Who Are You? – Knowing Your Brand And Sticking To It

This is an article I wrote for businesses about creating a brand but I feel it also greatly applies to performers and crew as they are their own small business!

“Who are you?”  If you can’t answer this question about your business in the first 10 seconds, it’s time to sit down and get your thinking cap on.

PASSION = BRAND

Nick Morgan, author and public speaker remarked, “In a world where people have a lot of choices, the story may be the deciding factor.” With all the “noise” of other brands and individuals, people don’t care about your product unless they care about who you are, as well as what you represent. That is why establishing a solid brand, and keeping continuity with that brand, is vital.

You don’t have to be a world acclaimed story-teller to form your brand. At the core, you need to know the answer to “Why this company?” and know your target market’s needs. Once you have these facets listed down, start writing your brand’s story – but take yourself out of your head and let your passion and energy drive the brand forward. Several tweaks and revisions later, and you will have the foundation of your brand. Everything else is built off of that foundation, whether it is the company colors, your logo, tagline, and even how your company’s voice “sounds” in videos, articles and social media.

BRAND LOYALTY

The end goal is to have a complete face to the company that you can send out to your target market, in order to introduce you and what you do. The ideal is that your brand will elicit an emotion out of your target audience in order to create a relationship.  These emotional connections are what creates brand loyalty. We see the benefits of brand loyalty all the time in the media.

One specific brand that comes to mind, as I drink my morning coffee, is that of Starbucks. Dr. Raghubir, a Marketing Research professor at New York’s University’s Stern School of Business, was quoted in a 2013 Huffington Post article, “The enduring brand loyalty is about the core offerings, which is not just coffee… It is the experience of going to Starbucks.” This shines true as more and more artisanal coffee shops appear in every city, Starbucks continues to remain on top.

OK, I HAVE MY BRAND, NOW WHAT?

Once you have your brand established, don’t get too comfortable! Now that you’ve put in that time to create your brand, you need to make sure not to forget it. Your brand must appear in everything your company does, everything your company releases, everything your company associates itself with or to simplify the laundry list: your brand needs to show that it is uniquely itself all the time! By not having brand continuity, you take the risk of confusing your target market about you, or they get turned off as they believe that you don’t even know who you are as a company.

BRAND CONTINUITY

We have worked with several successful organizations that, in the beginning, had some severe brand continuity issues:

• Logo on social media didn’t match logo on website! (Monkey B isn’t a monkey you’d take home to mother!)
• The company colors were mismatched, or completely incorrect, on all online and print resources!
• Their video told one story – while their website told a completely different one about the same thing!

INVEST IN YOUR BRAND

To some individuals, this may seem obvious but you will be surprised how easy it can be to take your brand for granted and not give it the proper attention or time. If you catch yourself saying “Close enough.” or “Good enough.” or “It doesn’t matter. We just need to get it out!” – WARNING! – Go back and make sure that what you are doing stays true to your brand. If not, invest the time into it that it deserves; you will thank yourself for it later!

It’s your story, so make the best of it. Understand your importance and what you specifically do as a company. Once you have this foundation, it’s time to listen to the old saying of, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

For more on Evin and Waverley Knobs Entertainment: WaverleyKnobs.com