Your brand’s foundation

 

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How are you building your foundation?

A brand, much like someone’s personality, isn’t something you concoct or fabricate.  You can’t put it on and take it off at will.  It’s not window dressing, but instead it comes from within your company, the culture, the people, the vision and of course…the marketplace in which it exists.

 

You can, of course, amplify your brand by doing the right things with intention and frequency.  But…the foundation is already set.

In fact…you build your foundation with every choice you make as an organization and as the individuals who work for that organization.  David Ogilvy once said “every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.”  In today’s digital world where everything is archived by Google — it goes far beyond that.

Long before you are consciously on the radar screen of your target audience…you are creating your brand’s foundation with every:

  • Tweet
  • Facebook update
  • Snarly employee wearing one of your logo’d shirts in a bar
  • Branded truck driving carelessly
  • Sponsorship of an event
  • Comment left on someone else’s blog, FB, etc.
  • Advertising/Marketing offers

Think of each action as a log or brick.  Without meaning to — you are stacking each of those choices/actions together to create my first impression of you.  The foundation upon which I will decide if I want to keep interacting.

And by the way — your absence is as noticeable as your presence.  Those choices should be made as carefully as deciding where you do want to be seen.

Here’s my question.  How intentional are you being about your brand’s foundation?  Are you building it with a vision and purpose or is it just happening haphazardly?

 

Hat tip to Derrick Daye for reminding me of this Ogilvy quote.

 

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4 comments on “Your brand’s foundation

  1. Chef Chuck says:

    Yes, I am building my brand with real purpose, with some haphazardly help…
    Thank you for sharing, I really enjoy your meaning!

    1. Chuck,

      I’m glad it was helpful. Let us know how else we can help.

      Drew

  2. Branding is very important. It’s synonymous to your business’ identity.

    But we should also take note that building and maintaining a small-medium enterprise (SME) brand take different steps as compared to the ones implemented by big or multi-national corporations. For one, the latter has all the resources it can dispose. It can afford national TV ad spots. The former, on the other hand, has small budgets. Its branding strategies are limited.

    Nevertheless, small financial resources don’t equate to small branding foundation.

    1. Amelia,

      I’m guessing if you asked the big boys, they’d tell you that their resources are limited too. But you’re right — they have mediums available to them (especially if they are a consumer product) that other businesses do not.

      But brand strategies are size agnostic. You can still be very smart and deliberate about how you build your brand!

      Drew

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