The buzz in today’s business world is innovation. Keep it new, keep it fresh, make it different. Change!
Change does not come easy, though. Most people by nature would rather stick to the status quo, especially if it’s worked in the past. Branding is no different. Why undertake a rebranding exercise? After all, the customers know you by your existing brand…it’s been working fine so far. The danger with this thinking, of course, is that you can lose your competitive edge and relevance before you know it.
With a strong brand there is often considerable internal resistance to change, even if it is clear that change is called for. Understanding and combating this is key to any branding initiative. Buy-in at all levels is critical.
Make the case
A branding initiative touches all levels of the organization and, if successful, becomes an integral part of corporate life. It is essential that everyone in the organization understands and, more important, believes in the brand, its values, and its messages.
Before you can sell the brand to your customers, you have to sell it to your own employees:
• Build a strong case for the initiative; it should make sense to the employees and not be viewed as a useless exercise.
• Define the branding exercise’s contribution to the organization’s intangible assets (reputation, public perception, etc.).
• Work to build consensus both from the top down and the bottom up.
• Sell internally to as large a constituency as possible.
• Reward brand behavior at all levels.
• Promote internally with consistent, seamless communications. • Don’t deviate from strategy. Stay the course, yet be adaptive, shaping tactics to meet opportunities.
• Appoint brand champions to lead the charge and keep attention focused.
• Internalize the brand idea by integrating it into business operations.
Make it measurable
Brand value is notoriously “soft” and amorphous, which is one reason it’s such a hard sell inside the organization: The C suite wants to know exactly how it will affect the bottom line. To make your initiative successful, it’s important to be able to report tangible value that arises from it:
• Devise measurements and standards that are relevant to your organization, and make them an integral part of the initiative.
• Work with the chief financial officer to measure intangible benefits.
• Keep the executive suite engaged: provide “dashboards” to give them immediate information.
• Get other parts of the organization to deliver metrics that meet your requirements: HR, sales, margin, etc.
Know thyself
One of the biggest mistakes an organization can make is to embark on a rebranding effort that ignores its own people.
What goes on inside an organization is critical to any branding effort; the employees are the organization and embody the brand values. Without them, a brand is merely a hollow shell, and it will be obvious to the world that there’s nothing there to support it. The key is to make the employees an integral part of the project, rather than sending it down from on high:
• Get a handle on what the employees are thinking about.
• Forge internal relationships at all levels to help you communicate.
• Study the internal dynamics of the organization. Is the culture one of collaboration, participation, and ownership?
• Do the employees agree with and buy into the vision and values that the brand represents?
A productive internal dialogue encourages acceptance, generates enthusiasm, and is an excellent tool for shaping the brand. Engaging the people who live with the brand day in and day out, who see first hand how it’s perceived, who are expected to embody it, who are most in touch with it, is incredibly valuable. Some of the best ideas can, and do, come from those in the trenches.
Hampton Bridwell is president of BrandLogic (www.brandlogic.com), an identity consulting and communications agency based in Wilton, CT.
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