F*ck brand pyramids
Pointers on how to increase your brands’ effectiveness. 7 minute read.
A lot of us got into business to do what we love. Follow a passion, or just be involved in a community or hobby that makes the hours in the day go a little faster.
Unfortunately, that often makes us the last people you can expect to get a objective answer about how good the product or service we deliver is. In your eyes what you do for a crust it’s great, you wouldn’t have spent the last X years doing it if wasn’t.
Warning
No one wants to hear that they’re wrong. So if you're reading and at any stage start to think that I'm an asshole for the things I'm saying, know that i’m coming from a good place. This might be a bit of the tough love you need, because I don't want to see you fleeced by marking wankers peddling BS.
Here we go!
You’re not that important
We over-index how important what we do is to our customers. Look, I don’t mean this to sound negative but we need to be realistic. Think of how many things you have going on in your life. Your customers are the same. Even if they use your product or service every day, that doesn’t mean they think it’s anywhere near as important as you do because you live and breathe it.
I’m not trying to neg you out, but it’s important to realise that for reasons I’ll now explain.
Your main marketing challenges
Your company/business/brand/product has largely two marketing challenges.
being known by your customer
being understood by your customer
Unless you’re a big player in your market you should be focusing on challenge number one. Why? Well because I can’t understand what you’re about if I don’t know, you can I?
If you think you’re a big swinging dick in your market, then you’ll likely have a brand strategy to help you overcome challenge number two. If you don’t - stop reading here and contact us. We can save you a whole bunch of money and time.
Anyway, brand strategies are usually a PowerPoint presentation put together by a marketing agency which tries to summarise the ‘feelings’ or ‘essence’ or ‘tone’ or another word equally as abstract, of your brand.
If you’ve worked with an agency or consultant worth their salt you should have 2-3 ideas or concepts that underpin your brand.
If you have any more than that, they’re wasting your time.
If they’ve given you a whole PowerPoint pack just to explain what your brand should mean to customers. They’re wasting your time.
If they’ve used a ‘pyramid’ a ‘keyhole’ or some other analogy or abstract shape to give you a whole framework for your brand which they expect you to live and breathe and execute with… they’re wasting your time.
Why?
Because as we covered above your customers don’t care as much about you as you do. If you need a multi-page, bells and whistles document to articulate your brand, how will a customer interacting with your brand in a millisecond have any chance of getting it? It shouldn’t be that complex.
Your employees are arguably the most important part of your brand - How are they going to be the best brand advocates if you can’t explain to them what the strategy is? I’m not saying your employees are stupid, but I will guarantee you if you struggle to articulate it, they will struggle to understand it. And if they have to do their job in a way that aligns to the brand it’s just not going to happen.
Think of three things
This is how you should think of your brand strategy:
If could put 3 words that in your customer’s mind when they think of your brand - what would they be? (Specialised, qualified, experienced anyone?)
Yes, it’s simple. It’s definitely not easy. But it is brutally effective.
You can write it on a single page (possibly even a post-it note).
You can test everything you do against them to ensure they align.
All your staff will get it and be able to follow it through.
If you get a bunch of other things right, your customers should get it too. (or at least have a better chance than that 80 side power point presentation the agency pitched you)
I’m not saying the thought that goes into a huge, comprehensive brand strategy is a bad thing. Far from it. What I am saying is as soon as the strategy can’t be explained to the troops to implement it, it’s wasted.
A few other thoughts about that SLIDE Deck.
Brand codes/assets are likely something jammed into that PowerPoint from the agency. If they’re done well they’re incredibly powerful tools, so keep hold of them! I’ll cover more about those in another blog post.
There’s also hopefully a lot of insight in that PowerPoint deck you paid a bunch of money for. That’s good work by your agency if it’s decent research. My main challenge to that is they, like you read into that and end up at the same place you are which overstates the share of mind your brand has with your customers. Just review with a pinch of salt.
If you see something in there called a ‘brand ladder’ that’s ok too - so long as it mentions things like functional or higher order benefits. It’s a pretty robust framework for developing messaging and positioning. Another one I’ll cover in a separate post.
So remember
No one cares about your brand/ company/ product as much as you and your employees, so don’t expect customers to give you the same time of day as you give yourself.
Unless you have huge brand awareness or recognition in your market - your businesses’ efforts should be focused on becoming known to all relevant customers.
If you have high levels of recognition - keep your brand strategy simple and practical. Three things. No more!
Sound too hard? Need someone to help you pick those three things for your brand? Maybe you’re still at stage one and just need to make more of a splash.
Let us take your six and make it happen.
- Luke
Image credit: Les Anderson