A Pocket Consultant’s BRANDING

            So, what is this book all about?  What is a Brand?  Why should any business need one?  Why should any business owner care about having one?  Isn’t it complex?  Isn’t it expensive?  If you’ve read the introduction to this book you would already have a bit of understanding as to the answer to all those questions. But just to make sure let’s briefly cover them here, beginning with “What’s a Brand?” 

A Brand in its simplest form is just a name or a label by which you identify things.  Well known examples would be names like: Ford®, Coke®, Hershey’s®, Mr. Clean®, Kleenex®, Gucci®, NIKE®.  But Brands are beyond these: the National Geographic Society® is a Brand, the Democratic and Republican parties are both Brands, New York City is a Brand.  Some of you may remember back to when the unions engaged in active Brand building, with their, “Look for the Union Label”, advertisements and TV commercials.

So is a brand just a name?  Any name by which you identify things?  Again, in a simple sense — yes.  However, the real power of Branding, the power exercised by many of the Brands noted above, comes from the emotional connections people have with those names.  It comes from the sense of knowing what you will get if you engage in activity with that Brand, be it a clean house, help with your runny nose, an escape to an exciting city, or a good feeling about helping the underdog. 

It is an organization’s (profit and non-profit oriented organizations alike), ability to understand, develop and manage their Brand that helps them build long term success in the marketplace.  That is why understanding your company’s Brand is so important.  What people know, understand and feel about your organization is what will drive your success and growth.  However, the really great news is that this power is available to everyone: from the huge multinational multi-billion dollar company, to the small entrepreneur to the local zoological society or theater guild. Best of all, building a powerful Brand is basically free.

To build that growth and success for your organization we are first going to delve a little deeper into what a Brand is.  Then we are going to walk through an easy step-by-step process that anyone can use to build their own Brand.  So let’s start this journey, and begin by placing “branding” into the right framework for you and your business

Special note to all non-profit readers out there.  In this book we will use business in the very general sense of engaging in economic activity, be that activity for things or for services, profit or non-profit.  So the processes described here are fully applicable to you as well.

Your Business

The first thing we need to look at is your business:

Maybe you run your own coffee shop or restaurant.  Perhaps you are the minister of a church.  Maybe you manage a line of products for a large company.  Then again, maybe you are a service provider to the community. Regardless of what you do, you know that in managing your business you have to make a variety of decisions everyday:

·         Do you accept a questionable return item?