Branding Strategy and Execution
Branding is perhaps one of the most cryptic concepts in business, judging by how many different interpretations of it I hear from my clients. Branding is generally thought of as a simple concept: it’s the name and logo of your business, and maybe the colors you use in your products and marketing. Those things are a part of branding for sure, but they’re really more like the bi-products of branding, like the children. There’s a process to defining it, and best practices you can engage in at all levels, from small business to Fortune 100, to help understand your brand and put that knowledge into action.
So what is branding then? In short, it’s the personality of your business. If your business was a person you were going to introduce me to, how would you describe her to me? You wouldn’t just tell me her job or career to describe her, right? Typically you’d mention “she’s a really nice person, a great photographer, she likes to do stuff outdoors, gives to charity, I think you’d like her!” From that description, I can get a sense of the types of decisions this person might make, what makes her tick, what kind of attitude she might have.
That’s how to understand your brand. You need to know it like you know yourself. If you have your branding fully established and understood, you don’t have a hard time making decisions, you aren’t unsure of how to react. You know, when faced with a tough decision, that you will react in a certain way and handle situations the way you handle them.
The process I find works best in discovering and defining a brand comes from investigative journalism and storytelling. Many branding agencies spend a lot of time asking questions about the meta of your brand: what animal is your brand, what color, what words do you associate with it? Those aren’t bad questions to answer, but they don’t lead you specifically to the truth of your brand. To do that, you must answer the core questions required to tell a good story:
Who are you?
What do you do?
When? (history, special events/awards, plans for the future)
Where are you? (local brand, national, global)
WHY ARE YOU DOING IT?
How do you do it?
Branding Cuvee Coffee
Let me give you a good example from a client I worked with called Cuvee’ Coffee, located in Austin, TX. Cuvee had some elements of their brand understood; after all, they were 10 years old already by the time we started working with them. So their logo, color palette and name were well established, and really awesome for a coffee roaster: a beautiful hue of light blue, a quirky, hand drawn font for the name with a cool little star. Their bags stood out in coffee because they weren’t the earth tone, organic bags we’ve come to expect out of the best roasters, and they had fun graphics that brought them to life.
Cuvee Coffee
Their coffee has distinct branding that sets them apart from almost every other coffee company around.
However, when we met with the team to discuss their brand in depth, we very quickly identified how off the page everyone was. It wasn’t total chaos, there were many core themes developed; but they didn’t all have the same answers to questions, especially centered around mission and vision. The kind of questions like “who do you want to be when you grow up?”, but for business.
What we discovered was that Cuvee was a micro-brewery, an independent beer brewer with all the attitude and innovation of brands like Dogfish Head or The Brew Dogs from Scotland. The only thing is that they roast and brew coffee, not beer. They didn’t want to be the stodgy, elitist coffee brand with the type of messaging around how clean and organic their beans are, how they’re hand picked from misty mountains at sunset with bards playing on lutes and hand packed into donkey baskets. They wanted to be the fun, bearded, potentially naked coffee brand that might do something completely random and crazy just to see what happens.
With this understood, the company was free to do a lot of different things without fear of what it might look like, or how they might be perceived. They were able to say “this is who we are, like us or not”. And they got to work putting that knowledge to practice, and success.
They released an innovation that has since been rippling through the coffee world: nitrogenated cold brewed coffee, available on draft and in nitro cans (like Guiness). This product is now on draft in retail bars and restaurants throughout TX and NY.
Next, they opened a coffee shop in Austin and refused to provide wifi in the shop as a matter of principle. They wanted conversation, interaction, and a lively environment. Some people hated them for doing this, and left negative reviews of it. They got flack all around. And they held their middle fingers up at it because they knew what they were doing was right for them and those that believed in their brand. It has also been a huge success for them, and their customers love them for it.
Because of their brand positioning, they took on a new innovation for both coffee and beer: a very large can the size of a glass growler, known as a crowler. Using a special canning tool, this allowed them to can beer and coffee together or separately for people in a more environmentally friendly manner. And this brought them to a battle with the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission (TABC). TABC is strong arming any retailer selling crowlers, and owner of Cuvee Mike McKim has been fighting them tooth and nail. There have certainly been times that he questioned whether what he was doing was good for the company. But he held true and continues because he knows his brand, and his customers are his advocates as a result.
This sense of clarity comes from having a fully defined brand. Prior to our meeting, Cuvee wasn’t entirely sure about their message or mission. They had a lot of great ideas and had hit on their brand haphazardly from time to time. But once it was set and understood, they have been trail blazing ever since.
Ultimately, the most important question to branding (as in life) is #5, WHY ARE YOU DOING IT? Make sure you can answer these questions in as least words as possible, like you’re talking to a 2nd grader. Someone that young may not understand High Performance Computing, or any other complicated subject like it, but the important point here is to try. Because once you have these questions answered, you have the ability to act.
That brings me to the ultimate point of this blog: when you know your brand, and have it well defined and understood, you can form and execute strategically at the highest levels. You don’t get caught in the weeds on your marketing or product decisions. You spend that time instead on doing the greatest work as your brand, and success comes from that kind of clarity.
For established brands with large teams, especially those brands in the Fortune list, it’s important to know who to speak with to draw out the truth. With Cuvee’, we interviewed everyone on the team at once (there weren’t that many of them). But for others, especially those with wider teams, it’s important to find the right people to talk with. Many make the mistake of just consulting the executive team.
Anonymous Big Home & Commercial Services Company
I worked with another client (NDA prevents sharing who), but let’s call them Big Home & Commercial Services company. With over 3 major headquarters in their biggest markets, and 1000’s of employees, we couldn’t interview them all, but we needed more input than just the executive team. So who do you interview?
Start at the ground level - interview the customer service reps and secretaries that have been around a few years - they often give you the best answers as to what the culture stands for, because that’s likely the biggest reason they work there
Move to those that interact with the product or service on a daily basis - the technicians, product dev teams, and designers
Team Leads are next - managers, dept. heads - these are some of the hardest to get the truth from. Really dig into follow up questions and specific stories
Finish out with the executive team - they will be very lofty and visionary, but can give you specific stories and examples to hinge their vision on
As an added plus (or even a prerogative), interview some customers - they can tell you what they are seeing and hearing from the brand from the outside, giving you data to compare against the answers from 1-4 above
With that info, we were able to share TONS of very engaging content about Big Home & Commercial Services. We were able to talk about them, rather than just their services; and their customers responded tremendously. Traffic and sales were record breaking that year as a result of this major content strategy, all of which was begun with the branding process.
Arena -> Attaq Online Rebrand Problem
I want to dig into one last example: Attaq Online. This is an example of what to do when you have a brand that needs to be rebranded, or if you have a new product focus that requires a branding pivot.
Arena Online, now Attaq Online, is an online tournament gaming platform in the esports space. They had to rebrand, and hadn’t truly gone through the full branding process to begin with. Picking a new name was painful as a result. So I led them through the same discussion I led Cuvee’ through, and we tackled some new concepts for them.
Are you looking to be the edgy, hardcore competitive gaming company? Are you trying to be fun and goofy? Are you the professional competitive company that takes itself seriously?
What came out of that process was a brand that was looking to set a professional standard in the competitive gaming space; one that was trustworthy, valid, and a place for serious competitors to improve. We have seen all too often many brands in the esports and gaming space conduct themselves unprofessionally, ripping off fans and pros alike. We were to be the antidote to that.
Having this established made every marketing decision thereafter much easier to make. It led to understanding how to execute a PR strategy by crafting a message of encouraging other companies in the space to assume the same standards that we were. We chose to be leaders in the industry, to help the esports ecosystem mature as it builds towards a more structured and consistent entertainment industry like the NFL or NBA.
Our advertising and marketing strategies are similarly formed with this knowledge. Our message became really clear. We always knew what voice to use when interacting with our fans, how to handle customer service engagements, the tone of our content. Where we were previously insecure in our direction forward or of our message, we emerged confident and sober about what we needed to do next.
This is the best process we’ve identified to understanding and defining your brand. It’s about isolating the real truth in the story. Investigating all the stakeholders, not just the “key” positions, is often the best way to get to the real deal, and not just the marketing message or features and benefits of working for the company.
If you are unsure of your brand, you’re unsure of your decisions, and of your strategic planning. Your message sounds generic or neutral, your content uninspiring, and your press opportunities are squandered of their total value. It’s importance cannot be understated. Do yourself a favor and start to work on this as soon as possible, or call us to do it with you. But don’t lose another night of sleep worrying whether you just blew millions on an unsure decision.