It is possible you can learn a lot about communicating by checking out some of the big brand success stories.  We receive somewhere in the region of 3000 commercial messages every day.  Which ones resonate with you?  Which ones resonate with your client base?  What can you learn from this?

Warren Buffet once said that if someone offered him 100 billion dollars to knock Coke Cola off the top soft drink spot – he’d refuse the challenge.  Only 25% of the value of this company is tangible, the remainder is the power of the brand.

The brand is all about delivering a promise.  To build a brand you not only need to set out what it stands for, but set out how that message is delivered through every single interaction you have with your target client base.

There are some key words that illustrate brand values, they are: integrity, trust, difference, loyalty, fame, belief, cohesion, principle, profit, and passion.  These are significantly important in word of mouth marketing sphere but it is important to recognise that advertising still has its place.  Even, Cadbury, an established brand, had a 20% uplift with this brilliantly conceived gorilla advertising campaign

To emulate the high street brands you need to build your own brand on four pillars.  They are:

• The ideology of your business,
• The capability to deliver what you promise,
• The environment in which you are trading,
• The consumer connecting completely with the above.

If any of your pillars fall short of the others then the imbalance throws your brand off kilter.  The following brands are good examples of balance of strength in their four pillars just right, when they launched.  First Direct, Sanctuary, Innocence.

How balanced, do you think, are your four pillars?

With thanks to Andy Parker for inspiring this Blog post.

Published by thehiddenedge

I love words - they can say so much and say so little depending on how you use them. Come and explore them with me in this learning journal. View all posts by thehiddenedge