Brand Strategy

The Disconnect

When we think of branding, companies usually think of how the public will perceive them. What they don’t often think about is how that brand will be championed internally by their team members. Companies who focus all of their branding efforts on external messaging leave internal teams feeling like a disengaged cog in the machine. If your team doesn’t believe in your new brand positioning then how will your brand deliver a consistent 360° experience?

Aligning Your Team

While smart messaging and glossy images get noticed, it can sometimes be difficult to translate that into a purpose your team can truly rally around. They have to be on board before a new brand or campaign is launched so they can ultimately deliver on the new promise. They don’t only need to feel involved in changes in the company, they need to be equipped with simple messaging to know how to talk about the changes consistently and clearly. Your team will ultimately be the ones living out the brand on a day-to-day basis in sales calls, meetings, and customer service interactions so making it inspiring and easy to adopt is essential.

Every Team Member is in Marketing

Too often leaders gather and make brand-altering decisions and think that it is up to them how the company is communicated and marketed. The truth is every team member is in marketing. Every member will eventually be a voice for your company in some capacity. Brand repositioning is a powerful tool to ignite excitement and higher performance in the entire team. Leaders should share what the new positioning means to them personally so the team can adopt the heart and purpose behind the change. Allow the team to get a sneak peak at new creative advertising and messaging to build excitement before it goes to market. Provide a social media tool kit to allow them to share. Produce unique content for them to circulate on their own through social media. Let everyone own it, not just the leaders.

Trickle Down Buy-In

Big internal changes should be announced then reinforced over time. Today’s leaders should develop thoughtful internal rollout plans that include training manuals, brand guides, and message training for key team members that will influence the company as a whole. Teams can go through role playing exercises to develop a consistent tone and voice across the organization. Messaging banners can be placed around the office to reinforce purpose, vision, and values. Make sure everyone is informed and excited.

Now more than ever marketing has to be deeply true. A company’s purpose, vision, and values must mirror how employees feel the values are practiced daily through the company in order to keep a consistent customer experience.

When customers can Google and find the best in the world, they won’t hire you because you are average or well rounded. They will hire you because you are brilliant at something.

I was driving down the road the other day and a roofing company’s truck pulled up next to me that read, “specializing in all roof types.” How can a company specialize in all roof types? They are essentially saying, “we are just like every other roofing company.” What they should say is, “we specialize in metal roofs.” That would make them unique. That would make them an expert. That would create scarcity.

Your Audience is Not Everybody

The thought behind this innately contrary tagline is the idea that the roofing company wants to attract everybody. Sounds like a good business plan, right? What they don’t see is that if everyone is their customer then no one is their customer. Sure, we would all love it if everyone bought our product. But the days of mass media appeal are over. In the ’50s everyone was watching the same commercials, buying the same cars, and drinking the same drinks. Today, information flows differently. People live in their own tribes and are influenced by tribal leaders on social media or in their peer group. They buy what their friends buy. So unless you are Coca-Cola, Apple, or Amazon you are wasting your time trying to sell to everyone. The goal is loyalty with a few rather than single transactions with many.

Specialization Increases Perceived Value

For most company’s, most of the time, it is better to specialize in a narrow selection of services and products — especially upon launch or while in the early growth phase. Following a strategy that is more focused makes it easier to deliver a high level of excellence with greater efficiency. Specialization increases perceived value in 3 ways:

1. Specializing Positions You as the Expert
If you are the expert in your category you are no longer selling time or materials. You are selling your expertise. You have authority, influence, and knowledge that set you apart from competitors, and that creates massive value and revenue potential that generalist’s can’t tap into.

2. Specializing Makes Marketing Cheaper and Easier
If you are selling one thing it is easy to optimize SEO, sales processes, and marketing programs. If you are selling 10 things you have to have 10x the budget and do 10x the work to get those products or services out there.

3. Specializing Creates Believers, Not Just Buyers
Buyers are great. Believers are better. By specializing and becoming an expert in your field you make yourself so valuable that a customer can’t imagine their life without you. They become someone that believes in your company, your mission, and most importantly your value. A buyer, on the other hand, just wants to fulfill the immediate transaction and then move on. They don’t care about your brand or your company. It is easier to scale a company by creating believers. These are the one’s that will come back over and over, then tell their friends how much they love you.

One organization. Multiple brands. How do you organize them in a way that is clear to the consumer but still builds equity in the mother brand? Here are a few common strategies used by companies we love.

Branded House

In a Brand House Model organizations invest in making the single “mothership” brand image known and loved. Customers come to trust the mothership and then by default trust the sub-brands. In most cases, the corporate name and brand identity is one and the same, the marketing is the same, the brand position and the value proposition are the same. It’s simple and easy to apply across a multitude of marketing applications. Examples include Google, FedEx, or Virgin.

House of Brands

Another common approach is known as a House of Brands, where organizations market two or more different house brands. Powerhouses like Procter & Gamble (Tide, Folgers, Pampers), Unilever (Dove, Lipton, Axe, Ben & Jerry’s) and Newell (Yankee Candle, Rubbermaid, Elmer’s Glue) are great examples. Consumers don’t really care about the mothership brand. They care about the brand they are interacting with. Each sub-brand has it’s own value, promise, and identity.

Hybrid Brand

There is a third approach which is a bit messier because it tends to happen organically rather than by strategy. It is a hybrid of the two approaches listed above. Coca Cola, Marriott, and Amazon are three organizations that exemplify a hybrid brand strategy. The mothership is offering value and brand recognition, but the products themselves are also offering value.

The Coca Cola company has leveraged the strength of its namesake with a variety of mothership brand extensions like Diet Coke and Coke Zero, while also having house brands like Sprite and Dasani. Marriott uses a similar approach with a strong mothership brand, brand extensions like JT Marriott, endorser brands like Courtyard by Marriott and house brands like The Ritz Carlton.