To many, a brand is an intangible concept that is associated with an image, such as the Nike® “swoosh”. That definition is too limiting, and for many of us who own service-based businesses, brand is an important concept that should be part of your overall business strategy. Your brand is your business identity – the image you wish to portray to the world – and is one of your company’s most valuable assets. It communicates your corporate personality and shapes the internal and external clients’ perceptions of who you are as well as the expectations and promises you extend to your customers in terms of quality, service, reliability and trustworthiness. A strong brand helps the audience differentiate you from your competitors and can positively influence their purchasing decisions, directly impacting your profitability. In short, a company’s brand identity includes brand names, logos, positioning, brand associations, and brand personality.

Before we talk about brand, be sure you read the Cultivate Market Perception article on positioning. To build your brand, you need to have your positioning nailed because you need to know who you are before you can get to where you want to be. By understanding your positioning, you can ensure that your brand is unique, defensible, credible, and motivating.

This article will explore the idea of branding in greater detail, and give you a framework to help think about what you want your brand to stand for.

What’s a good brand worth?

BusinessWeek, in conjunction with Interbrand, recently looked at the value of some of the largest brands in the world. This annual ranking – which studies financial forecasts, brand strength, and the role of the brand in the business model – found over 100 companies whose brand was valued at over a billion dollars. Yes, that is billion with a ‘b’. Companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s derive the majority of their value based on the equity of their brand. According to the BusinessWeek/Interbrand analysis, more than 80% of McDonald’s $30B+ market cap is attributed to the value of their brand. 
Clearly good brands provide tremendous value for companies like these, but I’m willing to bet that most of you have companies far smaller than McDonald’s. But that should not stop you from developing a strong brand for your business. In the book, “Brand Warfare”, David D’Alessandro makes a point that consumers need good brands as much as good brands need consumers. For the consumer a good brand:

• Saves time
• Projects the right message
• Provides an identity

This is true regardless of size. For many small businesses their brand stands for unique products, fair prices and excellent service. For example, I bought flowers for my wife’s last birthday at Lavender Fields Flowers and Gifts, a florist I had not done business with before. The bouquet was stunning and drew comments from everyone in her office. Now, whenever I need flowers (like the morning of my anniversary when I forget to get something), I know this brand is a safe bet and projects a great identity.

What does your brand stand for?

In “The Myth of Excellence”, Frederick Crawford’s book on why great companies never try to be the best at everything, Crawford breaks every business transaction into five attributes – Price, Service, Access, Experience and Product. He makes the case that no one company can be excellent at all five, and in fact will fail if they try. According to Crawford, companies should align resources and efforts to dominate on one attribute, differentiate on a second, and reach market acceptance on the others. While most of his examples are large companies – Wal-Mart, which dominates on
price and differentiates on the breadth of products; or Starbucks, which dominates on the experience of a fresh latte and differentiates on customer access – many of the principles apply for much smaller companies as well. 

The following exercise is interesting to try, either by yourself or with outside help. Take the following five attributes and evaluate your company on whether you want to
dominate, differentiate or compete:

• Price – Overall cost of the product or service along with pricing model. Note that customers often care more about fair and honest pricing then they do about lowest price. Be sure to consider special pricing models or payment terms that might be an element of how you differentiate.
• Product – Quality, depth and breadth of product(s) offered.
• Service – How customers feel about a company after a transaction.
• Experience – How customers feel about themselves as a result of a transaction.
• Access – Ease with which a customer can interact with the company. For a retail company this may mean physical location and store layout, while for a service provider, this may mean ease of reaching the provider
  and scheduling appointments.

Using this as a framework for discussion provides interesting insight on what you want your brand to stand for. For example a small company making hand made gift solutions will most likely focus first on the quality and uniqueness of the product, and
secondarily on customer service. A health spa offering a wide variety of services wants customer experience to always come first, and may secondarily focus on the breadth of offerings in order to be a one-stop shop for customers.

During this process, do not ignore or dismiss the voice in the back of your head – or across the table – that disagrees. There very well could be gaps between what you want your brand to stand for and what others actually think it does.

Watch out for those gaps

Understanding your own desires for your brand is a big step, but certainly not the last one in your journey. Once you’ve focused on the key elements of what you want your brand to mean, look at any gaps between reality and your desires. If, for example, you want your brand to be associated with unique high quality products, but you produce a commodity, you probably need to go back to square one. On the other hand, if excellent service with a unique all-inclusive pricing model is the key aspect of your brand, yet customer complaints are on the rise, it is time to focus internally and fix the underlying source of the complaints.

What comes next?

Assuming you’ve gotten this far – and by no means is this an easy process to go through – you need to ensure that your marketing messages, collateral and programs are consistent with your branding efforts.

‘How do I do that?’ you might ask. Good question, and one we’ll tackle in a future article.