Dirty Brand? Clean it up…

It’s a new year,

so it’s time to think about taking a close look at your branding to make sure it’s still fresh and relevant. Now I know what you’re thinking. “Brock,” you say, “I’m too swamped with the rest of my work to think about rebranding right now. Besides, my branding is just fine. Why would I want to change it?” I’d be the first to admit that you probably don’t need to do a complete rebranding. In all but the most dire circumstances, the equity lost in rebranding isn’t worth the shiny new marketing materials. And you don’t have to undergo a complete makeover. Sometimes, however, you should give your branding a much-needed spa treatment. After all, if you take care of your branding, it will take care of you.

Taking Stock

There are two things you have to do before doing any work to refresh your brand. The first is to understand that branding is a habit, not something you can “set and forget.” If you are responsible for branding your organization, expect to devote resources to maintaining your brand. We’ve all seen companies that use the same marketing materials for twenty years straight. It doesn’t work for them, and it won’t work for you. It doesn’t have to be much work, but you should plan to regularly audit your branding to ensure that it continues to align with your organization’s goals, mission, brand promise, market position and target market.

So that’s the second thing. Before beginning any brand refresh, make sure you know your organization’s goals, mission, positioning, etc. Without a firm grasp of the fundamentals, anything you do to tweak your branding will just be the proverbial lipstick on a pig.

Find the Balance

Keeping your brand fresh requires a careful balancing act of focused messaging and creative play. If your brand has become little more than a series of templates, it’s likely to be boring your customers as well as you. On the other hand, your audience needs to know that it’s you sending the message; your branding can’t be so inconsistent as to become unrecognizable. Remember, good design demonstrates a competitive advantage. Research shows that companies that invest in design are much less likely to compete on the basis of price alone. (For more on how quality creative can improve business results, visit Design Council.) Though it may have become a cliché at this point, discount retailer Target does a exceptional job at keeping their brand interesting and flexible. Their commercials, for example, are always wildly creative. And yet, you know that it’s a Target commercial the moment it comes on. Likewise, their inventive use — almost abuse — of their logo would make most corporate branding guides burst into flames.

Focus On Authenticity

When examining your brand and marketing communications, be sure to evaluate how authentic your messages are. Authentic messages are ones that speak to your audience and engage them on an emotional level. If your messages come across as too corporate or safe, it will hurt the value of your brand. This doesn’t mean that every brand should be edgy or extreme. Rather, it means that your brand should feel “real”. An absolutely stellar example is the new the Intel refresh. Their branding chief, Deborah Conrad, deserves huge kudos for their new geek chic, “Sponsors of Tomorrow”, commercials. Rather than promote a specific product or new innovation, the new branding admits — even celebrates — the nerdiness of Intel’s work.  Even though you know it’s just another commercial, it feels authentic in a way that most technology ads don’t.

Be Passionate About Your Work

According to Robert Kyosaki, author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, “Brands die if the leader’s passion dies, or if the leader’s passion is simply to make money.” If the only purpose of your brand communications is to make money, your customers will know, and they’ll lose respect for you. This may seem like a rehashing of my previous tip about authenticity, but it’s entirely possible for branding to be entirely authentic and still lack any real passion for the organization’s core mission.

Think about the last furniture commercial you saw. Maybe they had a nice spokesperson telling you about the great special they had on that new bedroom set. You probably don’t remember, though, because you were leaving the room to go get a snack from the kitchen. It wasn’t because the message was too corporate. It’s because you knew that there was no passion there. That furniture store is human enough, they just don’t seem to really care about what they’re selling. Like you, they’d rather be out getting a snack.

Become More Sociable

The new rule in branding is that consumers want interaction, not just action. The voice from God marketing strategy of the 20th Century just won’t cut it anymore. Consumers care about brands that they engage with. So provide opportunities for your audience to interact with your brand, and watch their attachment grow. This isn’t really new, it’s just been brought to our attention with all of the new focus on interactive social media. And so you every brand from Red Bull to Office Depot has some sort of interactive Facebook page and Twitter feed.

The important thing to remember about social media is to provide value in all of your communications. Minneapolis-based writer Kris Decker loves Walgreen’s Facebook fan page for exactly this reason. “As a fan, I get special coupons and deals that only their Facebook fans get. It gives me a great reason to interact with the brand.”

Spruce It Up

Finally, remember that the purpose of a brand standards manual is to ensure the highest quality branding that is conveying the right message. If you have to break the “rules” of your manual in order to achieve good results, by all means, break the rules. So go on and spruce up your branding in 2010. A little bit of tweaking isn’t going to lose any of your brand equity. ‘Cause let’s face facts: your customers aren’t paying conscious attention to your branding materials. They really won’t know that this month’s ad had the logo 2 inches from the bottom while last month’s ad had it 2.5 inches from the bottom. The only thing that matters is that you’re communicating the right message to the right audience. If you’re not, it doesn’t matter a hill of beans that your branding is consistent.