What I’m seeing time and time again is that YOU are the best person for building your brand. What brand you get profile for is up to you – it might be your organisation’s brand, the ‘brand’ of your team or department that’s under-appreciated, or your own business brand.
What doesn’t work is a faceless logo or label or utterly transparent inauthentic strap-line. Why? Well, it comes down to trust and reputation, and well-known brands in every sector are struggling.
Kicking it all off was the global financial crisis over ten years ago, and more recently, data breach scandals and sexual harassment allegations that have hampered reputational recovery. Over the last year, according to the Reputation Institute, big brands have narrowly dodged a ‘reputation recession’.
Your brand
So how are you going to get to your consumer, or client, or colleague, to create a connection where they can feel warm towards your ‘brand’?
This is talked about in PwC’s Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019 that focuses on ‘ROX’. That’s ‘return on experience’ for both consumers and employees. According the report, one of the ways of developing ROX is to create ‘magic moments’ (sing-a-long!) for your customers, clients and colleagues.
Those magic moments can’t be created by a logo or an advert. It’s humans’ work that, creating the simplest of interactions, where you ask questions to find out what your CCCs want to experience and what they want to achieve. If you can then deliver that then you can gain trust.
That’s why small and medium sized businesses are increasingly able to get a foothold in their market place – sometimes surprisingly – amid sectors dominated by big players. They are able to get out there, get known, liked and trusted. They are making themselves a little bit famous.
Just a thought…
Your brand isn’t just a collection of YOUR key messages, and your capability at what can do for your customers, clients and colleagues, because that’s salesy. And wears a bit thin after a while.
Turn it around to be ‘useful’ to your CCCs in what you communicate. Make it less about you, and more about them.
Think about: what concerns them, what keeps them up at night, what would help them in the way they think about things or approach their challenges?
Give aways: share your best stuff, explain how, hand out tips, tricks and techniques all the time! Yes, give it all away! It will pay dividends.
Ask questions: seek to understand, enjoy the conversations, make mental notes of what people want to experience and what they want to achieve.