Brand Renewal Starts Today
Our office overlooks an 8-acre marsh. This little sanctuary has scattered structures on one side, with deep woods across the way. One early Spring day a few years back five fire companies were called in to battle a raging marsh fire. After a long, cold and mostly dry winter, the marsh grasses and cattails provided perfect fuel for the fire. After many tense moments the fire was brought under control, and allowed to burn its course.
Fires like ours are a good thing. A few days afterwards the view of the blackened marsh started to green up around the edges. The peeping frogs returned, as did curious deer, noisy hoot owls, hustling raccoons and loudmouth redwing blackbirds. In short, the fire renewed the marsh.
Maybe this is a good time to think about renewing some of your communications efforts. Every visual or printed document with your company’s logo on it is an advertisement for you. Every one. So here’s a quick test, courtesy of our good friend and colleague, Mike Farley, EGX Design in Milwaukee. Take this test to see how your firm stacks up in the marketplace.
Pull out any marketing materials you’ve constructed, produced or in any way sponsored in the past three years. Spread it out on a conference table. Brochures, flyers, ads, sales sheets, folders, binders, catalogs, stationery, business cards, even Yellow Pages ads and anything else you can think of that has your company’s logo on it. Then, bring in your sales manager, your receptionist, your spouse and your Starbucks barista, and ask them these three questions:
- How many people do you figure produced all of these documents?
- How does this company look to you?
- How old is the oldest piece here?
These three questions might just save your marketing neck. You see, they all point toward consistency of message. For a company that has built a strong branded image, one in which their customers, their employees and their vendors all receive the same strong brand message, the answers should go something like this:
- "Not many. Looks like it was done by the same people throughout."
- "Credible. I like how these pieces seem to work with one another."
- "I can’t tell. Looks like they all could have been produced around the same time."
For a company that may be facing some branding "issues", the answers may go something like this:
- "Looks like a bunch of bodies. How many of these were produced by our agency anyway?"
- "Like it’s all over the map. Look over here, our logo is blue and on this one, it’s red!"
- "That one over there looks like it was done around 1968."
If you’re in the former camp, congratulations! But, if you recognize your firm within the latter camp, you’re not alone. It’s very easy for independent materials, created for very separate reasons to lose focus from a brand perspective.
The cure: find yourself a consultant, inside or outside your organization, to help "mind the brand store", judging every piece that goes out your door against a consistent standard. Your place within your marketplace will improve with each successive piece.
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