How To Police Your Brand!

-Ed Roach

Your brand is probably your company’s most valuable asset. It is what provides you the opportunity to make money based on strong relationships.

Your brand makes advocates out of customers which means that they in effect become salespeople for you.

Being an advocate for a brand, makes it a pleasure to recommend that company to your network of contacts.

Paying close attention to the environment in which your brand exists will reward you at times when you find your brand in a bad place or subject to sloppy practices.

Because your brand is essentially your reputation, it is therefore, dire that you always defend its integrity. Here are 7 critical areas where you should police your brand:

ONE: Corporate Logo.
Your corporate logo is the face of your brand. It is what the public sees and identifies as your company. Every logo has associated with it a color palette and distinguishing features. Even the space your logo occupies is valuable real estate. Explain the rules for reproducing your corporate logo. Be sure to have an RGB, Hex, Pantone, Process Color, Black & White and Gray Scale version of your logo. DO NOT compromise on your palette/real estate. Once you drop the ball once, your audience will be confused. Consistency is powerful magic.

TWO: Type Style.
Choose fonts that accurately represent the personality of your brand. Use these fonts in everything you do. Apple has gone to the trouble of designing a font expressly for their use. Fonts like other graphic elements set a tone that can be recognizable over time.

THREE: On-Brand Thinking.
This one is over-looked at times. Be sure that your entire staff has a keen understanding of your brand statement or unique positioning strategy. If staff is allowed to define what you do, you stand a good chance of jumping into the sea of sameness along with the competition. On-brand thinking portrays an image of confidence.

FOUR: Internal Communications.
Internal communication is a sub set of on-brand thinking. Keeping your organization current with company news and direction, helps to eliminate communication by rumor. Rumors are often wrong and typically negative. It eats away at your brand from the inside and contributes to the erosion of business.

FIVE: Poor Corporate Behavior.
We only have to cast our eyes upon Wall Street to quickly see how well-established brands are destroyed overnight when greed rules the day. Once your brand has been trashed by your corporate officers, it is often nearly impossible to recover. Brand trust is what makes you money.

SIX: Exit Strategies.
If an individual represents your brand as it’s icon, do you have a plan in place if they should suddenly disappear due to natural or other causes? Mascots or spokes people are a double edged sword for your brand. Done well they can cement a relationship with an audience, but the trick is to make them larger than life - something beyond themselves. Great ones are Colonel Sanders, Ronald McDonald and Dave from Lenox.

SEVEN: Risk Planning.
Utilizing Compliance Branding and having a plan in place help offset an unplanned event that threatens your brand. A case in point: Martha Stewart. How Martha responded to the situation she found her brand in, resulted in a secure brand once the event was over. Determining how the company should react to any negative publicity and who should speak for them is important to weathering a storm.

Policing your brand is an ongoing effort. Your competition is only too happy to see you fall. Unless you take the proper steps to protect it you stand a great risk of not only allowing the competition to define your brand but it puts you in the undesirable position of reacting constantly to events that didn’t have to happen. Ignoring your brand takes money directly out of your pocket. The suspect in this crime is in the mirror.