Strategy & Brand

As a general rule, BlackDog doesn’t brand upstarts. Here are some resources to help get your brand new brand off the ground though…

If you can’t find the answer to the brand query you’re muddling over, puzzling out, and Googling till the cows come home, send it our way. BlackDog’s 365 blog is an ongoing, evolving, question and answer guide developed to help business owners and entrepreneurs understand and hone their brands. Submit your questions on brand, branding, or branders to BlackDog and we’ll send you a personal response with the answer. An anonymous and confidential version of your question and our response will then be posted on BlackDog’s 365 blog to help out your fellow ponderers.

What’s a Brand?

• The Big Idea
• Logo vs Brand
• Who Defines a Brand?
• Brand Success – Just a Marketing Plan?
• Brand vs Advertising

Do You Need a Brand?

• Why Do I Need a Brand?

Naming Your Brand:

• How to Name a Startup
• 10 Ways to Name Your Company or Product
• Types of company and product names — A field guide

Slinging a Slogan:

• What’s The Difference: Good Tagline vs Bad Tagline

Picking a great URL:

• How to Find a Good URL without Having a Brain Hemorrhage

Finding Your Big Idea:

• The Big Idea

Differentiating Your brand:

• Differentiators…Let me count the ways
• Crazy. Inspired. Bold. Successful.
• How Do We Crate an Iconic Brand?
• Strip Away All the Filler…

Missions and Visions:

• Is Our Mission Our Brand Promise?

Components of a Brand Strategy:

• 19 Components of a Brand Strategy

Identifying Your Customer:

• Who Is Our Customer?

Identifying Your Brand Touch Points:

• What’s a brand touch point?

The Best Brand Book for Startups:

• Is There a Brand Book For Startups?

The Best Brand Books Period:

• Do You Have a Favorite Brand Book?

How to Write a Business Plan:

• Writing a Business Plan

Identifying Core Values:

• How Important are “Core Values”?
• Changing the World… One Brand at a Time

Developing Brand Standards:

• Hey, I Have Standards

Sponsorship  & Strategic Partnership Standards:

• Banners, logos, & Neon Lights, oh my!

Diversifying into New Markets:

• How Does A Brand Diversify Into New Markets?

The Truth About Brand Loyalty:

• Do You Believe in Brand Loyalty?

Synching Your Brand with Your Brand Experience:

• How do you sync brand and brand experience?

On Relevance, Transparency, & Avoiding Bullshit

• Do you ever get over whelmed by finding ways or trying to be inventive and original?
• The Better You Are, The Better You Look

Do Charitable Actions & Social Giving Build Brand Equity?

• Do Charitable Actions Build Brand Equity?
• Redux – Do Charitable Actions Build Brand Equity?

Bringing Your Humanity to Work:

• Brand Is An Inside Job

Communicating your Differentiated Brand:

• We Don’t Brand Bullshit: How BlackDog Does Communications
• Narrativity: You’re Too Good For Boring
• How Buff is Your Brand Narrative?
• Crafting Content out of Fingerprints
• Top Shelf: Communications Reads We Recommend
• Top Shelf Part II: More Communications Reads We Recommend

Brand & Social Media:

• Social Media – The Prize Inside
• The Rolling Stones Didn’t Have to Bribe THEIR Groupies
• Twitter, the Medium is the Message
• Social Media Masterminds: Facebook Pages that Are Getting it Right!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world… it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

It took me 30 minutes this morning to buy wheat pita bread at the grocery store. Not because the lines were long or the aisles congested, but because every brand of bread I selected from my grocer’s shelf contained High Fructose Corn Syrup. I scoured the bread section looking for any loaf sans this pesky addition. Oatmeal, Wheat, Whole Grain, Rye, White…There wasn’t a single bread brand or style that didn’t contain High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). There was, however, HFCS-free wheat pita- so I bought it instead…

I’ll survive just fine on organic oatmeal instead of toast, but the question remains: why does the food industry still insist on using an ingredient that customers are consciously, actively trying to avoid for sound, healthy reasons?

It’s obvious the food industry has caught on to our growing concern for dietary health and nutritional value. Take a stroll down your local grocery’s cereal aisle and you’ll see an interesting new phenomena- nutrition labeling on the front of cereal packaging. This ‘front of packaging labeling’ isn’t regulated by the FDA, and it’s being used to make unhealthy cereals appear healthier than they really are- by showcasing only selective nutrition information on the front of the package (you’ll find more info on front of package labeling here, and here). This unregulated nutrition info has been shown to decrease the likelihood that people will read the actual ingredients list or peruse the FDA regulated nutrition facts panel.  Instead of making cereal healthier, they’re making cereal look healthier.  Instead of removing corn syrup from our food, the Corn Refiners Association began  working to make corn syrup look healthier by lobbying to changing the name of High Fructose Corn Syrup to the more natural sounding name: Corn Sugar. The Corn Refiners Association has spent more than 30 million dollars to air a series of new commercials attempting to convince the general public that our bodies can’t tell the difference between real cane sugar and corn syrup- as long as it’s eaten in moderation. Experts, including “Sugar Shock” author Connie Bennett have argued that eating corn syrup in moderation is nearly impossible since it’s the cheapest and therefore most heavily and widely used sweetener on the market (it’s found in 2 out of every 3 items available in your local grocery store). It’s in our cereal, our pasta sauce, our baby formula… Instead of helping us eat healthier, live healthier, the Corn Refiners Association dropped 30million dollars to make corn syrup look healthier than it is. (You’ll find an interview with Connie Bennett discussing the disturbing truth about these 30 million dollar corn syrup ads via AdAge’s youtube)

At BlackDog, we know: The better you are, the better you look. Brands don’t live in vacuums, they impact, influence, and shape the world around us.  Imagine what 30million dollars could do if it wasn’t being wasted on deception and manipulative spin?

We don’t brand bullshit, and we don’t buy bullshit brands (on or off the clock).  We know, whenever we buy anything, we’re buying more than just the tangible items we’re walking out of a store with. Our dollars, whether they’re spend on branded sneakers, a pint of beer, or a donation to a local not-for-profit, are actively contributing to that organization’s continued existence- for better or worse. It’s time for us to switch our brand loyalty to the brands that are positively contributing to the world we want to live in 10, 20, 50 years down the line.

Progressive hospitals keep it real. Investing in meaningful strategies that tap the passions of working cultures is the only way to deliver persuasive differentiators and drive preference in any industry. Especially hospitals, where the lifting is heavy, the work is long, and the high call is “personal”.  Effective brand and patient experience programs must first find consensus within the organization.

BlackDog recognizes the work of Leebov Golde & Associates as a critical alignment tool linking strategy and expression. We fell in love with Wendy Leebov’s plain talk approach and her practical insights- both of which you’ll find below, in our 45 minute interview with the queen of patient care herself…

What does ‘patient-centered care’ mean to you?

Simply:  I am here FOR YOU.  YOUR best interest is my first priority.  I WANT to partner with you to ensure that your best interest and voice are at the center of everything I do.

If you could teach every hospital one lesson, what would it be?

Caring and COMMUNICATING caring are two different things.  We need to help the caring people on our teams EXPRESS their caring in every interaction.

What about your work do you find most rewarding?

Seeing the wonderful people who enter healthcare professions revive their passion for the work by communicating with caring and CONNECTING with the people they serve.  So beneficial for patients and families and so gratifying for the service provider/caregiver!

What are the most common mindsets and protocols you have to help hospitals overcome in order to help achieve patient-centered care?

The most difficult mindset is task-orientation.  People have racing minds.  Their to-do lists are flooding their consciousness.  This makes it impossible for them to connect to the PERSON behind the patient.

What do you say to skeptics who think focusing on patient experience distracts from hospital efficiency?

What good is an efficient hospital without satisfied patients, patient loyalty, a good reputation and referrals from satisfied consumers?  Also, happily, now hospital reimbursement depends in part on patient experience scores… so leaders are shooting themselves in the foot by NOT focusing on patient experience.  They will lose money.

Do you have a favorite example of a before and after patient experience scenario that helps articulate why patient-experience matters?

A patient cries out in pain, and a nurse says, “How would you rate the pain from 1 to 10?”  The Nurse WANTS to come up with the FIX for the pain, but does not communicate with empathy.  The patient experiences the nurse as hardened and unfeeling even though the nurse proceeds to remedy the pain.  If the nurse had said, “I’m sooo sorry you’re in pain and I want to help!  So, tell me, how would rate the pain, etc.”, then the patient would feel cared about and would perceive the nurse as caring and supportive.

How do you foster an internal hospital culture that shifts the collective focus from task-oriented to patient-centered at every nook and cranny touch point?

It takes a combination of work with leadership as standard setters and role models, revised job descriptions, performance review forms, etc., aligning recognition and reward, TRAINING because the skills for making your caring felt are not obvious even if you are TRYING to communicate your caring, reinforcement, practice, and a long-term attention to hardwiring caring communication into everyday routines. 

What are some of the oddball touch points that hospitals and caregivers frequently overlook?

Touchpoints where patient and family ANXIETY is significant.  Anxiety reduction is the most powerful driver of improvements in patient satisfaction.  Patients and families are fraught with anxiety and few organizations have pointedly developed communication protocols designed to prevent anxiety or ease it if it can’t be prevented.  Most communication protocols are fact and content-oriented….. and miss the boat on providing emotional support.

One example is handoff communication.  Usually there isn’t much of this, for instance, when a nurse is leaving and another coming on for their shift.  Patients become anxious.  “Who will be taking care of me now?  When will they show up?  Will they know what’s happening with me today?”  There needs to be (and increasingly there are) protocols for the handoff between shifts:  “Mrs. Harper, I’ll be leaving in a half hour.  Nancy Ford will be taking over for me and she is TERRIFIC!  Also, rest assured that I will talk with her before I leave so she knows what’s been going on for you today.  You’ll be in good hands with Nancy!”

What advice do you have for hospital employees who are advocating for changes in patient care and experience within the organization?

It’s usually either nurses or executive leaders who begin pushing for changes in patient care and experience.  Nurses and other patient-care advocates within the hospital are burdened with the task of making the case for how the organization will benefit from the changes, how the patients and families benefit, AND how the employees will benefit.

Patient-care advocates need to make the case that improving patient experience is a sustainable win-win for the people they serve and well as the organization.

Communicating caring and great patient care experiences promote healing are shown to produce clinical results. Care and communicating helps patients and their families feel more confident with the quality of care they’re receiving, feel better informed about the care and treatment they’re receiving, feel better prepared to speak up, and feel more able to participate in treatment and recovery planning and decision-making.

GREAT patient experiences also maximize value-based purchasing for the organization, builds a great reputation within the community which helps retain and attract patients and helps the hospital become provider of choice. For employees, Great patient care experiences and communicating caring helps make their work more gratifying, makes them more likely to devote energy and enthusiasm to their duties, and considerably improves job satisfaction and retention.

Tell me a bit about the role anxiety plays in determining patient experience.

In the past, too many improvement strategies were designed to make people happier, but when you’re sick you can only be so happy. At Disney, it matters that customers feel happy; in healthcare, what matters is that patients and families feel cared for.

Research conducted by the Jefferson University Hospital has shown the importance of anxiety reduction to patient experience. When patients’ anxiety levels are reduced they can concentrate on the information they’re being given, they’re able to ask better questions, they’re better able to retain information, they feel more confidence in their caregivers, and they’re more likely to partner with caregivers. Additionally, anxiety has been shown to interfere with healing and recovery- it matters for patient experience and HCAP scores, but it also matters for clinical outcomes.

Are there tools other than communicating caring that you frequently recommend to help reduce patient and family anxiety?

The specific skills that show caring help reduce anxiety. When the patient feels that you’re genuinely paying attention to their needs, they feel respected and they feel confident in their caregivers- they don’t feel judged, they feel safer.

Non-verbal communication is also very important. Sometimes people say things they think are caring but their non-verbal communication is conveying something else entirely- which creates anxiety. This is an especially common problem because medical professionals tend to be very task and outcome oriented- which can make them seem cold and hurried. Patients are getting a double message. Aligning non-verbal behavior with caring and communicating helps create trust, reduce anxiety, and improve patient experience.

Explaining Positive Intent is also important. Positive Intent means explaining how the activity a caregiver is about to perform is in the patient’s best interest. Saying you’re here to take vitals doesn’t say anything about how that activity is in the patient’s best interest- then the patient has to worry if something is wrong, or if they’re just being inconvenienced by a standard policy. If the caregiver instead explains that they’re here to check on you and make sure you’re well throughout the evening, the patient doesn’t have to experience anxiety- someone is paying attention to their specific needs, they aren’t lost in a big cold busy hospital system, and so on. Expressing emotional intent creates trust and reduces anxiety- it communicative that caring activities aren’t just policy- they’re caring activities in the patient’s best interests.

One of your specialties is “Horizontal hostility; coworker relationships”. Tell us a bit about horizontal hostility and how it affects GREAT patient care.

Staff members are relating to each other all day long, and the quality of those actions affect how staff members feel about their jobs all day long, which affects how they feel about patients.

Hostility and relational aggression among staff members has a disproportionate affect on the working culture- what helps is labeling it with the team. Managers need to explicitly address the issue and teams need to create signals so they can address horizontal hostility when it occurs. Team building strategies and communication routines within work teams help reduce horizontal hostility by addressing accountability with managers, creating a working culture that addresses issues proactively and is unintimidated to address the issue, and by creating a zero tolerance mentality.

We have one associate on our team who is a specialist in horizontal hostility specifically to work within hospital teams to help create a culture that’s supportive, that positively contributes to each others’ working experience, and works with a constructive team mentality.

What admirable staff characteristics help facilitate GREAT patient experiences?

I always assume people are caring people, and people just need to express their caring and make it felt. Emotional intelligence is an extremely valuable characteristic in great patient care, as is the ability to be emotionally generous (which requires that they be able to get outside themselves and listen to the needs of other people and act genuinely on behalf  of other people). Also: the ability to connect in a non-judgmental manner, the ability to listen, mindfulness, the ability to communicate effectively and providing effective explanations, responsiveness, the ability to take initiative and be proactive, the ability to anticipate people’s needs-  because patients shouldn’t HAVE to asked for everything they need, and the ability to connect with other people and help patients feel less alone.

Your website explains that “Nurse Communication” is the factor with greatest impact on patients’ overall hospital experience ratings. What are other common factors that have major influences on patient experience?

Great patient care is much more than confidently performing the tasks, and handling the information and treatment and plans in an effective way, it’s also the emotional aspects- the emotional aspects are vital to great patient care. People are relying on us for more than effective care, they’re relying on us for effective caring- because it makes them feel safe and confident. There are lots of things that we can’t fix, and people in healthcare are fixers by nature, but some medical conditions can’t be fixed. What we can always do is help people feel cared about, cared for, and less alone- it’s a vital part of providing great care.

That’s why, when you address caring and communication you DO see patient experience scores improve.

What questions are you asked most frequently by new and prospective clients?

1. “How do you hold people accountable?”

The answer is that managers on the front lines need to be engaged and be prepared to raise the bar with their staff. Managers need to be clear that they’re expecting more than clinic excellence- managers need to expect that clinical excellence be combined with caring and communicating caring. Managers also need to be responsible for coaching and feedback. Accountability is in the hands of frontline managers. So we do considerable coaching for mangers who are having trouble getting the results that the organization is looking for.

2. “How do you know you’re having an impact?”

Mostly our patients prove impact with their experience scores, and you can supplement that feedback with patient stories and a real-time feedback system so interventions can be made immediately when problems do arise to help make things right. It’s important to decide the methods you’re going to use to monitor impact and to set up the systems in advance so they work.

3. “Are these results sustainable?”

Everyone cares about sustainability.  Communicating caring usually sustains itself because IT WORKS.

To achieve sustainable results hospitals need to incorporate caring and communicating into job descriptions, they need to evaluate for it when they’re hiring, managers need to hold employees accountable, and ongoing training and focus on caring is essential. Managers absolutely need to refocus on caring and communicating, because the more you communicate with caring the better you get at it and the more satisfying your job becomes.

For more insights from Wendy, and more info on patient-centered care, we recommend signing up for Wendy’s monthly newsletter: HeartBeat on the Quality Patient Experience

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Links in this post

http://www.quality-patient-experience.com/wendy-leebov-e-zine.html

“Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own.” Jean Toomer

Will anyone search out your sponsors’ products and services simply because you permitted their logo to grace your stage, your ad space, your playbill?

Sometimes advertising, sponsorship, and strategic partnership slumming happens because the bills have to be paid, sometimes it’s due to time constraints, and sometimes it happens because some decision maker somewhere didn’t know how to say no to a neighbor, cousin, or golf buddy. Most of the time though, it happens because there just aren’t explicit standards in place to guide right-fit selections and guard against poorly chosen partnerships.

One of my favorite stories on sponsorship and brand standards is the glorious, rebellious, and legally questionable tale of The International Times paper and it’s infamous IT Girl. It all started in 1966 with a unique problem…

Jim Haynes was a young theater director, living in London, faced with a complicated problem. The high cost of his production expenses meant that his entire theater could go under if even a single production failed to woo and wow critics and theater-goers. Jim knew his theater would never be free to experiment until it could afford to fail… So, Jim devised a plan that would make failure financially feasible.

One of Jim’s highest production expenses was advertising. Enter, Stage Left, Jim’s solution: The International Times. The International Times newspaper, later known as IT, was created to provide free advertising and event listings for experimental theater and productions sympathetic to the underground movement .

The only issue IT’s founders, Jim Haynes and editor Tom McGrath, agreed upon was their passionate sentiment on censorship.  Censorship, along with funding constraints, was impairing theater’s ability to experiment. Censorship was also preventing the pre-internet underground community from banding together to support the causes, events, and organizations they cared about.

IT’s second issue made a bold statement by featuring the previously unpublished anti-Semitic speeches of Ezra Pound. The radically offensive speeches were accompanied by an editorial proclaiming the paper’s unequivocal support of free speech and creative expression. The editorial explained that, while IT’s staff didn’t agree with Pound’s views, IT would publish art because it existed, not because their editorial staff agreed with it or because it met a restrictive pre-set definition of “good”. In an interview with Tom McGrath, he explained that the Pound speeches were the paper’s first bold, unwavering, unapologetic stand against censorship. Publishing something that they themselves didn’t even agree with was their way of proving their genuine commitment to free speech, and the paper immediately began to take off.

When art and theater events were banned and canceled by officials due to censorship, IT began helping re-organize events and worked to keep attendees updated on event relocation details. When an art exhibit was banned in Lund, Sweden because the nude model in the exhibit’s advertisements depicted pubic hair and a hash pipe, IT used the paper to re-organize the event. Instead of a small one-time event in Lund, IT managed to host the event at galleries across Europe.

While Jim started out selling the paper by hand, outside of small experimental theaters after late night performances, the explosive expansion of IT’s readership began to necessitate an actual distribution strategy. So, Jim and Tom found locally-owned shops who were committed to the underground community: record shops, bookstores, head shops, tattoo parlors…  and then they made a sign: a sign featuring Theda Bara as the IT Girl. The IT Girl sign quickly became a symbol for something far bigger than theater and newspapers. Something that resonated deeply and passionately with the paper’s readership. The IT Girl was a blazing symbol of a business’ staunch support of the newly united underground community.  If you had an IT Girl in your window, you deserved the underground community’s business. Supporting shops that proudly featured the IT Girl became a way for people to actively and consciously contribute to the continued existence of the brands that supported their values.

IT had standards, standards that centered around their purpose, their values, and their brand identity. Standards that helped unite the underground community, facilitated support for locally owned businesses, and helped shift the hierarchy from who had the business to who deserved the business.

Sponsorship and advertising standards have the power to create value and relevance when they’re consciously designed, clearly understood, and unapologetically enforced.

For more on Sponsorship check out BlackDog’s blog: Banners, Logos, and Neon Lights, oh my!
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Resources

http://www.jim-haynes.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_underground

http://www.internationaltimes.it/index.php?year=1966&volume=IT-Volume-1&issue=2&item=IT_1966-10-31_B-IT-Volume-1_Iss-2_001

http://www.internationaltimes.it/index.php?year=1966&volume=IT-Volume-1&issue=2&item=IT_1966-10-31_B-IT-Volume-1_Iss-2_002

http://blackdogstrategy.com/blog/2010/09/09/sponsorship/

Only 7% of the US beer market is comprised of craft beer devotees.
Yet, this savvy market is hopping at an ambitious rate of 11% annually as the commercial beer market shrinks 2% year after year. We want to know more about craft beer imbibers to build a kick ass craft beer brand for 3 guys with high ideals and a lot of guts.

If you drink craft brew this survey is for you… tell us your story. Be honest and keep it real.

Breakaway brand successes occur when brands with something to say begin speaking to audiences outside their close-knit school of thought.

Far too often, brands spend their all their communications efforts on preaching to the choir. Over, and over, and over again.

Remember our Outside Perspective blog? The disruptive technologies that radically move markets forward typically come from outside industries specifically because they have an outside perspective. The music industry didn’t imagine the ipod, airlines didn’t conjure up “go-to-meetings”, and TiVo wasn’t the brain child of the cable company.

When brands with valuable insights, unique perspectives, and innovative solutions only speak to other like-minded industry experts (who live within the same close-knit school of thought) or only speak to a group of devoutly loyal existing converts, their messages and their influence are limited and constricted. Speaking to the overlapping issues and the different audiences that are empowered to impact change and advance your cause moves your brand out of a category and into relevance…

Let’s take University Brands as our example. Through BlackDog’s activist foundation, Serious Play for Serious Girls, we frequently encounter academic researchers who report that their research is their contribution to their field and to the world at large. These researchers often find themselves frustrated that their research fails to reach the layman audiences who are positioned and empowered to affect the issues said research is helping address: social policy, corporate initiatives, education practices, environmental regulations, the list goes on. Unfortunately, researchers often find that professional networking and having to act as their own public relations advocates diverts too much time and energy away from actually conducting their research- which is the part of their work worth talking about in the first place…

One solution to this dilemma would be to provide researchers with networking and pr advocates who could help their work move beyond the peer community of fellow researchers and into the hands of professionals and activists positioned to impact change.  In addition to the outstanding societal benefits, these advocacy positions can help strengthen the university’s brand recognition, improve the brand image, improve the University’s working culture, increase the amount of outside funding available to researchers at the institution, and help the university to maintain ongoing relevance.

Another outstanding solution would be University Publications- trade journals, industry-oriented magazines, and community-centric industry-oriented blogs. Communications Arts isn’t published by Columbia or the Rhode Island School of Design, Vogue isn’t curated by Parsons, and Wired isn’t produced by MIT.  Examples of universities whose publications are actually speaking to their industries and contributing to the broader conversation are rare exceptions rather than the norm: Rotman, Harvard Business Review, The Journal of Pediatric Psychology…

What operational issues are reining your message in and holding your organization back? Here’s a quick self-audit check list to help identify if the broader audiences you’re positioned to speak to:

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

What relevant issues is your brand positioned to speak to?

Which audiences would benefit from or appreciate the issues you’re positioned to speak to?

If you could speak to anyone, which audiences would you choose to speak to?

Why would these audiences care about your brand? What about you is relevant to them?

Who else is targeting the attention of these audiences? How will this interfere with your ability to reach them?

What would you have to do differently to reach these audiences?

What are the biggest obstacles holding your message back?

What creative solutions could help reduce or completely eliminate these obstacles?

There are so many companies with so many brands that it is hard to believe there is much “new” out there. Do you ever get over whelmed by finding ways or trying to be inventive and original?

Finding ways to help relevant, authentic brands tell a unique story is rarely overwhelming, in fact it is energizing and inspiring.  Organizations with energy, curiosity, courage and chutzpah that are willing to take on the challenges of driving their brand forward are a joy to work with.

That isn’t to say there aren’t obstacles. The most common, and most difficult, challenge is in establishing a brand’s positioning. It’s thorny ubiquity stems from two realities.

The first reality is that very few organizations truly understand differentiation. They are so ensconced in their day to day world, that they cannot lift their eyes up to see what makes them special. They typically don’t want to do the hard work of excavating that which makes them different… the essence of their brand.  And, even after doing the hard work, they often have a hard time embracing their differentiation, because the results are rarely what they anticipated and most often are significantly different from anyone elses in the market. Which they should be.

The second reality compounds the first. The vast majority of organizations, despite their vociferous claims of wanting to stand out, be different and unique, in the end just want to do the same old thing. They want to do and say what everyone else says and does. Unfortunately for them, imitation has never been a form of flattery; it’s always been boring and it’s really overdone. You cannot fake brand relevance, it’s not cheap or easy; it can’t be copied or bought.  It is hard earned and hard won.

It is in that hard work, the excavation and research, missteps and do-overs, thoughtful days and restless nights that the obstacles are overcome… and a brand emerges.  In the end the challenge isn’t a shortage of creativity; it is invigorating everyone to set their creativity, innovation, and ultimately their brand, free.

We have a brand experience process; but we have a very different brand experience. How do we sync what we want done with what is done to deliver the promised and hoped for brand experience?

Executing a brand is a strategy.

Brand strategies may be “believed” by contributors but they still require integrated systems to be operationalized and delivered.

Systems are created to clarify direction, resolve challenges and satisfy needs.

Healthy integrated systems are guided by principles:

1.)   Define, revise and pursue the purpose (outcomes):

You’ll need a sound understanding of the outcomes, the challenges, and the disparities as well as the related and unintended consequences to focus sensible solutions. Don’t trust assumptions.

Encourage everyone involved to adopt an open attitude and a resolve to improve and revise processes. Involve all insiders and outside eyes.

2.)   Take account of the people:

Integrated systems consider everyone that is impacted or affected by the need to be met and the process that resolves the need: specifically those that experience, use and maintain the systems.

Never hand down a system or changes without the input of the very people that work it into a reality.

3.) Be creative and open to new approaches to old ways of doing things:

Entertain and devise effective solutions to the real problems rather than force the problems into canned solutions.

4.) Think holistic; start with the end in mind:

Rely on a long view and critical thinking to resolve the disparity. Imagine what can go wrong at every phase in an effort to achieve a healthy work environment and an exceptional user experience.

5.)    Work the system:

A well-designed system does what it should and doesn’t do what it should not for everyone. Put changes into action.

6.) Engage the relationships and manage the project:

Proactively reconcile the inevitable conflicts that arise. Encourage users to provide insights and feedback relating every real or imagined concern. Encourage everyone involved to adopt an open attitude and a resolve to improve and revise processes.

Garland Pollard, a writer, web editor and SEO consultant writes “Is there too much branding?

He continues, “… must we all be so concerned with branding? Isn’t a good brand really the result of a moral, well-run company? Isn’t it better that hospitals focus on patients, and let the “branding” speak for itself? Do churches really need to “brand” themselves, or is it better that they focus on saving souls? Do we really need for banks to have visual identities, or do we want them to treat us properly when we make a deposit? Is the most recent mania for branding yet another management fad that we use to obscure coercion, duplicity and manipulation?”

Taking those in bite size pieces:

“Is there too much branding?”

A.) No, there is not “too much branding” anymore than there are too many interesting, purpose driven people making honorable contributions to the world.  There is far too much talk about branding and too many quick fix, faux solutions applied that actually distort the power of brand.

“Must we all be so concerned with branding?”

B.) Yes, in global and competitive markets we should all be concerned with branding; differentiating our organizational value in a memorable way is critical to vitality.

“Isn’t a good brand really the result of a moral, well-run company?”

C.) Yes, exactly! A good brand is the result of a moral, well-run company. But how does a working community define a moral company and align a well-run company without a shared identity and concerted purpose?

“Isn’t it better that hospitals focus on patients, and let the “branding” speak for itself?”

D.) Yes, hospitals should focus on patients. Healthy “brand philosophies” align the operating objectives of hospitals with the patient needs and expectations.

Appreciating that everyone, from patients to our nation as a whole, expects more than just advanced health-care today demands that hospitals offer more than quality recovery.

E.) Strong brands rarely, if ever just emerge from the operational routine to speak explicitly and align strategically.

“Do churches really need to “brand” themselves, or is it better that they focus on saving souls?”

F.) This not an either or proposition. Churches most certainly need to distinguish one from another in an effort to save souls. Churches passionate about their “call” want to speak beyond the pulpit to the people that are hoping for a message of hope and membership. Pentecostal? Down-to-earth? Fiscally transparent and accountable? Humanitarian outreach focused? Missions supportive? What a church represents is a story worth telling.

“Do we really need for banks to have visual identities, or do we want them to treat us properly when we make a deposit?”

G.) Yes, yes, and yes. A compelling brand ensures that your teller will treat you properly when making a deposit. The goal is to align what you do and how you do it around a simple, relevant and meaningful concept (brand promise) that can be delivered consistently provokes interest and woos customers.

I attempted to make a deposit with the wrong paperwork just recently. A logo on the slip would have been time saving for everyone waiting in line.

“Is the most recent mania for branding yet another management fad that we use to obscure coercion, duplicity and manipulation?”

H.) Identity matters. Buyers report that a cohesive brand for a relevant product/service eliminates the mental tug of war that they face when they make buying decisions.