Where could your business go if you released your limitations? With the right kind of brand, you can break down barriers and realize your career dreams.
But what exactly is the brand? Your brand is how people perceive you and your mission, whether it’s your company, your personal career brand at work, or even your private goals. The brand distills its ideology into a series of elements that together create the appearance of an ideal.
Branding is the practice of using your company name, logo, taglines, color choices, and other assets in your marketing communications so that consumers can easily recognize you. In short, it is your image.
Your brand communicates the qualities, ideas and user experience that your products present to the market. Using these assets in all your business communications will reinforce your brand with every consumer touch.
The largest and most successful companies in the world use these strategies to build their brand value in the billions of dollars. Industry giants of yesterday and today (Google, Apple, Tide, Microsoft, Xerox, Kodak, Nike, Ford, Disney, Kellogg’s and many more) have successfully built their brand into family recognition.
Consumers know these brands by heart and trust the products enough to buy them without debate. Product safety, quality, and reliability are assumed, even expected.
Of bumpy roads and grizzly bears
I started my career working for one of these mega-brands, Kodak, and it literally changed the way I perceive my place in the world. It has also had a profound and lasting effect on my success. By associating myself with a major household name, my employers, clients, and colleagues look at me a little differently. Some of the brand magic dust brushed against me and launched my early business career.
Early in my career, I had one of the largest sales territories a young salesperson could hope for. It was also in one of the most remote areas on the planet. My job was to sell Kodak-branded film throughout the state of Alaska. It may sound prestigious to have such a large territory, but before you get too impressed, I’d like to put this data into perspective.
Now, Alaska is not an easy place to promote a brand. Half of the state’s population lives in one city, Anchorage, and Alaska is the largest state in the US; in fact, the state is one-third the size of what Alaskans call the “lower 48.” You can’t cross it in one day.
In fact, most of the state is not driveable. One of the most popular modes of transportation is the seaplane. Even these rugged vehicles have trouble reaching large expanses in rugged wilderness, largely because there’s simply nowhere to land.
Let me put it this way: As a Kodak guy, I had a lot of muddy ground to cover in my bright loafers, and my wide yellow tie was a little hard to miss among the weeds on the tundra. Even the caribou herds rolled their eyes when they saw me coming.
I will never forget the time a sales call took me to a gold mine located half a day’s drive from the big city where I lived. I thought someone at head office had made a typo on my sales sheet, either that or they were playing a practical joke. I mean, who sells Kodak film in Hope, Alaska? I couldn’t imagine a gold mine wanting to have anything to do with my assets.
The road to the mine was a dirt road, now flooded by runoff from the spring break. The further I got from the main road, the more certain I was that there had been some kind of mistake when my Chevy Celebrity jumped over the potholes.
It was more than 15 miles after leaving the pavement before I saw another soul. You can imagine my relief when I turned a corner to find this replica of an Old West town: a tourist attraction, a relic from the days of the Klondike catering to Japanese tourists who wanted a nature experience. I went into the only open building I could find, a tavern populated with a few old saltmen who smelled of smoke, bacon, and Jack Daniels.
However, even in the farthest and most remote corners of the world, the Kodak brand was recognized and I was invited to pick up a stump on the table for a cup of hot coffee in a tin cup. After talking to the mountain man at the end of the table, it seems that the tourists in this gold panning paradise preferred Kodak film to Fuji film… all I had to do was introduce myself and write the order.
The brand does more than create recognition. It builds trust and loyalty among consumers in your market, allowing you to more successfully penetrate future markets with new product offerings, no matter how remote. A successful brand brings awareness and trust, even in a land populated with more bears than people.
So as you think about your marketing efforts, pay attention to your brand. You will discover many unintended benefits of crafting a message that will stick in the minds of your audience.