Firebrand

I have been re-reading David Aaker’s “Building Strong Brands” and this like alot of posts in the coming weeks is inspired by the book. Aaker spells out the 4 aspects of brand identity: 1)brand as product, 2) brand as organization, 3) brand as person and 4) brand as symbol. To expand on Aaker’s thinking, brand as organization is the precursor to success in brand as product and brand as person.

Let me quickly run through the aspects. Brand as product is the attributes you want associated with your products and services. Brand as organization is the brand of and for the people in the company; for example, “Company X: never leaving a stone unturned for innovation.” Brand as person is the interaction between the company and the customer on a personal level (“Skype always seems so friendly!) And Brand as symbol is the graphics and colours that people associate with your brand.

To me, the foundational aspect is the brand as organization. We have talked about brand dissonance before, but it is when the face that a company is trying to show to consumers is completely different than the company actually is. It usually comes out in a scaring article, or a bad customer experience. I had that experience with Fido recently. I didn’t appreciate the brow beating I received from the commission hungry, clearly offshore firm they hired to tele-market their mobile internet stick, especially since their ads are filled with cute puppies and friendly yellow graphics. If your brand image and your organization have different values and personalities, than customers are going to get an uneasy feeling about dealing with your company. The same feeling in fact as when they hear a dissonant chord in music, interestingly enough. (Joker Theme by Hans Zimmer is a good example, if you dare.)

Brand as organization drives both brand as product and brand as person. To use that “Company X: never leaving a stone unturned for innovation.” as an example once more, if management fosters that culture of innovation throughout the company than the products will truly be innovative. If a company says that they are innovative to the outside world, but their culture is risk averse than their products will not be innovative. If  company says their products are innovative, but they are not than they are going to loose credibility and the brand becomes a liability. I often hear a chicken or the egg argument to get there unfortunately. “If we want to be innovative, do we brand our self as innovative and let the employees rise to that brand?” No. You brand internally as innovative and foster a culture of innovation, then when you have something to show for it (a class leading product perhaps?) than you show off that innovative culture to the outside world. This is simply because culture change takes longer than brand image change, and in the time when your brand is dissonant you will be doing damage to it. This is not just true of innovation as a trait; the same rules apply if you want to be known as friendly, customer service focused, quick to respond, serious, professional… anything and everything.

This internal to external branding strategy is why CEOs with marketing based mindsets do so well. They know how to foster a culture because they spend as much time marketing and branding to the companies employees as they do to it’s customers.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large multinational brands everyday designing retail displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of Colin Finkle’s employer, FX Displays.