Crafting a Brand Image

The core definition of a brand has evolved over time. Initially a brand was simply meant to be tied to a singular set of product values, customers knew this brand made great widgets while that brand made good boxes. Everything was essentially tied to the core product offering and not much more. As time has progressed, the brand has evolved to be a more and more important facet of a company. Leveraging a brand has become central pillars of competitive strategy and we hear all day, every day, that the brand is one of the most important things you can build.

Your brand, broadly speaking, is the way you define yourself and interact with your key stakeholders such as employees, customers, and regulators. This catapults the importance of building a holistic brand strategy to the top of the list for growth focused businesses as having a strong brand offers a significant advantage over other firms.

What components need to go into building a brand though? What are the key areas to focus on and know that your key stakeholders will find value in while minimizing the additional effort you and your team need to put in for brand building. Building your brand through the normal actions of your business is, by far, the most efficient way to build a strong brand.

When building a brand, I always recommend focusing on what are your core values as a business. Choosing your core values is not only important for your brand image but it is also vital for having a guiding light of your business. As a rule of thumb, it is best to focus on three or four core values that can then be embedded into all of your business and branding decisions. These values should go beyond just common business practices and should resonate with the core of who you are as a business.

For example, having “profitability” being a core value may be an important thing for your business, but it doesn't make for an inspiring value from which you build a business. Instead, look for values like “trust” or “sustainability” and use those as guiding lights for your branding strategy. Once these values have been decided on, they should be kept reasonably consistent over the years to ensure a long term vision can be accomplished. If you are changing your core values frequently, you do not have a clear enough idea of your business personality to start building a brand.

After selecting your core values, your business is ready to decide on its mission. This mission will build off the core values to state what the value is that you will provide to the world. Now, this doesn't have to be a grandiose statement or an overly lofty goal. It could be as simple as becoming “the most trusted and environmentally friendly provider of gardening services in southern Minnesota” or it could be as grand as to become “the world leader in accounting services”. The beauty of this is that there is no right answer and it is a way for you to verbalize your goal for yourself, your customers, and your employees. Mission statements serve as a way for you to share your brand’s goals and the brands overall plans for business. This allows you to share your vision with these key stakeholders as well as communicate what they can expect from your brand over the long term.

Causes are not necessarily needed when building a brand, but they can be incredibly powerful in accelerating your brand image. This can be seen as an extension of your mission and values in a way that directly interfaces with the community around you. A cause can be anything from donating to various non-profit organizations to actively advocating local governments to change regulations in a way that benefits people in the community. These moves should only be taken once your brand has established a strong set of values and is committed to the brand’s mission so that your causes always align with your core stakeholder sentiment.

One must be VERY careful with this though, by working on a cause, you are marrying your brand to that cause and the supporting organizations. This is why it is critical that the brand has already decided on its core values and has carefully vetted any partnering organizations to ensure they share your brand’s values and will behave in a way that boosts your brand image.

There is a lot more that goes into branding that we normally think about. Typical questions are more along the lines of “what should our logo look like, what are our colors, what is the best website name…” and these are important questions. The problem arises when businesses focus only on these outer aspects but fail to spend the (considerable) amounts of time needed to construct a solid foundation with values, a mission, and causes that are critical for building a brand that lasts. I would strongly advise anyone interested in building a long lasting and sustainable brand to devote time to understanding those core tenants of your business and brand vision. When the foundation of your brand is solid, it matters a lot less what colors you choose compared to the values you have committed to.