It’s Only Your Brand, Part II

Sunday, Sept. 30, 2007 | 1 p.m.

A few weeks ago, D Mac asked me to elaborate on my column, “It’s Only Your Brand.” He asked if I could write about how to change an existing brand. I said yes, but at the time didn’t realize how difficult a task this would be. So, even though it’s later than I wanted, here it is!”

The most important attribute of a brand is not your logo, your written material, or your website. The most important attribute is your behavior. Change the way you think and act and you will change your brand. Sounds easy…but not so fast!

Often a company begins a process to change their perception in the marketplace (their brand) but fails in one of the most critical components of branding — they don’t build their brand upon something that lies within their heart–the essence of who they are and what’s important to them and their company (their purpose).

To build a solid brand or change your existing brand, my suggestions are:

Focus on your collective promise: To build a brand that you can deliver, first focus on who you are and what differentiates your company in the marketplace. The sooner you can get all of the members of your whole firm to open their minds and their hearts and talk openly about what’s important to them, the sooner you’ll be able to build an authentic brand.

Make sure people understand the language you use: Too often in business, we use the same language but the meanings we hold for these words are very different from those of our colleagues. Take the word “collaboration.” I’ve known people who believe collaboration means “group consensus on every decision.” I’ve known others who believe that if they keep you informed of their decisions, then they are collaborating with you. It is my belief that collaboration is the art of working together and knowing when it needs to be interactive and when people can work on differnt areas that will result in solving the task at hand. There is a real synergy to my “collaboration.” Each of these meanings are plausible, but you can see the disconnect between them and the difficulty that will arise in the expectations of each party. I suggest finding common meaning or as one of my wise friends says, “seek precision in language.”

Avoid the traps: Avoid falling into the fads of today unless you truly believe in them. We live in a world where you can’t pass an hour in which global warming, the environment, or green living aren’t discussed. But, do you believe in these concepts? I’ve observed firms try to build their brands on being the greenest firms, while members of the firm drive their SUV’s, don’t recycle, don’t reduce, and don’t look for ways to be more sustainable in their lives. These things in themselves are not bad or good, but in the context of building a “green” brand, they send a major disconnect to the marketplace. Firms like these are trying to catch on to a trend to gain market share, not because they believe in that particular trend — and people who do believe in that being “green” (the client’s these firms are seeking) will see right through them.

Don’t be someone else’s brand: I know firms that will copy anything they see in the marketplace to try gain more work. The trouble with this is two-fold: your behavior most likely will not match what you say; and by copying each other, firms appear very similar and lose the opportunity to differentiate themselves.

Changing your brand in the marketplace takes time, patience, and the courage to persevere through some difficult changes. Our firm recently dropped the word “architects” from our name because it didn’t accurately reflect the breadth of our services. It took us seven years to actually do it! It took this long to get everyone on the same page and change our behavior. When we felt enough synergy internally, we were able to move forward externally. I was pleasantly surprised to find that own internal changes had already found their way to the marketplace earlier because of our behavior. People were already seeing our firm as an evolved firm where architecture services were only one of our core offerings.

I’d like to hear from you:

• Do you have an example of someone or a firm that lives its brand?

• Have you been successful at getting people engaged in talking about who your firm is and why you do what you do?

• Do you have the energy to persevere?

Until next week…

Craig