. Brand Voice. Cobranding. Generic Brand. Master Brand. Off-Brand. On-brand. Parent Brand. Rebrand. Service Brand. Sub-Brand. And so on.
Quite a list, isn’t it? Do you think many of the marketing execs running around town are in agreement with the definition of all of those terms, much less the alignment and execution of each as it relates to your business? The consulting firms are having a heyday selling the articulation and activation of this verbiage. Totally confusing clients has become a profitable art because leaders are willing to pay for clarity.
Effective Brand Alignment Leaders
As mentioned, a lot of marketing professionals mess up a lot of brands. They are not intending to mess them up, they just do. Truly great brand strategy firms can be very helpful when you find one you can trust that totally understands brand alignment and your specific brand. They will inherently keep it simple for you as they focus on your one thing.
My favorite brand alignment leader for small to medium businesses are the entrepreneurs themselves. They have the intuition and common sense that helped them launch the business in the first place, and as long as they can stay out of their own way, make great brand leaders.
Getting Out of Our Own Way
I like the way Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful puts it; “I have a lot of faith in entrepreneurs. They usually know what they should be or want to be doing, but have talked themselves out of actually doing it.” As noted, the trouble with us entrepreneurs is we sometimes have trouble getting out of our own way. We can’t see the forest for the trees and therefore lose our ability to be our best brand leader.
You do not have time to explain your brand and your customers don’t have tolerance for your excuses. Effective brand alignment is when your organization’s execution is played out at every discernible touchpoint to ensure your stakeholders’ interactions are consistent with the brand’s vision, identity and values. A customer, client or patient who sees any element of the brand, should believe the company delivers in alignment with its promise, and all messages and actions are authentic to their personal journey.
Great brand alignment is art, science and common sense. Use your common sense and avoid the confusion.
