The most important elements of a brand should be:

Brand Position

• Who is addressed by company’s branded products or services. What the company does and for whom
• The company’s unique value and how customers benefit from products and/or services
• Key competitive differentiators, what makes the brand be chosen, be different from its competitors

Brand Promise

• The ONE most important thing that the brand promises to deliver to its customers — Every time!
• What customers and partners should expect from every interaction, how should they feel as brand’s customers

Brand Personality

• What the brand is to be known for
• Personality traits that customers, partners, and employees use to describe the company. What comes to the (potential) customer’s mind when addressed about the brand

Brand Story

• The company’s history and how the history adds value and credibility to the brand
• A summary of products/services/solutions

Brand Associations

• Physical artifacts: name, logo, colors, taglines, fonts, imagery
• Ideally, it must reflect the all the above statements about the brand and the company

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A successful brand has to stand for something. And the more variations to attach to it, the more you risk standing for nothing. This is especially true when what you add actually clashes with your perception. [...]Until companies come to grips with the simple fact that they don’t really have an inordinate need to grow, but an inordinate desire to grow (because of Wall Street), bad things will continue to happen. Slowly but surely, brands will lose their meaning as they try to become more.

George W. Bush, Branding Guru?
What lessons can be drawn from Bush as brand guru?

• Visuals are more important than text
• PR is the most pow
• Naming is important
• Brand to your base
• Enlist brand allies

Internal Marketing vs. Internal Branding
Where Internal Marketing & Internal Branding Overlap

• Both approaches recognize employees ARE the brand. As a result, both are focused on engaging employees.
• Both are part of organizational and marketing strategy to strengthen competitive advantage.
• Both involve leadership – i.e., neither can be effective without management commitment.

How do we brand ourselves?
Like any branding exercise, the key to personal branding is having a good product, one which you understand and pitch to the right market. The first step in personal branding is knowing who you are, find out what strengths your brand possesses and how these strengths can help you. Personal branding is not about presenting a façade to the public; a poor product will not stand up to market scrutiny. This is also a choice of brand elements, people you deal with, the look that you have, and how you conduct yourself.

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20 – Brand Evolution – Adapting a brand to align a company’s promise, or value proposition, with its growth over time; a company’s brand must reflect its current position to ensure that it keeps its promises and is accurately “known” by customers

36 – Brand Identity – The outward manifestation of a corporate brand, product brand, service brand or branded environment including name and visual appearance.

37 – Brand Integration Plan – A proactive, structured and disciplined plan, with clear strategic objectives and detailed implementation steps that helps merged companies build a new, integrated brand and value proposition. Ideally this planning begins prior to completion of merger or aquisition

See full branding “periodic” table.

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