Branding. Can I Afford It?
- March 19th, 2010
- Posted in Thoughts
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I have several small clients and when I suggest they brand their product or service they often ask, what is branding? And it’s a good question. What it isn’t, is it is not a logo, a business card, an advertisement or a website.
It is all of the above plus.
It’s a culture. It’s how you answer your phone, your e-mails, your texts. It’s how you approach a conversation at your local Chamber After Hours. It’s how you design and create your product or service so that it is unlike any other in your category or even your town. It is how you convince the customer that you and your product or service is the only one that can solve their need. It is even how your stock boy or girl talks with their friends about your business.
Can you do it? Of course. But it takes time and patience. It takes guts. It takes desire. I say again, it takes patience.
Can you afford to brand your product or service? The better question is, can you afford not to?
In the last six months I have come face-to-face with the power (and value), of a brand. The founder of a once-successful but dying company had pretty much “folded his tent”. He had even reduced his website to a forlorn 1-page “Good-bye”. At the request of numerous customers of the “dying company” a client of mine founded a company she anticipated would be a natural successor. Seemingly out of nowhere, someone bought the rights to the “dying company” and its intellectual capital and, very importantly – the brand and logos which had developed industry-wide recognition. Even though the new owner’s execution is being called into question by the company’s customer set, in surprisingly large numbers, they are sticking with it and quite a few have expressed reservations about leaving it.
My client’s new company did not contemplate this revival. What was left for dead by many is now a formidable competitor of my client’s company. This is so for only one reason…its brand. My respect for a powerful brand has been elevated from textbooks and anecdotes (Coca Cola for example), to something very personal that has significant financial implications for my client.