A Simple, Powerful Step to Achieving Brand Success

Justin Lynch
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

We’ve all heard the adage “actions speak louder than words.” While that may be true for most things in life, it can become a crutch if applied to your branding.

When you start to emphasize your actions or words over the other, you create inconsistencies in your brand.

So, how does emphasizing your brand’s actions become a crutch if you apply it to your branding strategy?

Crafting a successful brand requires consistency, and that consistency comes from doing and saying the same things. By acting in unison with your brand’s message you create loyal and trusting customers. Then, over time, you can leverage the trust you’ve built to achieve new goals. This leverage is how companies, such as Apple, can successfully launch new products in new market segments time after time.

When you start to emphasize your actions or words over the other, you create inconsistencies in your brand. For examples, here’s how different scenarios play out if you choose to emphasize one over the other:

“Your words speak louder than your actions”

We’ve all seen this before. A company kicks off a new marketing campaign promising things will be different than they were in the past. They’re under new management and now they’re all about their customers.

However, through their actions everyone quickly realizes their words are at best hollow, or at worst deceitful. Any trust they built up is eroded, and their brand now carries a stigma.

This is one of the quickest ways to destroy the credibility of your brand.

“Your actions speak louder than your words”

This scenario happens when a company makes all the right internal changes, but fails to market the power of their brand. Over time they’ve build up a small, but loyal customer base. However, depending on the financial health of their business they may not be able to build their customer base quick enough to stay in business.

Your brand won’t stand on it’s own. You must promote it if you hope to achieve the success you’re aiming for. Often times companies rely on their brand to do all the talking, hence why it becomes a crutch.

“Your actions speak in unison with your words”

When your actions speak in unison with your words, powerful results can occur. For example, in 2009 Dominos promised to rework their pizzas from the crust up. They made a huge marketing push explaining why they were making the change, what their promise was, and then they went out to deliver on that promise.

Whether you like Domino’s new pizza is up for debate, but what isn’t debatable is the impact their business saw when their actions spoke in unison with their words. At the time of their initial marketing push in 2009, Domino’s stock price was average $8–10 a share. Today, in 2018, their stock price is now almost $300 a share (a 30x increase in value).

So, if you want to achieve brand success, it starts with a simple, powerful step; ensure your brand’s actions speak in unison with your brand’s words.

Written by

Helping others repair and improve their brand • www.avlier.com

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