Recently my partner, David, and I were fortunate to have the opportunity to go to New Orleans to help launch the brand we developed recently for one of our clients, Centennial Mortgage.
As a Certified Brand Strategists through the Brand Establishment, we subscribe to a specific methodology of developing brand for an organization. This is a proven and efficient process, and we’ve seen outstanding results as we help companies understand their distinction in the marketplace.
The brand development process began earlier in the year as we worked closely with the Centennial team to understand their uniqueness. There were many interviews both with the internal team and then with a group of their clients and vendors. Along with the interviews, we did a communications audit and finally took their team through our Soul Searching™ discovery process. Voila, the new brand was born – ok, it wasn’t that easy, but that was the general process.
Once you have determined the brand essence, franchise and positioning statement you need to communicate it internally first. Everyone on the team needs to understand, believe and live the brand. This “enculturation” needs to take place before you even THINK about telling your clients/customers.
Enculturation, or operationalizing the brand, starts with a solid understanding by the internal team of what the company promises to their customer. Then making sure each person is empowered to deliver on that promise from where they sit within the organization.
Because their team was scattered across the country, there were members new to the organization that have never met face to face. This needed to be remedied and the client began planning to bring everyone together. This gathering offered the perfect opportunity to do some team building and to formally launch the new brand and begin the all important enculturation process!
Important elements of brand enculturation:
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- The team should hear from the CEO, as brand is driven from the top down, to talk about the direction of the company and her/his vision moving forward.
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- There should be a presentation of the new brand elements – brand essence (the heart and soul of the company – pulling in recently uncovered Unique Value Propositions (UVPs)); the brand franchise (promise to the customer, a further distillation of the UVPs) and positioning statement (what the essence and franchise equal), new logo and colors, etc.
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- Presentation of brand guidelines in printed form so that everyone can move forward with one cohesive look and feel.
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- Establishing core groups assigned with particular tasks to work on aspirational goals and closing any brand gaps.
A company brand needs to be reinforced and nurtured, and then when fully understood by organization, shared with the customers through every touchpoint.
The Soul Searching process is fun, revealing, and sometimes emotional. When you dive deep and understand your brand so you can “Be the Brand”, it can be a game changer.
Get in touch with us at Force 5 if you are interested in creating a stronger brand for your organization, we’d love to help!
