Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
marketing
by Jim MacLachlan We all know the old game of telephone. One person whispers something into the next person’s ear, who passes it on to the next person, who passes it on to the next.
At the end of the line, the last person repeats the message out loud, generating a hearty round of laughter as everyone discovers that what started out as “I’m having the time of my life,” has morphed into “I’m having an affair with your wife.”
Pretty funny when the message is nothing but a harmless parlor game. Not so funny when the message is your brand. Unfortunately, if you allow the people producing your communication materials to interpret your brand on their own, your brand message can end up with a similarly distorted meaning by the time it reaches your audience.
So how do you control how others interpret your brand? You have to have a system for policing it. First, you need a clear set of laws so everyone with a role in communicating your brand knows exactly what the rules are. Second, you need to assign people (or cops, so to speak) to watch over your brand and make sure the laws aren’t being broken.
Writing standards
Putting clear brand standards on paper helps everyone understand what’s “law” when it comes to communicating your brand. Brand
standards help those involved in the planning and creating of brochures, ads, reports, speeches, radio spots, or anything else that goes outside your four walls, to produce an end product with a consistent look, sound and feel.
Brand consistency is critical in getting customers, business associates, shareholders and employees to understand who you are as a company. Most importantly, consistency creates synergy that builds brand strength.
What should your brand standards include? Corporate brand standards run the gamut from a few simple pages explaining how to use the logo, to huge three-ring binders defining precise rules for executing every communication vehicle a company produces.
What’s right for your company will depend on the size and complexity of your business, and how many people are involved in communicating to your internal and external audiences.
For example, a large company with multiple divisions and product lines might entrust its brand identity to several staff members and outside agencies. That’s when comprehensive brand standards are most necessary, because different people are developing materials independently of one another. On the other hand, if everything goes through one person or department, a simpler document can suffice.
How strict should your brand standards be? The answer to that question also varies with each company. The goal is to find the precarious balance between maintaining consistency without stifling creativity. Don’t overcomplicate things. To be effective, brand standards must be clear, direct and simple.
We’ve seen standards so unwieldy that no one in the organization really understands how to apply them. And that essentially puts you back to square one, with each individual interpreting the brand a different way.
But if your standards are so inflexible they leave no room for creative interpretation, that’s not good either. Some standards are defined so rigidly that everything comes out looking identical, a mistake that can quickly make your brand look tired and boring.
Think of your various marketing communications as siblings in the same family. Each piece should have unifying characteristics that make it look like it belongs with the others. But it should also have a unique personality that distinguishes it from everything else.
Assigning cops
With any set of rules, you must have a system for enforcing them. Enter the brand police. Your brand police (or brand stewards, as they’re sometimes called) are the individuals or team members responsible for preserving brand continuity. They’re the ones who walk the beat to make sure everyone’s following the rules, and who take action when anyone violates the rules.
Who should fill this role? Your logical choice would come from marketing or corporate communications, the area from which most of your communication efforts flow. If one agency handles all your marketing communication work, you might be able to delegate some policing responsibilities to them, but it’s usually best to keep the function inside.
Choose a clear communicator with excellent people skills. The brand cop has a tough job, and it’s much easier if the person is capable of winning people’s support and cooperation without coming off as dictatorial.
A good brand cop will help others to understand the intricacies of your brand and the value of communicating it consistently. Ideally, the person will be viewed as a resource rather than a threat. Then people will see your brand standards as a helpful tool rather than an annoying obstacle in creating effective communications.
No matter whom you decide the lawmakers will be in your organization, establish clear routing procedures to make sure nothing escapes their scrutiny. A simple sign-off system is usually sufficient for monitoring brand consistency.
It can be difficult to maintain consistency when building a brand. Establishing solid brand standards (good laws) and effective brand stewards (good cops) will help you get off to the right start, to ensure your brand message stays the same, no matter how many people are repeating it.
