It’s so easy to do a lot of good work on your brand and then slip back in to old patterns of doing business as usual — old habits are hard to break. One method I’ve found to help solidify the new brand values your organization has developed is to have each person on the branding team take the time — right now, when the essence of your brand is still fresh in your mind, you know why you’ve agreed on a few key phrases and attributes for your brand, and you feel strongly about them — to document your understanding of it.

Mike Moser recommends this step in his book, United We Brand, as a way to help people internalize the key brand messages: write a few sentences in your own words explaining why each particular brand value defines or is relevant to the essence of your organization.

For example, if you chose “expertise” as one of your key brand values, Moser suggests thinking through and writing down how it defines you and why you think it’s relevant. Something like:

“Expertise – Every message we communicate should be grounded in facts. Every solution should be actionable and relevant to the lives of our customers. We need to communicate that we have the ability and the power to get things done.”

or

“Direct – Our business model is direct and so is our personality. That means we’re relentlessly honest, straightforward, and we ‘tell it like it is.’ We don’t go through middlemen to sell our product, or go through metaphors, analogies, or euphemisms to make our point. We state each message simply and directly.”

Collect what everyone’s written and distribute the document to everyone on your team. Discuss the interpretations, especially if there are any conflicting ones. Think about what’s been written, and talk about what needs to change in your organization to in order for these descriptions to stay real and meaningful.

And don’t pack them away on a shelf somewhere. The more you refer to these brand values and what they mean to you, the more relevant your new brand essence will become.

[tags]brand essence, branding, brand relevance, Mike Moser, key brand messages, brand values[/tags]

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Brand Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.