A McDonald's sign in the town of Westbury on Long Island. | Location: Wesbury, NY, USA. (Photo by ... [+]
Does eating at McDonald’s make me look fat? Does drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer make me look frat? Does shipping with UPS make me look flat?
Does your brand suffer from a brand identity crisis? That can stop an independent professional or small service firm dead in its tracks from attracting high-paying clients. Typically the problem is messaging that is off.
So change the messaging and change the narrative. McDonald’s now sells salads. Pabst isn’t just for frat parties, it now has a hot global reputation. UPS now makes brown logistics look cool.
These are some brands that suffered a brand identity crisis and made messaging changes. Now think about your personal brand or the brand of your small company.
Face it, you already have a brand, but is it the brand you want? A brand is what clients and prospects perceive about you. Some call it the brand promise. You need to make sure your brand promise messaging says what you want to communicate. A brand identity is too important to leave to chance or fix down the road.
How can a messaging mismatch cause you a brand identity crisis?
To learn about this potentially costly wrong step in marketing, I huddled with Christine Alemany, CEO at TBGA.
“A common problem for marketers is learning that the brand identity isn’t resonating with its intended customers,” says Alemany.
Alemany is a trusted expert in reinvigorating brands. She advises startups through Columbia Business School's Entrepreneurial Sounding Board and is a teaching fellow at the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center.
“What I find a lot is the internal confusion or frustration, especially as companies grow,” says Alemany. “If the founders aren't 100% aligned as they grow, what typically happens is the silo starts moving in different directions.”
Here is the problem according to Alemany. If you talk to the operations team, they'll say one thing, and then the customer service team will say another thing. And the sales team will say something different. The product team will say something different too. The messaging of the brand promise is out of whack.
“And in that case, you don't know what you're delivering to the customer, and you're probably not delivering on what you're saying you're going to deliver,” she says. ”If nobody agrees on the value of the product to the customer, then you don't really have a brand. You have five different people interfacing with their customers in five different ways, saying five different things to the customers, and sometimes they don't agree.”
According to Alemany, this lack of internal synergy about brand identity can really hurt a company. “Usually,” Alemany emphasizes, “there are one to two things that your product or service will be known for. If your salespeople, your customer service, your engineers, or your account managers don't understand that or if they have different views from the company leaders, that creates a lot of confusion in the marketplace.”
How do you know if you have a messaging mismatch? “If you are losing market share, especially to new entrants, then that's a red flag for your brand identity. The Apple brand, for example, is now pivoting from creatives and early adopters to creating a community. There are always new entrants, and when you start losing market share and new entrants are gathering market shares, then that's something to stop and think about.”
What's a good way for marketers to successfully shift a brand identity in a way that will be a better match for their target customer?
“Align the management team around the brand identity,” she says. “Consistently communicate it to the entire company. Make sure that everyone is bought in.”
The bottom line: As your team grows, make sure everyone on the team is communicating the right brand promise.
