Business Branding Tips

By Suzanne Tulien, Principal & Co-Founder, The Brand Ascension Group

I am writing this with sad news. Another one of my newly experienced, ‘fav’ brands I was so excited about has fallen from grace. Oh, and it sooooooo didn’t have to be this way!!!

A few articles ago I wrote about a new up and coming brand in the airline industry, and how excited I was about their model, the overall experience, and it’s savvy potential in a decaying airline service business. They were definitely creating their own ‘Blue Ocean’ (re: Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne) in the marketplace.

And then,…we flew them again (optimal word; AGAIN).

With a fairly limited flight schedule, I was so excited that this regional airline flew to the destination we were planning for my husband’s birthday week. A reasonably priced, non-stop, fun, easy flight with XM Radio, a meal AND snacks, $3 wine and $1 dollar beers, not to mention a farewell mint candy and a smile delivered by the flight crew as you step off the plane.

I told all my friends. I touted the brand in my workshops while covering the importance of creating powerful differentiators, and I wrote about my experience flying them. It’s not so much the embarrassment for ‘jumping the gun’ and actually believing they were different and telling ‘the world’, but the pain of realizing it was only a or a ‘one-off’ experience and then KNOWING that it didn’t have to go there!

In brief, here’s what happened.

There were three in our travel party. As we were getting settled in our seats (two on the right, one on the left with an aisle in between), our stewardess interrupted the hum of passengers settling in by announcing on the overly loud intercom that we will not be receiving a meal as this city was not a ‘catering destination,’ in her short, sassy, memorized shtick. I was confused as we were served a meal and snacks the last time we flew from this same city just a few months ago. Disappointment #1.  

Our travel buddy neglected to grab a set of individually packaged headphones from a wicker basket at the ticket counter (for listening to the onboard XM Radio) and politely asked the stewardess for an extra pair. She abruptly replied, ‘you were supposed to get yours before you boarded the plane, I doubt I have any onboard for you,’ as she whizzed by slamming the overhead bins closed. We started to feel like elementary school children being scolded by the bus driver. Disappointment #2.

Once airborne and beyond 10,000 feet, our stewardess began her beverage service. We were close to the front of the plane and one of the first to be served. As she pushed the cart down the isle and asked us our beverage preference, we noticed that her short, sassy comments were not few and far between. When she approached our buddy and asked for his order, this is what our friend recounted, ‘I was dozing lightly and had my ear phones in and the ‘flight attendant’ asked if I wanted something to drink. I had a little trouble pulling out the head phones (3 seconds) and when I did she said ‘I’m not your wife, I can’t read your mind.’ She didn’t yell at me but delivered a tone to show cue me that she was frustrated with my delay in responding…Yikes! Did that really happen? Thank goodness our friend was mildly tempered and held back his reaction to the comment. Disappointment #3.

Disappointment #4 -  A ‘no go’ on the candy mint farewell treat. A big deal? In the scheme of things, no, but when it comes to creating a memorable brand experience that caters to small but meaningful emotional connections, then I would argue that YES, it is a big deal. As Americans, we are lucky to have the array of choices that we do in everything we seek to purchase. It is the brand’s job to carve out a unique position in our minds and emotions to the point of basing our buying decisions on these emotional connections.

In a the most recent annual survey (2007 Brand Marketers Report by Interbrand)  on brands and branding by experts from top global brands, what was cited as the most critical aspect of successful branding? CONSISTENCY! Hands down! At 36%! Marketing and Advertising rated at less than 1% (.8%),
and Innovation rated only 18.2%.

This article is really about missed opportunity, inconsistency, and cognitive dissonance of the brand. This airline has a great concept, super differentiating behaviors, and much appreciated amenities that no longer permeate the airline industry; all lost in a single experience – a moment in time forever embedded in the minds of the customers. The customer question becomes, ‘How do I trust my experience with this brand? What will I receive next time? When prices and schedules are the same (commodity), which brand do I choose?”

Questions for the brand are:

1)      What are the true costs of inconsistencies in the brand’s behaviors?

2)      Do our employees understand, live and embody the brand values?

3)      What investment do we make in our people to assure the brand is articulated correctly and consistently to our market?

4)      What systems and processes can we put in place to assure proper cognitive resonance of the brand with our customers?

Brands with consciousness become mega-brands. Brand consciousness consists of being fully aware of who and what the brand stands for; not just today, or the first 6 months of business, but everyday, in every behavior, through every process. It starts internally with defining the brand’s DNA, integrating it into the culture, systems and processes, and leadership. It’s not rocket science, just tenacity, due diligence, and a passion for the brand.

So, will I fly this brand again? Probably. But I won’t be seeking it out, ranting and raving about it or using it as an example of what powerful brands can do to differentiate themselves. No, as of this moment, they have unfortunately transpired into a commodity, lumped into a blur with every other airline in my mind. Another promising idea that didn’t consistently fly…sadly, another one bites the dust.

Don’t let your brand go there!

Suzanne Tulien is Principal and Co-Founder of the Brand Ascension Group, LLC. She is brand consultant, award-winning graphic designer, a certified trainer and certified in Accelerated Learning Methodologies. She is author of The 6 Myths of Branding, and co-author of Megapreneur. She regularly writes article on branding for entrepreneurs and is published in a variety of publications. www.BrandAscension.com, info@brandascension.com, 719.265.1707.

Learn how conscious branding practices can capture and sustain valuable market share in any economic situation …By Suzanne Tulien, Co-founder of the Brand Ascension Group  

How many of you are conscious of the state of our current economy? How many of you have started tightening the purse strings to prepare for rising prices, slow sales, and a tough ride ahead? 

Business owners are already searching for ways to reduce the impact of the impending “R” word (RECESSION, there, I said it!). But there are many companies who have done the “due diligence” within their brand building strategies to ensure and support withstanding almost any kind of economic condition (barring national disasters!). 

But before you start feeling like you need to invest in a family-sized bottle of Tums® finish reading this article and look for ways you can take on board the ideas. 

Consider the following scenario with one of our clients – a premiere tanning salon who embarked on a branding initiative about 2.5 years ago. They were a dual store location of about 12 employees, and feeling the crunch of high gas prices, finding it to harder to retain young employees (“Y” generation), and implementing marketing campaigns with minimal return on their investments. Finally a big whammy, they were plagued with a profound “commodity mindset” from their targeted audience.  Enter: The Brand Ascension Group. Hearing their dilemma we immediately quiz them on their current brand. With questions like: (among others)

1. Do you and your employees truly understand what your brand stands for?
2. Do you have a set of core values for the brand that everyone in your company is aware of and understands?
3. Do you have a unique culture that fosters positive, memorable behaviors that differentiate you from your competitors?
4. Do you regularly ask your customers for feedback on your standards of performance?
5. Do your employees have the authority to “break the rules” to make a situation “right” for the customer?
6. Do you benchmark your employees’ behaviors against leading practices of highly successful brands?
7. Do you have a specific and unique ‘brand vocabulary’ that creates distinction with your brand?
8. Do you have a Brand Promise that your employees commit to and continually deliver on?
9. Do you understand and leverage all your key differentiators to your competitive advantage?

 …..among other questions.  

After lots of ‘deer in headlights’ and ‘no’ responses throughout this revealing interrogation (we had fun with it, really!), we recommended the immediate huddle of their core team into a highly intensive, interactive invention process to define, create, and build their Brand’s DNA from scratch. They were game, and after two full days of ideation, collaboration and precise selection, the team emerged from the process proud parents of a brand new brand! They built it, now they own it! 

To make a long story shorter, we continued to consult with them throughout the year and guide them on how they would go about ‘operationalizing’ the new brand DNA into every facet of their operation so they could begin living and embodying it (across a ‘brand scorecard’; employees, customers, financial, and through their systems and processes). 

From the Brand DNA process their team flushed out a very compelling and distinctive ‘Brand Platform’: SIMPLY MIND-BLOWING EXPERIENCE, which became the essence of their brand’s ‘way of being’ from that point on. 

I remember this phone call from one of the owners: “Hey, Suzanne, I had to call you and let you know what I’ve noticed since we developed our Brand Platform from the DNA session. The first thing we did was make a critical decision to let go of two of our employees who just weren’t willing to ‘step up’ the brand’s experience and what a relief to all the other employees who are taking on the new brand like wildfire!  And, I noticed something yesterday that was so interesting! As I was walking through our retail portion of the store I overheard one of our employees challenging another to create a ‘mind-blowing experience’ for the next customer who walks in the door! They are really having a blast inventing ways to impress and take care of our customers, it’s incredible to watch!” 

Fast forward 1 ½  years. Just a few weeks ago we connected with this client once again to check in on how the brand development was going. And as if the flood gates had opened, she burst out with a list of things they have been implementing with their employees, their processes, and customers. All of which have positively impacted their bottom line! And each of these changes was highly relevant to the attributes of their Brand DNA (core values, style, differentiators and standards). 

The industry overall has been in a virtual “slump” the last few years and with the “recession” mindset eroding any hope of new client enrollment into their services. However; our client has reportedly increased their per customer transaction 35%-50%, adding much needed cash flow to their bottom line. How’d they do it?  They achieved this increase by being much more conscious of their behaviors, how they interact and communicate with each other, as a team culture, and with their customers. All this redesign was possible because of the work they did to define, create, and build their brand’s core DNA…from the inside out. 

Here’s my point. When an entrepreneur makes the decision to build their brand, it has to mean more than developing a logo, business cards or develop a marketing campaign. The process of branding has to start INTERNALLY with your core purpose in mind of how you want your employees and customers to perceive you. If you don’t actively define and manage that perception, your customers will! 

And when you take the time to develop your authentic brand, put a ‘stake in the ground’ and COMMIT to behaving consistently that way, then you will build trusting relationships with your team and your customers. So when your customers need/want your product or service, and when they have a choice of who to do business with….the choice will be obvious for them…YOU of course! Gain and retain market share now by building your brand’s DNA! 

(For more information on how you and your team can experience improved business performance just like our tanning salon client go to: www.BrandDNAProducts.com. We’re now offering this same brand-building methodology in a highly interactive and accelerated on-line course environment utilizing the latest web-based technology You too can experience phenomenal results through our progressive methodology. 

© All Rights Reserved. Suzanne Tulien and Carol Chapman are Principals in The Brand Ascension Group LLC a leading-edge, multi-faceted, experiential consulting and training firm that partners with organizations in elevating their brands.  Through their innovative Brand Elevation™ methodology, they help clients capitalize on the power of human perception and engage them in conscious internal and external branding practices to propel and sustain the growth of their businesses.  They can be reached at www.BrandAscension.com. 719.265.1707; 719.748.2290. 

When business owners think about building their business, their mind, more often than not, goes to the functions of marketing…”How can we get more exposure?” “Where do we need to advertise our message?” “How do we get more bang for our buck?” This is all good and will probably need to be answered in the long run. But our question is this…”Who are you?” “What do you stand for?” and “What do you REALLY provide your customers?”

Without knowing clearly the answers to our questions — your marketing efforts are diluted because the customer experience will not be congruent with the marketing message. How do you get clear? How do you define, create, build and profit from your unique brand? You create and solidify your business Brand DNA! How? With a proven methodology facilitated by The Brand Ascension Group.

It is time to focus on building your brand, not spending money in marketing, when the message you are sending out is not crystal clear, and your behaviors do not yet fully reflect your marketing message. Think about it — build the road map, the foundation, the unique, distinctive and consistent brand you’ve always wanted to be!