Steps to Brand Supremacy
Step 1) Brand Strategy
How can your business win? Brands that win are outcome-focused, not service focused. They know it’s about the experience, the confidence engendered and the hassle avoided. Coke understands that nobody ever wanted a cola. They wanted an exciting cold drink that made them feel like a part of a worldwide tribe of people just like them.
Without Coca-Cola’s ad budget, how do you establish your credentials and influence your target audience? That’s the role of brand strategy; through this process, clarity on purpose, positioning, proposition and your brand promise are realised and integrated into your operations, people and communications. A rebranding strategy that does not take account of the strategic context for brand transformation for your business, will not deliver the full benefits your business deserves.
Step 2) Brand Identity
Brand identity is all the visual, verbal design and cues of your brand and should match your overall brand personality. Many rebranding strategies stop at this level but we aim to go beyond the visual and match these cues not just to the brand personality but also to your brand imperatives; things like purpose, positioning, position and promise), and be designed to make the right impact. This is how you build out a rebranding strategy with stamina.
Step 3) Capability and CX (Customer Experience) Alignment
Holistic integration of brand strategy into your operations and processes can create a customer experience that customers appreciate and don’t want to be without. That comes from building the capability to match your brand’s promise.
It’s important to grasp that your customer’s experience is a rolling river, from when they become aware of you, to when you have fulfilled an order to when they recommend you or find out you have other services they need because you anticipated their needs to when you ask for reviews they are happy to give or respond to a query or complaint they wish they didn’t need to when they read news of what you or your employees are up to, doing things that interest or matter to them. It matters.
Step 4) Change
Understanding what needs to change to plug the gaps between your vision and your as-is business model with its attendant challenges and constraints, is a key part of building a brand or rebranding. Change is central to successful and sustainable rebranding and managing this process and your organisation’s readiness for it is vital.
Step 5) Communications
Once your brand personality is clear, your voice and language can be evolved to meet prospective client expectations and appeal to their emotions, and this comes from messaging that is concerted and consistent across all channels for employees, partners, and clients alike.
Step 6) People and Culture
As first-line advocates of your business, and defenders of the faith of your business, your employees are so precious. It’s critical that they buy into the principles of the business and that they are empowered to embody your brand ideas and ways of working in their conduct and performance. The culture of your business must enable the attitudinal positions your business expects to see through your employees. Building and executing a rebranding strategy in the context of brand transformation is a perfect opportunity to review how well your processes facilitate innovation and adoption of change as some profound changes to underlying processes and systems may be required.
Step 7) Digital Transformation, Marketing, Presence and Web
Digital – the word on everyone’s lips with a plethora of applications, fields and opportunities.
Rebranding your business strategically, not just visually, is the perfect time to start to understand your customers, their needs and habits as well as the outstanding gaps in your business’s capability. Being the aspirational brand your business aims to be will fall short without significant and extensive digital capabilities and a presence that is built and bolstered through them, for example, engagement and the ability for your clients to access some of your services through your digital infrastructure.
Step 8) Constantly and iteratively align brand imperatives to business objectives
Once deficits are identified, it is important that all changes undertaken are done with a view to mapping strategic objectives, delivery methods and the brand’s aspirations and objectives.
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