Every company has a brand. During every cohort, we bring brand strategist and Highway1 mentor Mark Mian in to give a talk about the creation, care, and feeding of your company’s brand. We had a chat with him after his talk for the previous cohort about the amount of control you can exercise over your company’s brand; for the ninth one, we wanted to find out something different.
HWY1: You’ve done branding work with a lot of different companies; is there a stumbling block a lot of companies seem to hit in the brand design process?
MM: Companies often underestimate the value of research to achieve “brand-market fit.” It’s the problem of being an insider, of not leaving one’s bubble to understand the context of one’s work within the surrounding landscape. As a consultant, I first act as a hyper-critical outsider, conducting “reality check” research into everything tangential to the enterprise. This includes society and industry; consumer psychology and trends; government and regulatory issues; competitor and “peer” brands; press activity and attitudes; and, of course, the company itself — uncovering employee perspectives, attitudes, and experiences. The goal is to synthesize as objective a picture as possible to make confidently strategic design decisions.
As the research begins to reveal patterns and trends among market players, another stumbling block for companies is having the courage to stand apart from what’s standard or typical among competitors. That’s true for anything; going against the grain can be scary, especially for more established organizations that can be set in their ways and attached to past successes. But therein lies the opportunity for more nimble startups, who often want to save money by skipping the research phase and going straight to design. I’ve seen too many startups fail simply for that reason: disruptive, visionary products represented by typical, myopic brand design.
Another stumbling block — one that I’ve been considering a lot, lately — is the problem of implementing the brand into everyday life, at every level of the organization, and not just at the surface via the name, logo, and visual design. The problem stems from two issues:
- Brand is DNA: Not realizing that brand is endemic to everything within the company.
- Branding is behavior: Not realizing that everyone in the company must understand how to authentically embody the brand in their particular role.
So the brand is more than the superficial image: it’s an ethos that determines a uniquely characteristic style for everything the company does. A full brand design campaign should include research, strategy, design, and ongoing talent training.
Another part of your talk is about audience touchpoints for brands; is there a particular area that you see companies tend to skimp on when they make their brand impressions?
Absolutely: Customer service (or “customer success”). Companies should realize that service can be as important as initial product design because of how easy it is for customers to relate their post-purchase experiences via social media. Companies may invest in the superficial aspects of brand design while overlooking how branding — as the mechanism for creating lasting impressions — also includes the company’s behavior. This means one of the most important touchpoints is the dissatisfied customer. As most marketers know, a negative review may create vastly more impact than a positive one.
However, turning a negative experience into a positive one can also create a vastly positive impact, because it’s an opportunity for the customer to be served and cared for in a personal way. Fixing problems for customers shouldn’t be dismissed as an unfortunate cost stemming from an inadequate product or offering, but rather an opportunity to make personal contact with the customer and prove to them the brand actually cares. Done right, customer service can create brand evangelists from disgruntled customers, and customers are typically the most effective advertising channel. I consider customer service as critical to branding as the name or logo — for me, it’s part of the product. Failed expectations among customers are going to happen, and the brand should be strategically built in anticipation of such incidents as opportunities for customer engagement and development.
As a company, how do you recover if you’re perceived as having broken the promise your brand makes?
You have to inspect what promise was made in the first place. Again, this is why research is important. Language is relative and brand promises are assessed in the context of the marketplace and beyond. A brand may innocently make claims that simply don’t measure up to market, industry, or societal standards. Don’t tell me you’re the best when you don’t know what else I’ve tested.
Our culture places much value on victory and avoiding failure. Engineers and scientists understand the value of failure, but it’s not as well-tolerated in the marketplace. Too many companies present themselves as “the best ever,” “the ultimate,” “the only choice,” etc, as opposed to simply presenting an identity that’s committed to achieving perfection. If they were to consider that failure’s going to happen — that dissatisfied customers, partners and press are likely — they might consider having a brand that can accommodate failure without losing face.
The best way to avoid breaking promises is to avoid making promises you’re not 100% sure you can keep. Otherwise, making good depends not only on humbly extending an apology, but taking action that demonstrates your renewed commitment to being as good as you say you are. “Sorry” should be a creative action, not just an admission of fault.
Are there any advantages startups have over big companies as far as branding goes?
Certainly. When a startup is in a market with large, established, dominant players who have big budgets and many resources, the startup must look to its advantages and pick the right battles. The flexibility of its behavior, communications, and design is a great advantage towards being fresher and more relevant than older brands. A big company isn’t as nimble. They can’t deviate from their historical identity as easily and authentically while retaining credibility among followers (and shareholders, if the company’s public). Startups can be more adventurous and responsive, evolving external and behavioral elements to address their audience’s sensibilities as they change and grow. For startups, the same mix of strategy and daring that inspired their disruptive product must be used to engineer an effectively disruptive brand.
