Branding

If you know the strategic character that you are taking on your exciting journey with your brand, now might be the right time to start measuring what is happening in the market. Measuring things like:

• How much are you spending on marketing?
• Is your brand being recognised in the way you expected?

What you measure may depend on how you arrived at this point, if you have developed a brand character you may have developed some measurement metrics on the way, or you may have some universal industry metrics relating to the category, or you may want to see how your customers will define your metrics from the ground up. Either way, you are taking the enlightened path to brand management. As they say: “what gets measured gets……..” – you decide!

Your brand strategy is what makes you stand out in a distinctive, positive way in the customer’s mind. Its purpose is to bring your brand alive with meaning for the customer. It’s more than a name, a logo, a colour, or a slogan, it’s the long term support for the brand built around customers’ preferences and expectations of the brand. The starting point is to understand how customers feel about your brand and in what way they view its distinctiveness from its competition. The next step is to work with Archetype models to find one or two potential positions. These can be road tested with the target audience, before settling on and developing the chosen direction. It’s a big strategic decision, but it’s a great way to create a consistent personality around the brand, that can survive changes in people and culture within the organisation, without confusing the customer.