A Better Brand in 2009

A new year is just around the corner, and that inevitably means a list of resolutions. For a better brand in 2009, make (and keep!) these five resolutions:

I will live the brand throughout the organization. It's time to dispel the prehistoric notion that branding is something the marketing folks do. Branding affects, and is affected by, your culture, management and operations. In short, branding is everything you do. You won't succeed if you stick branding in some functional silo.

Execs, I'm calling you on the carpet. Since branding concerns every area of your company, the entire C-suite has to understand, embrace and champion it. There's simply no other way to ingrain branding into your corporate DNA. And once you get it, make sure your people get it too.

I will serve. If you're serious about true branding, here's the first lesson: It's all about service. If your brand isn't improving lives in some way, big or small, your long-term chances of success are nil.

So stop looking at your consumers as data points or as means to reaching your sales quotas. They're the reason you're in business, and if you want to stay in business, you'll never stop searching for ways to make their lives better. Do this, and sales will take care of themselves.

I will be courageous. To paraphrase the old saying, one definition of insanity is doing the same things as your competitors and expecting a better result.

Too often, we make decisions based on "how things are done in this business." And so we miss the point that the name of the game is to play it differently. No great brand was ever built by marching in lock-step with its competitors.

Consumers don't want more of the same. They want new experiences, new solutions, new ideas. If you want to win in 2009, start with the courage to blaze a new trail where it matters.

I will see the future. The ancient proverb is true: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there."

If you haven't defined your numeric measures of success, make that a priority. And most brands fall short in another goal-setting area: Positioning. Positioning is a clear statement of how you will be perceived by those you seek to motivate. It's a perceptual objective that complements your numeric ones.

Defining your positioning is your first act of courage, because it forces you to establish how you will be different, how you will serve, and what you will stand for. It is thus an invaluable guide for deploying resources and living the brand within your organization.

You can't build a brand without positioning. If you haven't defined yours, make 2009 the year that you do. If you have, evaluate it in the coming 12 months to ensure that it's optimized.

I will get smarter. It's easy to get stuck on auto-pilot, treating our assumptions as truths. But those assumptions could be quietly crippling our brands.

So, a challenge: In the next two weeks, define three questions that, if answered, would help you to better manage your brand. These could be things like evaluating return on marketing investments, defining key customer segments, or understanding the buying process.

Once you've defined your three most critical information outages, establish the plan by which you will close the knowledge gaps in 2009. Find a way to make it happen.

"Getting smarter" is also about mindset. It means listening more and talking less. It means gathering the right brains around you and leveraging them, including outside counsel when needed

Keeping even one of these resolutions will result in a stronger brand. Keeping them all should make it a year to remember.

A version of this post appeared in the Business Courier of Cincinnati column "That Branding Thing" on November 14, 2008.

To find out more about our services that ensure your brand is doing the right things in the New Year, please visit www.ThreeDeuce.com.