Three Core Principles to Make Branding Work for the Bottom Line
It's completely natural for a business leader to feel a bit uncertain and go on the defensive when embarking on a significant and fundamental change to the company's brand.
Whether brand development is part of a broader business transformation or a necessary rebranding of a tired brand, the process can bring many concerns.
In the development phase, it’s easy to become overly cautious.
You might start second-guessing those bold ideas from the initial creative proposal, wondering if they're really as good as you first thought.
You start to question whether the things that set your brand apart from the competition might irritate some, attract criticism from employees and customers, or even be ridiculed by competitors and industry professionals.
The bold opinions, provocations, and attention-grabbing elements of the rebranding are no longer just exciting ideas—they’re now something you'll have to stand behind.
At this point, you may be tempted to ask the marketing team to “tone it down” and “soften” the final execution.
Perhaps there were some key messages about product quality that were overlooked. Now, these need to be highlighted more directly in branding activities.
But this approach may leave the campaign lacking in originality, edge, and charm. What remains is just a polite and polished presentation of the brand’s qualities.
On the bright side, you’re now free from the fear of failure.
Or so you think.
If this sounds like you as a CEO, then you're on the path to creating a brand that ends up predictable, purposeless, and self-congratulatory.
You will have helped spend money on brand development and activation that has no chance of capturing attention, sparking curiosity, shifting perceptions, or attracting new customers.
When, after a while, you find no noticeable positive effect on the business, you conclude that branding doesn’t really work.
But, of course, branding doesn’t work if it’s done poorly.
You’ve played it safe, polished your halo, and stifled creativity, and you’ve received exactly what you deserved: zero business impact from your brand investment.
Here Are Three Core Principles to Make Branding Impactful for the Bottom Line
Here are my three foundational principles, which I rely on when I work to make branding impact the bottom line for the companies I collaborate with.
1. Find the Courage to Stand Out and Capture Attention
You need to escape the herd of competitors if you’re going to build a unique and strong brand that makes a real business difference.
Customers won’t have a chance to notice, remember, become fans of, follow, “like,” choose, or recommend your brand to other potential customers if it’s just a pale copy of the most established brands in your product category.
It’s impossible to break through to significantly higher brand awareness, new attractive perceptions, and extraordinary customer relationships by following other brands' footsteps.
The direct path from branding to the bottom line requires finding the courage to create a distinct and relevant identity for your brand.
Think of the safe and predictable (the dull) as the dangerous choice in your branding work.
Think of the unique, surprising, provocative—the elements that might make you blink and have a stopping effect—as the only effective approach to branding.
2. Make Branding a Substantive and Integrated Development Effort
Don’t view branding as a quick marketing sprint but as part of a more systematic effort to build a clear brand differentiation.
A unique brand identity is about embracing a distinctive mission and personality, cultivating a specific style, tone, and rhetoric, and creating a unique visual expression that collectively offers clear functional, emotional, and self-expressive benefits* to customers.
For these customer benefits to be real and credible, they must be backed by the company's unique products, production, service, distribution, leadership, organization, culture, and responsibility.
Customers have long learned to discern whether a brand’s identity and marketing are superficial or truly authentic.
Customers quickly pick up on whether a brand lives its mission to the core of every leadership decision or if it’s just superficial gloss on a profit machine.
*Functional benefits: The actual, physical needs that the brand's products fulfill.
Emotional benefits: The positive feeling one gains from purchasing and using the brand's products.
Self-expressive benefits: The story one tells about oneself by associating with the brand.
3. Unleash Creative Forces
Brand differentiation isn’t a one-and-done task. It’s not a project but an ongoing process.
Differentiation exists as a collective perception of the brand in the market, organization, and public. These perceptions can change if the brand stagnates.
The relevance, appeal, and thus the effectiveness of brand differentiation depend on movements in supply (competitors) and demand (customers).
New brands, or existing brands that reinvent themselves in new and valuable ways, can quickly become customers' new preferred choices.
Activating the company's unique brand identity and mission requires a 360-degree, dynamic approach to maintain or expand differentiation and the foundation for growth.
So unleash the creative minds in your organization and with your most innovative partners.
Creativity should be respected and engaged at a much higher level in your company.
Give it space, structure, and support.
As the CEO, set the overall framework.
Then let go of some control.
Tight, fear-driven, short-sighted micromanagement stifles creativity, kills unique branding, and wastes much of your marketing budget.
You must trust your creative employees’ instincts and strong desire to take responsibility for brand development and activation.
As a CEO, you don’t have to know and do it all yourself.
Right?
