Companies pay quite a bit of money to agencies to re-brand themselves. As a former agency owner and corporate marketing leader, I’ve led re-branding efforts at more than 20 companies. Here’s a little secret: you can save a ton of money and do some of this yourself. Here’s the second post in a four-part series about how I go about it.
Quick recap
What you’re trying to create
- Brand values – what you stand for and live every day.
- Core brand statement – the key message you communicate to all audiences.
- Brand personality – the voice in which your brand speaks.
- Brand icons – logos, fonts, colors, product names, layout styles, image styles, clothing, and music – the representations of your brand.
What you’ve done so far
- Interviewed stakeholders with a targeted series of questions
- Transcribed the answers
What’s next?
When you had the responses transcribed, hopefully the transcriber grouped all the answers to each question together. If not, do a little cut and paste so that you have all the answers to each question grouped together.
In general, you’re looking for themes that will inform your brand values, brand statement, and personality. You’re also looking for perceptions and misperceptions about your company which you might want to address as you build your brand. For each question, here are some things to consider:
- What products or services does my company offer? Do stakeholders know what your organization offers, completely and specifically? Look for themes. Sometimes you’ll get responses like “peace of mind” or “expertise.” These can be important to your brand values and statement.
- Who are my company’s competitors? Did anyone identify a competitor you didn’t consider? If so, what does that competitor offer?
- Who are my customers, either by name or by type? Did anyone identify a customer type you didn’t consider? Is that customer type a viable market for you and an audience you might want to consider as you build your brand?
- How am I different from my competitors? Look for value statements about what you offer.
- If we went out of business today, what would you miss the most? I love this question. It tends to lead to thought-provoking statements that frequently find their way into core brand statements.
- What do we do well? There’s almost always a surprise in here that may inform your values.
- What could we do better? This is where you get aspirations and sometimes course corrections. You may think you do something well, but it’s either unknown or not perceived as such by others.
- If you only had five words to describe our company, what would they be? I don’t think I’ve ever re-branded a company where output from this question didn’t end up in the brand values. You’re very likely to find repeated thematic elements here. If you’re not seeing them in prior questions, use these answers as a guide.
When you’re done with this exercise, you should have some common themes in your hand, and some ideas that will form your brand values. Next week we’ll talk about how to go about formulating and documenting them.