It’s no easy feat to build a healthy brand that stands the test of time while continuing to advance category leadership. Focus, persistence, and sound strategy will be required to stay ahead of the drumbeat of constant change and the surprises of unexpected and disruptive business conditions.
To help, we’ve distilled the most pressing brand health issues that keep bubbling up for further examination. The outcome is a list of 10 prominent “strength conditioning” questions to amplify your brand’s relevance and resonance.
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- Role of emotion in marketing effectiveness. What are the planning and strategy implications of neuroscience reports that affirm the limbic brain (emotion) controls consumer actions on the path to purchase?
- Mitigating the presence of perceived risk in purchase. Have we fully mitigated any perceptions of risk and uncertainty in how consumers assess and interact with our brand and its value proposition?
- Optimizing brand differentiation. Is our brand sufficiently differentiated from other adjacent category choices, in ways that are immediately recognizable and appreciated by our target customers?
- New category creation and ownership. Have we pushed brand strategy far enough to establish a new “category of one” that we own, while offering real solutions people can’t get anywhere else?
- Enhancing trade customer relationships. Are our trade customers sufficiently equipped and trained to help consumers understand our brand value proposition, product story and higher purpose (your why) narrative?
- Updating and refining brand positioning. Is our brand positioning and messaging optimized for relevance and resonance to embrace shifts in the influence of cultural change on consumer behavior?
- Leveraging sustainable choice. Have we assessed and addressed the rise in conscious consumption, while fine-tuning best practices for our sustainability targets and verifiable outcomes?
- Maximizing social channel proof and community. Have we exploited our social channel strategies to engage and grow a community of brand ambassadors, while encouraging users to convey their authentic experiences?
- Deploying employees in strategic communication. Are we leveraging the credibility and passion of our employees as evangelists for our brand story and product narrative?
- Activating advocacy to validate brand promises. Have we fully developed creative, compelling brand content and education outreach strategy that validates what we want consumers to believe about our company and products?
These 10 matter because simply throwing more dollars at chasing awareness, especially when there are potential dents in the brand fabric, is a less than optimal approach. Shining a bright spotlight on a weakened brand value proposition risks exposing the flaws.
To objectively answer these questions requires more consideration than meets the eye – in part because the effort must seamlessly bridge from an analysis all the way to the ground on how these tools are executed. That said, when properly fine-tuned, you’ve just inoculated your business against the raging environmental conditions that pop up to throw your marketing off its game.
This Top 10 list is a brand health regimen that will require added investment of time and resources. The outcome is improved brand resilience and that’s entirely worth the effort.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Robert Wheatley, CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency.
At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define and articulate what makes them competitive and valuable. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education
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