Does Your Internal Team Have Their Hands Tied?
I’ve had the opportunity of working with a number of companies to help them with their branding. Some companies are openminded to find the best solutions that works for their business, while other companies seem hung up on past design decisions that lacked vision and proper strategy. But for whatever reasons, some decide to stay with past design decisions for better or worse.
The first question to ask is, was the initial branding done by a seasoned professional, or was it just a placeholder until the appropriate resources became available. Unfortunately, many companies get stuck with the placeholder. Is your current brand working for you? Is it adding value and differentiating your offering? Or, is it positioning you as commodity where the lowest priced producers are the only winners?
Many times, past poorly constructed design decisions prevent the proper brand from emerging. A brand consists of many elements, and one major toolkit is it’s identity package. This consists of logos, color palettes, fonts, layouts, photo styling and graphic assets. This identity package defines your visual brand by creating a visual language. If this initial identity package was flawed or poorly constructed, your in-house design team may have their hands tied. If the culture of the business prevents them from innovating or changing this visual language, you may as well call it quits on your brand. This is a case where a company’s brand growth becomes stuck in limbo. It’s like spinner your wheels, because no meaningful brand development can be made. Quite the opposite of growth is happening. As new collateral gets developed, the company is digging an ever growing hole. The more marketing and collateral the company creates with a weak brand, the more work it will take to replace everything.
Is Your Current Branding Destined to Fail?
To determine if your company’s branding is destined to fail, you should ask yourself the following:
- Is the current branding adding value to your product? If you’re unsure, then it’s probably not adding value?
- Is the current branding aligned with business goals?
- Is the current branding aligned with your target audience? Do your customers identify with your brand messaging and styling.
- Was the initial branding done by a seasoned professional with a deep understanding of branding?
- Does your company have a culture of innovation? Or does it prevent it?
- Does your company reward innovation, or does it encourage to the status quo (aka the easiest way)?
- Does the management structure encourage critical thinking, and thinking outside the box?
- Is your company open to being self-aware and asking the tough questions?
Companies need to take a hard look at their current branding to assess whether it really aligns with their business strategy. The fastest way to brand failure, is to tie the hands of their internal team, and ignore when a brand isn’t working. If your management breads a culture of status quo, then it eliminates the canary that will sound the alarm before the whole company goes down. If you have a brand that isn’t working, you need to take steps to fix it. So take the bull by the horns and start brand building with a brand that is actually working for you.
“The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low cost producer is the only winner.”
Philip Kotler – Professor at the Kellogg School of Management
