Dropping Some Branding Knowledge | Resound Creative Blog: Recent Episodes

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Accounting firms are all the same, right? Nerdy, dad-joke-telling professionals who drive sensible cars and wear beige suits to work every day. Unless they’re feeling saucy, in which case they throw caution to the wind and go with the branded polo.

Of course, these accounting stereotypes come straight from the ’90s and, more recently, Parks and Rec.

But the industry isn’t exactly doing its job in busting that myth.

Most accounting firms:

• Claim to be “more than just accountants.”
• Use blue and sometimes green in their branding.
• All on a mission to come across as a little more human than a calculator.

Of course, we know these stereotypes don’t reflect the people working in the industry. And we’d like to help.

https://youtu.be/GRal1TSGuGU

The IndexHere at Resound, we thought it would be interesting to see exactly how differentiated—or how homogenous—the industry actually is. So we grabbed 40 data points across 1,485 accounting firms, crunched a little data, and named it the “Remarkabrand Index for Accounting Firms.”

The index reflected our desire to give firms a measurable standard against which to judge their branding efforts. Basically, “Are we different, or are we undistinguishable from our competition?”

Why? Because differentiation is a real challenge. Accounting firms struggle to distinguish themselves in a competitive market. And until now, there was no quantitative, benchmarking tool to objectively measure brand differentiation.

…until now.

So How Did We Collect the Data?Tons and tons and tons of manual, sometimes painful, data entry (we’re working on automation for this now).

But other than that, it was easy. We looked at 40 data points, including SEO scores, naming conventions, word-choice differentiation (e.g. in tagline), and color and logo style ratings, to name just a few.

The index revealed insights into effective differentiation strategies used by top firms.

Here’s an overview of the data collection:

SEO via Domain Authority ScoreWe used a standard measuring tool called Domain Authority from Moz, which acts as a good summary indicator of SEO strength. For additional context, we looked at inbound links as well.

Can Small Firms Compete?Toward the end of data collection, we started asking what company size and revenue had to do with the index score. Surely, bigger firms by revenue and employee count would do better, right?

We’re glad we asked, because the results were a bit surprising, with many of the top-performing firms having fewer than 200 people.

Visual Was HugeThrough the Eyes of a DesignerSome of the data wasn’t so straightforward from an evaluation standpoint. After all, there’s no math formula we know of to evaluate the quality of a logo or even the decade that inspired it.

So we brought in the professionals.

And lest you think designers are kookie, impractical, blocky-framed-non-prescription-glasses-wearing artsy types with no grounding in reality, we’ll have you know…our designers are pros.

And it’s a good thing they are because we have deadlines.

We asked them to evaluate based on design and branding principles. They tagged the logos and websites, collected colors, and, yes, even estimated the decade of the logo based on style.

Does Accounting Look Old?In addition to how firms differentiate, we wanted to know: is it time for a rebrand? Has there been deferred maintenance on the brand? Who needs a new brand makeover?

To get to the bottom of this, we ask a few questions:

Design Era Classification:

Was the logo designed in the 2000s by a guy who’s been unemployed ever since he designed the Windows 95 logo?

Was it designed only this year by a design school student who’s so progressive that she lives in the future where styles from 20 years ago are cool again?

To find this out—or at least assign a decade—designers went all antiques-roadshow and used style indicators to put the logos on a timeline.

Differentiating—or not—with ColorThe industry loves blue. If it could, it would marry blue. It has eyes for no other.

Except green. If it was going to have a mistress, it would be green.

The point is that the industry lacks variation in color.

But Names and Taglines Matter TooFirms love to use their founders’ names. It’s a near obsession.

Over 90% of the firms used the founders’ names or an acronym based on the founders’ names in their branding. This suggests a huge lack of imagination. It also suggests a great opportunity to differentiate.

Taglines were a lot of fun too. In fact, once we found the most popular words and themes in taglines, Sam Pagel created a script that amalgamated the perfect cliched tagline:

“Beyond numbers, we deliver clear solutions for business success, helping clients secure a trusted financial future since 1982 with personal service and value that goes beyond tax accounting.”

Because which one of us doesn’t wake up at night all “I want to secure a trusted financial future, especially if it’s beyond numbers?”

Standout OpportunitiesRebrand: The industry is competitive, but the branding is not. Maybe the biggest opportunity is for brands who decide it’s time to re-evaluate. Because if you’re ready to do it, you have at least 6 months—at least—before the rest of the industry realizes what’s going on and decides to own its space.

Need proof? Get your copy of the index and see the actual numbers. You’ll have all the data you need in just our first annual report to justify your rebrand. Now it’s up to you to sell it.

Cross-platform video: We didn’t see firms using a lot of video, which gives you a way to stand out with knowledge, education, and thought leadership. LinkedIn, YouTube, and other platforms present an opportunity to address people personally, whether that’s new business or recruiting.

Don’t Encourage UsWe’re like the guy at the party who’s ready to show off some sick dance moves. All we need is an excuse.

Cue the disco and the mirror ball, because we’re about to get down.

This first year created a monster. And for better or for worse, the positive response from the industry got us all worked up.

It’s almost like the industry needs this kind of data.

So we’ve been working on a list of ideas we think will make it a richer, more useful report in future years.

We may not get to everything in the next edition, but we’ll try:

• Including more small firms. Although this is a little more challenging, with less public information available, we’d like to see what it looks like when we get data from a wider swathe, size-wise.
• User feedback. We’re looking for ways to formalize the feedback process for future years, so we can get useful ideas from accounting marketers. This includes new data points.
• Automation and AI in data gathering and analysis. Although online data repos like LinkedIn frown on scraping, and we don’t want to run afoul of their policies, we’re working on ways to automate data gathering in an ethical way, and in a way that will deliver more reliable results and avoid mistakes introduced by human error.

Accounting Firms Aren’t All the SameWe know all accounting firms aren’t the same. But in order to fix a problem, sometimes you need to make sure those in charge of marketing see the opportunity.

You see, when an entire industry fails to differentiate, the ones who decide to move—to initiate the conversation in the firm—to get started. They’re the ones who can give their firm an advantage.

All firms aren’t the same. But differentiation can be a real challenge. Especially if you don’t know what an advantage it gives you.

This is our attempt to show the accounting firm the state of affairs and let them know it’s possible to distinguish themselves in a competitive market.

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Every brand gets its power from connecting with people and delivering on its promises. And that starts with internal branding.

I’m taking inspiration from a conversation I had with David and Sam, where we emphasize internal branding: taking an internal focus before taking your brand identity to the world.

We’ll explore why internal branding should be your first focus, the pitfalls of neglecting it, and how to implement it successfully within your team.

By aligning your internal stakeholders first, you set the stage for a more cohesive and powerful brand presence in the market.

https://youtu.be/hlG0ojbxGo0

Focus on Your Team FirstNobody advocates for your brand like employees. Their words and actions tell everyone what your brand stands for. If they know your brand—and you hire well, based on your brand—your employees will see the connection.

And that consistent brand experience—through the words and actions of your employees—connects with customers more than your claims ever will.

Create clear guidance and your employees will give you a cohesive internal brand that enhances customer service, employee satisfaction, and overall business performance.

Not Convinced Internal Branding Matters?Here’s what happens when external branding fails to connect with your employees.

• Lack of Cohesion. Without internal branding, your team acts and speaks inconsistently, confusing clients.
• Employee Disengagement. When employees don’t feel connected to the brand, their engagement and productivity suffer.
• Reputation Risks. Inconsistent branding can damage your reputation, making it harder to attract both clients and talent.
• Missed Opportunities. A team that’s not aligned with the brand won’t know how to represent the firm in social settings or online platforms.

Neglecting internal branding can have real financial consequences, from lost sales to increased employee turnover.

The Overview: Implement Internal BrandingBranding starts at the top but doesn’t stay there.

We’ve all seen companies that embrace amazing-sounding values but don’t live up to them.

You might be at the counter at the car rental desk, and you can’t get the agent to live up to their own values. The values are literally on the wall behind the person helping you.

They’re just not lived out.

So how do you build out those brand values properly and honestly?

1. Start with Leadership. The first step in internal branding is getting buy-in from the top. Leadership needs to exemplify the brand values.
2. Synthesize. People grow in understanding when they’re asked to think through the brand regularly. Ask everyone to apply them to a situation that happened recently. Did they live up to them? Is there room for improvement? Make sure everyone understands the brand’s values, mission, and vision.
3. Give them Guides. Don’t give them long paragraphs to read. Give them workshops, handbooks, or even regular internal communications.

Know the Tools for Internal BrandingInternal branding uses different tools than external. But they all do the same thing in the end: instill an understanding of the brand to humans who can either be encouraged and excited about values or eventually forget.

Here are some ways you can keep everyone engaged internally.

• Brand Handbook & Workshops: Combine a comprehensive guide with internal training sessions to educate team members on brand elements, values, and practical applications.
• Digital Communication: Use platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams for consistent, brand-aligned messaging and updates.
• Employee Engagement: Implement regular surveys and distribute high-quality branded merchandise to assess and reinforce brand understanding within the team.

Prioritize the LaunchEmployees get engaged when they see the commitment from the firm’s leadership. The most obvious way to do this is through a brand launch event. However you do it, make sure you launch in a very visible way that involves everyone in the firm.

Here are a few ideas for how to launch your brand.

Virtual Brand RevealIf you have a remote team, a virtual event may be your best bet. Use a mix of pre-recorded videos and live sessions to unveil the new brand. Include interactive elements like polls, Q&A sessions, and virtual breakout rooms for team discussions.

In-Person Brand ExpoMaybe you can get everyone together. This is the best option. Whether it’s at your firm’s headquarters or a rented venue, set up different booths or stations where employees can engage with various aspects of the brand—like a “Brand History” station, a “Meet the Designers” booth, or a “Brand Quiz” area.

Hybrid EventCombine elements of both virtual and in-person events. Stream the in-person event activities online for remote employees and include them through interactive digital platforms. This ensures that everyone, regardless of location, can participate in the brand launch.

Engaging Different Experience LevelsTailored Communication Understand that brand engagement isn’t one-size-fits-all. Customize your approach based on the experience level of the team member.

• For New Hires. Focus on educational workshops and onboarding programs that immerse them in the brand culture from day one.
• For Long-Time Members. Leverage their experience to serve as brand ambassadors within the team. Their endorsement can have a significant impact.
• For Partners and Stakeholders. Keep them in the loop with regular updates and involve them in major brand-related decisions. Their buy-in is crucial for long-term success.

Keep Brand MomentumEveryone wants to rebrand. That’s the fun part. But keeping momentum is the big payoff for the business.

Want to build your value and the value of the firm? Then you’ll want to maintain the brand.

Here are some ways to do that.

• Regular Audits. Regularly review your brand’s performance metrics to ensure alignment with your initial goals.
• Refresh Campaigns. Introduce new marketing campaigns that align with your brand but offer a fresh perspective to avoid staleness. This means you add a creative brief to your brand guidelines.
• Employee Recognition. Acknowledge and reward employees who exemplify the brand values in their work. You gotta keep them thinking about it.
• Customer Feedback. ABL: always be listening. Customer perceptions offer insights into how your brand is really doing.

How Do You Handle Team Members Who Push Back on Brand IdentityNot everyone will understand, and not everyone’s a perfect fit for the brand. Here are some ways to bring people on board. The most resistant can sometimes turn into the brand’s strongest ally. So don’t give up too easily.

• Open Dialogue. Create a safe space for team members to voice their concerns without fear of retribution. We’re not telling you to create a cry room with puppies and essential oils. Just listen in a way that lets people know you’re not interested in judging; you just want to know their honest concerns.
• Data-Driven Discussions. Use performance metrics and customer feedback to back up the importance of brand consistency. This may be the key to establishing your value.
• Inclusive Decision-Making. Involve resistant team members in brand-related decisions when possible. You’re not letting them sabotage things. You’re just giving them a sense of ownership.
• Training and Onboarding. Sometimes you just need to get them to talk about their objections and express your values in their own words.

Strong Internal Brands Fuel Strong External BrandsIn today’s landscape where name-brands dominate, your strong brand gives you more value than ever, providing guidance for how to make policy, how to communicate, and how your brand works, from the inside out.

Inspired by a conversation with David and Sam, we discussed why your team should be the first focus in your branding efforts. We also explored the risks of overlooking internal branding and offered strategies for successful implementation.

Remember, by aligning your internal team first, you pave the way for a unified and impactful brand presence in the market.

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Mergers and acquisitions can ruin a B2B brand. Even the best-intentioned M&A can take a toll on a brand when rushed decisions lead to a lack of coordination in the culture and a timid approach to the market. I had a conversation with Jaimi Koechel who’s a veteran of both a firm rebrand and a B2B brand merger about how to execute a merger well, from a branding perspective. B2B Brand Mergers: 2 Views Firms take different views on M&As. Some see it as just an opportunity to expand, adding a book of business and making the firm’s strengths available to a wider audience and geographical area. But while the firm’s management may be thinking about expansion, and making higher-level decisions about naming, the accounting firm marketer’s job is to think about how the brand gets lived out over the course of the merger.

Anyone who’s been through a merger knows that, although the technical aspects of a merger take only months and end when the announcement is made, everyone gets new office signage, new email signature lines, and t-shirts with the new logo, the effects of the B2B brand merger last until everyone understands the new brand.

It can take months and years to get everyone to embrace the new brand, especially when two companies form a merged brand, and two cultures come together. The Marketing Goal of a B2B Brand Merger As a marketer, your job is twofold:

End up with a strong brand whose values are understood and mean something, along with the requisite visual and verbal assets and guidance. Shorten the time between the merger and a strong culture that will consistently and convincingly live out the firm’s values.

We can’t control how quickly people grasp the culture at the individual level, but we can think ahead and make the path clear.

The Remarkabrand podcast was joined again by award-winning accounting marketer and former client Jaimi Koechel to help us understand what’s coming down the pike when two firms form a single, merged brand.

https://youtu.be/YjBNFIHU0BU 3 Decisive Moves Toward Brand B2B Brand Merger Success I asked Jaimi about some of the challenges accounting marketers face during a merger. How do you maintain the strength of a brand when a merger presents every opportunity to dilute the brand? How do you help everyone make sense of the rebrand and keep them focused on what’s important?

Brand managers face a unique challenge when their firm merges with another firm since planning isn’t always straightforward. How do you make a merged brand that makes sense?

Let’s continue on and talk about things you can do to solidify the brand during a merger or acquisition. Predict Brand Disagreements Nobody’s more likely to see potential brand disagreements than you are. As the caretaker of a brand you may have had a hand in developing, you’re likely more aware of the conflicts you see coming. And if you can express your concerns well—and think of ways everyone involved can work together to solve them—you could turn a problem into a big win for everyone—especially you and the firm.

After all, it’s not the order-takers who help the leadership make sense of things. Rather, it’s those people who can solve problems, make decisions and get people working together. A Few Examples

Whose logo and brand name will we use? Although this decision is usually implied by the structure of the merger/acquisition, it opens up a broader question about the rollout: how will we make this make sense to our clients? How aligned are the two brands to begin with? Do the voice, tone, mood, and values complement each other, or do they conflict? Are the two cultures able to work together? Is one more focused on individual relationships while the other sees clear processes as better for everyone? Clients are accustomed to a particular treatment, and your staff is used to having the flexibility or formality to carry out the same level of service. How will that change?

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Rebranding hardly ever happens in perfect conditions. But it's those challenges that grow us into leaders who can push through and win. For example, in my Remarkabrand podcast conversation with former client Jaimi Koechel—an award-winning marketing director with deep experience in accounting firms—we covered branding for accounting firms, rebranding during transitions, and what a successful, inside-out brand build looks like. 

Jaimi’s approach to demonstrating the value of branding to her firm's partners reminded me of a few things.

https://youtu.be/nfJdZkyioY4 Podcast Thoughts As I am wont to do, I’ll bring in my first point with an illustration from a TV show—the historical drama series "Chernobyl" that came out a few years ago. After the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melts down, the secretive Soviet government meets in Moscow to discuss what happened. 

One scene in particular puts us right in the shoes of Valery Legasov, a nuclear physicist who figures out that the reactor's core exploded. But at the table with Premier Gorbachev and his top advisors, Legasov realizes that his country’s leaders have no idea what happened. They don’t understand that millions might die from lethal radiation if they don’t act fast. This gives him no choice but to speak up—and risk his life and career in the process. Fortunately, Gorbachev hears him out, and after telling the horrifying truth no one wants to hear, Legasov finds himself advising the entire containment effort.  

It’s a far stretch from nuclear meltdowns, but the problem of preoccupied decision-makers not understanding something’s critical importance is one we can all relate to.  

Herein lies a branding point that’s really worth looking at: 

• A firm’s leadership may not see or fully understand the value of authentic brand building. 

Someone, perhaps even you, might need to demonstrate that value before the branding effort can begin. As Jaimi, a longtime branding advocate put it on my podcast, “They won’t know they need you at the table until you show them that they need you.” 

My second takeaway goes something like this: 

• Accounting firms should be no strangers to the branding process. Instead of assuming a killer logo will just do the trick, accounting firms that want to build relationships with their clients need to put the work in on the branding front, to the point of owning their authentic brand identity. 

Neglecting, misunderstanding or undervaluing brand identity makes for thorny problems: diluting brand and reputation or confusing the audience, to name a few. 

Outside of building out a true, authentic, consistent brand identity, how will everyone else know how remarkable they are? 

With these takeaways and Jaimi’s story as a starting point, here are my quick thoughts on what every accounting firm should know about branding, branding advocacy, and how brand identity helps firms build remarkable, lifelong relationships. 

Let’s dive in.  Every Firm Needs a Brand Advocate  First, I’ll pass a little more of Jaimi’s advice to anyone who might be in this position. If you have a seat at your firm’s leadership table, or if you’re simply making the case for some kind of branding effort to your firm’s team members, you probably need some wind in your sails. 

Hopefully, this will lend you some. 

As you think about how to show your firm’s partners the value of brand building, don’t forget…

To play the long game. Building trust takes time. 

Even with Jaimi’s marketing background, adjusting her rebrand proposal to suit her firm’s needs took time and persistence. Eventually, as she won trust and got to know the firm’s specific needs, her firm’s partners saw the value in what she was proposing. After partners warmed up to the idea of a complete rebrand, Jaimi led the way.  

To always put the firm first 

Even if you majored in graphic design and have the perfect new logo ready to go…remember that a firm’s branding efforts are...

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If you know so much about it, why don’t you write a book?

Imagine being able to say: “Yeah, I did that… and here it is.”

Mic drop.

Here, in part II of taking your brand anthem to a thoughtful, well-developed book that demonstrates your expertise, I’m making the argument that every firm (including yours) should chase that feeling. Building on last month, when I made the case for writing a book with co-authors with the partners of your firm, and over a calendar year of recorded conversations, I’ve got more thoughts on the writing process itself.

But before I dive in, I’ll go ahead and tell you why.

Why write a book?

Why take the effort to plan, write, edit, and publish a piece of content that, if we’re being honest, probably won’t be a bestseller, or even a moderately successful seller?

Because publishing a book is a powerful long-term strategy to build your firm’s reputation for thought leadership, and at the same time, define its position in a marketplace filled with noise. In another article we’ve published, Chief Operating Officer Chris Stadler puts it this way:

“If your firm writes a book, it’s a sign that your thoughts and processes are time-tested and organized. Anyone who can talk deeply enough about a topic to write a book demonstrates depth and experience.”

This is especially true in professional services, where brands develop their reputation and define their place in the market through knowledge, competence, word-of-mouth, and in-depth experience with a particular topic. If you’re in accounting, law, or engineering, then your respective knowledge of case law, financial trends, or the geographical layout of the Colorado River basin is your bread and butter. With that in mind, a brand anthem book gathers all that knowledge into an eye-catching, tremendously helpful brand asset.

Of course, knowing what you do is different from communicating that to everyone else.

Before you get cracking on a book, your best bet is having your firm’s brand story right.

Brand Anthem Squared This is where your brand anthem comes in.

Whatever your content strategy looks like—and trust me, articles, brand videos, a podcast, a killer website, and social media accounts filled with clever posts are all a pretty great start—it should be centered on a clear, memorable brand anthem. That is, on a memorable story of how you help guide your clients to the solution they need in your unique, unduplicated way.

The same goes for a book; it should wave your brand’s banner in an unmistakable way, even as it dives into your point of view, experience, and comprehensive knowledge of a particular topic. Even where it dovetails with your regular ongoing strategy, a book built from a truthful, memorable brand anthem should take things further. More than standalone blog posts, and even more than a viral brand video that’s trending with your target audience, a book fleshes out your brand anthem in a definitive way.

One that commands your audience’s attention.

Put Another WayA book takes all the content strategy that you’re already putting out, and condenses it into a sophisticated, reputable piece of brand content.

All together in one package, with a clean title and an author from your firm on the cover, and listed on Amazon or stacked on a table at an annual convention, a book speaks volumes. It produces a level of reputational trust that I haven’t seen with other pieces of content that firms put out in the marketplace.

As you can imagine, a book is even more than a summary of your brand anthem, or one source volume of content strategy. Rather, it’s a valuable, sophisticated asset for your firm and your firm’s brand. Not to mention a reputational investment in your firm’s role as a thought leader.

Going Beyond ‘Write What You Know’ You’ve probably heard that you should ‘write you know.’ But in the professional service and B2B corner of the world, a better saying would be ‘write what you want to be known for.’

That obviously means tapping into you and your firm’s expertise—the refined experience and thought processes you’ve acquired over years, or even decades of day in, day out business and interactions—and aiming it squarely at your target audience.

It might mean elaborating on simply ‘what you know,’ even though the topic is one that you probably eat, breathe and sleep. Research, reading other books in the market and for the same audience, and of course gleaning as much as you can from co-authors all goes a long way in building out your book.

If nothing else, translating your proven experience into expository or, at times, instructional writing conveys another quality. It suggests that you’re capable of teaching others about your thinking—not just what you think, but how and why you think a certain way.

If you do it well, writing as a teacher can even push you, your firm, and your co-authors into the realm of being a thought leader on that topic—something that’s much more valuable than simply sticking the book on your website and telling people to buy it.

If they buy it, that’s a bonus.

But the real tactical advantage of writing a book comes when your firm can use that book and the expertise it conveys as a reputational, brand-building platform. With a book to your name, you’re more likely to land speaking events, or to make an impression at conventions with people you want to work with.

Handing someone a book is like handing them a turbo-charged resume.

It’s proof of your knowledge, your proven experience, and your conceptual thinking, all rolled into one.

Do I Have to Write It? No shame in asking.

Nearly everyone wants to have written a book… and that writing, editing, and publishing part of the journey looks pretty daunting.

No doubt, there is a ton of work and planning involved—but as I explained in last month’s article, the writing process itself also pays dividends when it comes to monthly content marketing.

One strategy I talked about was writing a book by talking to people. That is, get together with the partners of your firm, or any co-authors, and schedule twelve in-depth conversations (one every month) that you’ll record, draw from, and eventually turn into chapters in your book. With that strategy in mind, I’ll be talking more about the writing and editing process, and about how your book should differentiate your firm from others in a unique, remarkable way… obviously.

Writing With Backbone

Here are a few tips on the writing process.

Or, and to the extent that writing is nothing but refined thinking, I should probably say the thinking process that will go into your book. A good process, along with a one year, one-topic-a-month strategy, goes a long way in making the whole writing journey a worthwhile investment.

Writing a book is a huge commitment. For every finished book, there’s a handful of would-be authors who got started but then changed their minds.

You’re probably not writing a book about something unless it’s something you really believe, and everybody knows that. When people see a finished book, the commitment that went into taking it over the finish line speaks for itself. Even more than case studies, a website, or marketing materials that share your philosophy while laying out what your firm does, a book gives your reputation and your way of thinking a backbone.

So what goes into this backbone? Chapter by chapter, page by page, and even paragraph by paragraph, how do you stack it all together? Aside from a keyboard, voice to text—or by the time I publish this, some flashy new copywriting bot—is there a silver bullet for translating that thinking into words and sentences?

Beyond carving up your book into a minimum of twelve chapter topics and then filling out those topics with recorded conversations, there’s no prescription for how you stack and organize your content knowledge. At the end of the day, someone will have to transcribe those conversations, edit the writing, and publish it.

Probably more than once.

But I can say that the backbone of your book should be particular details, focused on your target audience. The common thread through each detail, as well as each chapter, is that they demonstrate your proven experience.

Here’s where you’re in luck.

Your proven experience is made up of details you already know.

Oh Yeah? Prove It.

Say you’re telling someone all about your book topic: someone like a hard-hitting journalist. While you talk, they’re hitting you with a ton of questions that force you to get more particular, more example-driven, and even more focused.

“Okay,” they say, thinking about accounting software, jury selection, or start-up strategies, or whatever you’ve just told them. “Tell me more about your take on that.”

“How is your take different?” they ask. “How is it Special? How is it unlike what I’ve already heard from other firms who know this topic?”

“What have you thought about or realized that nobody else is saying?”

“Can you demonstrate?”

“Can you give me an example? Something from your experience that stands out and illustrates your point?”

The more you answer these questions, the more you’re responding to an unspoken challenge: prove it, prove it, prove it. By the time you’re done, you’ve probably got a whole chapter’s worth of content, just in answering their questions. Maybe you’ve got several chapters, or even a whole book’s worth.

This exercise forces you to get particular. Answering questions means fleshing out your proven experience in a way people can understand. If you’ve spoken to someone who’s curious about your work, but not an insider, you know that dry, flavorless exposition will leave them bored or scratching their heads. Instead, give them stories. Memorable examples. Details about the process. Give them jaw-dropping facts, anecdotes and general stats (or estimates) so they have a baseline and proper perspective.

And when they ask how you approach your process, you’ll answer directly: ‘here’s what this means to me, and maybe even to you.’

In other words, in an authentic, reputable way, you have to prove it. Regardless of chapter topic, chapter order, or paragraph by paragraph flow, proving it is a pretty good plumb line. At every step, you’re showing that your way of thinking is a trustworthy map: a graspable system that helps people understand your profession, your industry, your valuable insights, and how you approach common challenges with a unique solution.

But Keep it GroundedWhen you stack all this in a book, people can do more than grasp your way of thinking—they can test it out for themselves. They can compare something you said in chapter one to what you say in chapter nine… and see if the numbers add up. In other words, part of your thought leadership’s backbone means being falsifiable. Not stepping out on a limb for no reason, but rather, taking stand after stand that can potentially be proven false.

It’s a scary thought, but remember that your reader is asking you, your co-authors, and book one thing: prove it.

Nonfiction writers like to say that every book makes a promise to the reader at the very start. Any book worth its salt, from a how-to book to a sophisticated work of investigative journalism, answers that promise.

By filling out your book’s content with falsifiable, but thoroughly supported, claims and proven experience, you show the reader your thought system works to the nth degree. You show them that you’ve used it so much (as the case should be if you’re writing about what you know) and so often over the years that it’s trustworthy and convincing.

Thought Leadership as Content StrategyWriting your book means more than refining your thinking—and when all is said and done, proving your role as a thought leader in the marketplace.

Another advantage (and another reason to do it) is that putting your knowledge or your firm’s philosophy into a falsifiable, focused book filled with proven experience means getting all your co-authors on the same page. The monthly, recorded conversations are an excellent way to do just that… and when the writing and editing process comes full circle, having co-authors weigh in, make corrections, and keep an eye on the overall project is a kind of brand refining process in and of itself.

With the goal of carving out your firm’s position in the marketplace, you want everyone involved on the same page… singing from the same tune from the same hymn book, you might say.

To that end, your book doesn’t need to read like a textbook.

Believe me, it doesn’t have to be this super academic, footnote-packed product you might find in a college bookstore.

You can build your backbone and flesh out your claims with facts, details, and proven experience in a substantial way…while being approachable. Many businesses who want to write a book envision something thick and substantial, but the reality is that putting out a massive volume overestimates the number of people who might actually read it.

Guard Your Expectations Carefully Even if your book is brilliant, it faces a harsh reality.

Most people that you encounter as potential clients will never actually read every word of it. They’ll read the parts that matter to them, or they might not even read it at all. Seeing the book and browsing its contents might be enough to make them go “Wow, you wrote the book on that? I want you as my firm.”

So if you’re thinking of putting out a brand dictionary, something that will take vast amounts of time, resources, and even budget… keep this in mind.

As I mentioned last month, manage your expectations accordingly.

Of course your piece of thought leadership needs to be good—I’m not saying a stylish book jacket is an easy swindle for getting people’s business.

But while you’re writing, podcasting and recording, or editing the book into the best, most substantial and thought-through version of itself, take a deep breath… and remember why you’re doing it.

Don’t expect a New York Times bestseller… or even to see your book on any physical bookshelf in a store. Rather, remember you’re doing this as a sophisticated way to validate everything you think internally about your firm, your industry, and your brand’s unique place in the market.

With a book, and for those who read your approachable, systematic outline to your thinking and proven experience, you gain a little bit of monopoly power against your competition.

And that stakes out your firm’s position.

Don’t Be Shy If you love the idea of a book that can build your remarkable firm’s reputation with your audience, then ask for the help you need to make it happen.

Having written a book on B2B branding with some incredible people, I know the process back to front. I’m glad to help remarkable brands plan, outline, and even get the words right. If the end result is a proven, authentically-reading piece of thought leadership that builds your firm’s reputation, then I’m all in.

I’d love to help make that happen.

So if you need help, you can give the Resound team a shout. You can even check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon to see what the finish line looks like.

If you’re itching to get recording or writing, that’s splendid.

But don’t forget that you are remarkable.

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If you know so much about it, why don’t you write a book?

Imagine being able to say: “Yeah, I did that… and here it is.”

Mic drop.

Here, in part II of taking your brand anthem to a thoughtful, well-developed book that demonstrates your expertise, I’m making the argument that every firm (including yours) should chase that feeling. Building on last month, when I made the case for writing a book with co-authors with the partners of your firm, and over a calendar year of recorded conversations, I’ve got more thoughts on the writing process itself.

But before I dive in, I’ll go ahead and tell you why.

https://youtu.be/tNio5GpRXxU

Why write a book?Why take the effort to plan, write, edit, and publish a piece of content that based on your brand anthem, if we’re being honest, probably won’t be a bestseller, or even a moderately successful seller?

Because publishing a book is a powerful long-term strategy to build your firm’s reputation for thought leadership, and at the same time, define its position in a marketplace filled with noise. In another article we’ve published, Chief Operating Officer Chris Stadler puts it this way:

“If your firm writes a book, it’s a sign that your thoughts and processes are time-tested and organized. Anyone who can talk deeply enough about a topic to write a book demonstrates depth and experience.”

This is especially true in professional services, where brands develop their reputation and define their place in the market through knowledge, competence, word-of-mouth, and in-depth experience with a particular topic. If you’re in accounting, law, or engineering, then your respective knowledge of case law, financial trends, or the geographical layout of the Colorado River basin is your bread and butter. With that in mind, a brand anthem book gathers all that knowledge into an eye-catching, tremendously helpful brand asset.

Of course, knowing what you do is different from communicating that to everyone else.

Before you get cracking on a book, your best bet is having your firm’s brand story right.

Brand Anthem Squared This is where your brand anthem comes in.

Whatever your content strategy looks like—and trust me, articles, brand videos, a podcast, a killer website, and social media accounts filled with clever posts are all a pretty great start—it should be centered on a clear, memorable brand anthem. That is, on a memorable story of how you help guide your clients to the solution they need in your unique, unduplicated way.

The same goes for a book; it should wave your brand’s banner in an unmistakable way, even as it dives into your point of view, experience, and comprehensive knowledge of a particular topic. Even where it dovetails with your regular ongoing strategy, a book built from a truthful, memorable brand anthem should take things further. More than standalone blog posts, and even more than a viral brand video that’s trending with your target audience, a book fleshes out your brand anthem in a definitive way.

One that commands your audience’s attention.

Put Another WayA book takes all the content strategy that you’re already putting out, and condenses it into a sophisticated, reputable piece of brand content.

All together in one package, with a clean title and an author from your firm on the cover, and listed on Amazon or stacked on a table at an annual convention, a book speaks volumes. It produces a level of reputational trust that I haven’t seen with other pieces of content that firms put out in the marketplace.

As you can imagine, a book is even more than a summary of your brand anthem, or one source volume of content strategy. Rather, it’s a valuable, sophisticated asset for your firm and your firm’s brand. Not to mention a reputational investment in your firm’s role as a thought leader.

Your Brand Anthem: Going Beyond ‘Write What You Know’ You’ve probably heard that you should ‘write you know.’ But in the professional service and B2B corner of the world, a better saying would be ‘write what you want to be known for.’

That obviously means tapping into you and your firm’s expertise—the refined experience and thought processes you’ve acquired over years, or even decades of day in, day out business and interactions—and aiming it squarely at your target audience.

It might mean elaborating on simply ‘what you know,’ even though the topic is one that you probably eat, breathe and sleep. Research, reading other books in the market and for the same audience, and of course gleaning as much as you can from co-authors all goes a long way in building out your book.

Write as a Teacher If nothing else, translating your proven experience into expository or, at times, instructional writing conveys another quality. It suggests that you’re capable of teaching others about your thinking—not just what you think, but how and why you think a certain way.

If you do it well, writing as a teacher can even push you, your firm, and your co-authors into the realm of being a thought leader on that topic—something that’s much more valuable than simply sticking the book on your website and telling people to buy it.

If they buy it, that’s a bonus.

But the real tactical advantage of writing a book comes when your firm can use that book and the expertise it conveys as a reputational, brand-building platform. With a book to your name, you’re more likely to land speaking events, or to make an impression at conventions with people you want to work with.

Handing someone a book is like handing them a turbo-charged resume.

It’s proof of your knowledge, your proven experience, and your conceptual thinking, all rolled into one.

Do I Have to Write it? No shame in asking.

Nearly everyone wants to have written a book… and that writing, editing, and publishing part of the journey looks pretty daunting.

No doubt, there is a ton of work and planning involved—but as I explained in last month’s article, the writing process itself also pays dividends when it comes to monthly content marketing.

One strategy I talked about was writing a book by talking to people. That is, get together with the partners of your firm, or any co-authors, and schedule twelve in-depth conversations (one every month) that you’ll record, draw from, and eventually turn into chapters in your book. With that strategy in mind, I’ll be talking more about the writing and editing process, and about how your book should differentiate your firm from others in a unique, remarkable way… obviously.

Writing With Backbone Here are a few tips on the writing process.

Or, and to the extent that writing is nothing but refined thinking, I should probably say the thinking process that will go into your book. A good process, along with a one year, one-topic-a-month strategy, goes a long way in making the whole writing journey a worthwhile investment.

Writing a book is a huge commitment. For every finished book, there’s a handful of would-be authors who got started but then changed their minds.

You’re probably not writing a book about something unless it’s something you really believe, and everybody knows that. When people see a finished book, the commitment that went into taking it over the finish line speaks for itself. Even more than case studies, a website, or marketing materials that share your philosophy while laying out what your firm does, a book gives your reputation and your way of thinking a backbone.

So what goes into this backbone? Chapter by chapter, page by page, and even paragraph by paragraph, how do you stack it all together? Aside from a keyboard, voice to text—or by the time I publish this, some flashy new copywriting bot—is there a silver bullet for translating that thinking into words and sentences?

Beyond carving up your book into a minimum of twelve chapter topics and then filling out those topics with recorded conversations, there’s no prescription for how you stack and organize your content knowledge. At the end of the day, someone will have to transcribe those conversations, edit the writing, and publish it.

You’re in LuckProbably more than once.

But I can say that the backbone of your book should be particular details, focused on your target audience. The common thread through each detail, as well as each chapter, is that they demonstrate your proven experience.

Here’s where you’re in luck.

Your proven experience is made up of details you already know.

Oh Yeah? Prove It. Say you’re telling someone all about your brand anthem book topic: someone like a hard-hitting journalist. While you talk, they’re hitting you with a ton of questions that force you to get more particular, more example-driven, and even more focused.

“Okay,” they say, thinking about accounting software, jury selection, or start-up strategies, or whatever you’ve just told them. “Tell me more about your take on that.”

“How is your take different?” they ask. “How is it Special? How is it unlike what I’ve already heard from other firms who know this topic?”

“What have you thought about or realized that nobody else is saying?”

“Can you demonstrate?”

“Can you give me an example? Something from your experience that stands out and illustrates your point?”

Now take a look at what you’ve gotThe more you answer these questions, the more you’re responding to an unspoken challenge: prove it, prove it, prove it. By the time you’re done, you’ve probably got a whole chapter’s worth of content, just in answering their questions. Maybe you’ve got several chapters, or even a whole book’s worth.

This exercise forces you to get particular. Answering questions means fleshing out your proven experience in a way people can understand. If you’ve spoken to someone who’s curious about your work, but not an insider, you know that dry, flavorless exposition will leave them bored or scratching their heads. Instead, give them stories. Memorable examples. Details about the process. Give them jaw-dropping facts, anecdotes and general stats (or estimates) so they have a baseline and proper perspective.

And when they ask how you approach your process, you’ll answer directly: ‘here’s what this means to me, and maybe even to you.’

In other words, in an authentic, reputable way, you have to prove it. Regardless of chapter topic, chapter order, or paragraph by paragraph flow, proving it is a pretty good plumb line. At every step, you’re showing that your way of thinking is a trustworthy map: a graspable system that helps people understand your profession, your industry, your valuable insights, and how you approach common challenges with a unique solution.

But Keep it GroundedWhen you stack all this in a book, people can do more than grasp your way of thinking—they can test it out for themselves. They can compare something you said in chapter one to what you say in chapter nine… and see if the numbers add up. In other words, part of your thought leadership’s backbone means being falsifiable. Not stepping out on a limb for no reason, but rather, taking stand after stand that can potentially be proven false.

It’s a scary thought, but remember that your reader is asking you, your co-authors, and book one thing: prove it.

Nonfiction writers like to say that every book makes a promise to the reader at the very start. Any book worth its salt, from a how-to book to a sophisticated work of investigative journalism, answers that promise.

By filling out your book’s content with falsifiable, but thoroughly supported, claims and proven experience, you show the reader your thought system works to the nth degree. You show them that you’ve used it so much (as the case should be if you’re writing about what you know) and so often over the years that it’s trustworthy and convincing.

Thought Leadership as Content StrategyWriting your book means more than refining your thinking—and when all is said and done, proving your role as a thought leader in the marketplace.

Another advantage (and another reason to do it) is that putting your knowledge or your firm’s philosophy into a falsifiable, focused book filled with proven experience means getting all your co-authors on the same page. The monthly, recorded conversations are an excellent way to do just that… and when the writing and editing process comes full circle, having co-authors weigh in, make corrections, and keep an eye on the overall project is a kind of brand refining process in and of itself.

With the goal of carving out your firm’s position in the marketplace, you want everyone involved on the same page… singing from the same tune from the same hymn book, you might say.

To that end, your book doesn’t need to read like a textbook.

Believe me, it doesn’t have to be this super academic, footnote-packed product you might find in a college bookstore.

You can build your backbone and flesh out your claims with facts, details, and proven experience in a substantial way…while being approachable. Many businesses who want to write a book envision something thick and substantial, but the reality is that putting out a massive volume overestimates the number of people who might actually read it.

Guard Your Expectations Carefully Even if your book is brilliant, it faces a harsh reality.

Most people that you encounter as potential clients will never actually read every word of it. They’ll read the parts that matter to them, or they might not even read it at all. Seeing the book and browsing its contents might be enough to make them go “Wow, you wrote the book on that? I want you as my firm.”

So if you’re thinking of putting out a brand dictionary, something that will take vast amounts of time, resources, and even budget… keep this in mind.

As I mentioned last month, manage your expectations accordingly.

Take a BreathOf course your piece of thought leadership needs to be good—I’m not saying a stylish book jacket is an easy swindle for getting people’s business.

But while you’re writing, podcasting and recording, or editing the book into the best, most substantial and thought-through version of itself, take a deep breath… and remember why you’re doing it.

Don’t expect a New York Times bestseller… or even to see your book on any physical bookshelf in a store. Rather, remember you’re doing this as a sophisticated way to validate everything you think internally about your firm, your industry, and your brand’s unique place in the market.

With a book, and for those who read your approachable, systematic outline to your thinking and proven experience, you gain a little bit of monopoly power against your competition.

And that stakes out your firm’s position.

Don’t Be Shy with your Brand Anthem If you love the idea of a book that can build your remarkable firm’s reputation with your audience, then ask for the help you need to make it happen.

Having written a book on B2B branding with some incredible people, I know the process back to front. I’m glad to help remarkable brands plan, outline, and even get the words right. If the end result is a proven, authentically-reading piece of thought leadership that builds your firm’s reputation, then I’m all in.

I’d love to help make that happen.

So if you need help, you can give the Resound team a shout. You can even check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon to see what the finish line looks like.

If you’re itching to get recording or writing, that’s splendid.

But don’t forget that you are remarkable.

View Details

As we all know, there’s more than one way to get your firm’s brand out into the world. Traditional content strategy with a website, ad campaigns, articles, social media, and a skillfully edited brand video is increasingly common—and not necessarily ineffective. If it’s done well and authentically, not by a long shot.

Trust me, you don’t have to go super-outlandish with free air guitars or pregnancy test coupons in magazines to get your brand seen.

As I wrote about last month, short videos are probably the most potent, shareable way to capture your brand anthem and communicate it with a wider audience. Video taps two of the five senses, taps memory and emotion, and speaks the common parlance of phones, tablets, and computer screens that take up people’s time.

But even if you’re dropping money on filming or professional editing, there’s one final strategy you should not overlook.

Writing (and, of course, publishing) your brand anthem in a book.

A brand book, or perhaps a book containing your collected thoughts on a relevant business or marketing topic, gets people excited—especially in professional services.

Think of a brand book as a printed, sophisticated piece of thought leadership: a respectable piece of developed, long-form content that contains your brand anthem and even raises it to a higher level of conversation.

But writing a book raises pointed questions, with the first one being:

How do I get there?

How do I get my brand anthem into an actual book someone can hold in their hands?

Do I have to write?

What about editing and publishing—aren’t those lengthy journeys in and of themselves?

Great questions.

But before I dive in, let me recap what any brand or topical book should be doubling down on: brand anthem.

If you want to do something right, there’s no getting enough of the basics.

https://youtu.be/7eJqjJevgEc

Brand AnthemIf your brand anthem is the starting point—your north star for a killer video, slick visuals and marketing, or even a product rollout—you should know exactly what it is and why it resonates with people.

Lest we forget, a good brand anthem builds on elements of a good story (one about your clients, and how you help them) and waves them into a clear, vibrant banner. I walked through the elements of a brand anthem in detail, but they’re worth repeating—there’s the hero (your client), the problem they’re facing, the guide (that’s YOU), and then the solution. As you can probably imagine, the story goes like this: the hero had a problem, and with the help of a trusting, knowledgeable guide, the hero solved that problem.

That story, of course, contains your brand’s unique traits and values. If it’s uniquely you—and don’t forget, whether you’re an accounting firm or a law firm or an engineering firm, you’re still the guide—then your brand anthem should set you apart from the stories that other brands are telling… in a pretty big way.

How do you uniquely help the hero?

Which kind of hero (or better yet, which problem) are you focused on solving?

How do you uniquely solve it?

With what philosophy or fresh vision of a better world? How is your solution different from other brands?

If your brand story sounds a little too familiar… then it might be time to tease it out a little more. Getting your brand anthem clear, and polished, and getting your message about who you are on point means carving out your position in the marketplace.

What’s your approach to the hero’s problem?

What’s your unique solution? Your answer for a segment of the market that’s not being fully served?

Potent brand anthems are usually the focused ones… and if we’re talking about writing a book on it, the more potent, the better.

Starting the Book ProcessSay you’ve got all that—a brand anthem with a tight, well-messaged story, and maybe even a tagline to go with it. Say you’re developing that brand anthem with your website. Maybe you’ve started to write some blog posts that break it down for everyone.

Great.

If you’re there, or getting close to that state, you’re well on your way to building out the thoughtful brand book I mentioned earlier.

If polishing up your brand anthem is step one of the process, then writing, publishing, and promoting the book is step two.

I mention blog posts as part of step one because, for many brands, they’re an incredibly helpful content strategy… and at the same time, a helpful, preemptive, book writing hack.

But here’s a better one.

Trick Your Leadership Into Writing a Book I mean it… but not literally.

If you walk away thinking you can convince some ghostwriter that they’re really cranking out Mark Cuban or Elon Musk’s next business book (and for a hefty fee when the draft is done), please think again.

I’m talking about writing your book with other people’s input, and with a content strategy that lends itself toward developing a thoughtful, in-depth book over the course of a year, even while you’re pressing out monthly, brand anthem-grade content.

It’s no one size fits all… but it is a strategy worth considering.

Typically, it won’t be just you writing the book; it’s a process that will involve the partners and leadership of your firm. So give yourself plenty of time.

Start out by carving out twelve months (not five, not three) and making a calendar of topic questions. By topics, I mean every content angle, area, or conclusion you’d like your book to cover.

A twelve month content strategy calendar is necessary because the next step is involving the key brain power behind your brand… although if that brain power involves thirty or more people, you may not get to all of them.

Once you’ve got the brain power lined up, ask the tough question—who’s going to spearhead this? Will your book have one, or two, or even three authors? Assuming those potential authors have other full-time responsibilities, families, and a generally busy life (and assuming you’ve got one partner willing to step out with you and take the lead), how are you going to get them to dump out all that knowledge and experience they have?

How about one drip at a time, through conversation?

Generating enough content over twelve months that can be turned into a book is not easy. But one way you can get your partners to commit to is by planning time for you and them to sit, hit the record button, and talk about the things that need to go into the book.

That calendar, and those conversations give you plenty of material to work with, both for your book and for the monthly social media, audio, or even visual content that you want to be dripping out.

And that’s what I mean when I say trick your leadership into writing a book.

Speaking from ExperienceI’ve found that this works for one key reason—those people who are knowledgeable, experienced, and interested in being authors of a book are usually verbal.

Think about it.

They’re used to talking to clients all day. They’re used to having to sell and pitch the business with their mouths, with speech, communication, and facial expression. Getting them in front of a microphone is one of the best ways to get the content out of their heads and eventually into a manuscript page, paper or digital.

I’ve also found that getting those key people involved in planning that outline pays dividends. For one thing, if your co-authors understand the strategy, you’ll get buy-in right from the beginning.

Who knows?

By tapping your firm’s brain power as co-authors, you might also be tapping them as podcast hosts for twelve podcasts at the exact same time. One podcast episode a month can follow, and fill out a chapter in the book.

Or not.

Keep in mind that your conversational writing sessions don’t need to be a podcast. If you’ve got a twelve month, one year content strategy set, then you and your co-author don’t need to pull out some fancy, expensive microphone when topic one rolls around.

If it takes some pressure off, use your iPhone. Or, and with the high probability that you’re both working remotely, hop on Zoom for an hour. Just say ‘we’ll record it and we’ll see what happens.’ As long as you’re able to get their voices recorded, you’ve got content you can start to utilize—and pull from if you need quotes or soundbites for brand marketing.

With a twelve month content calendar, and a commitment from co-authors to sit down and record twelve conversations, you can’t go wrong.

Book Strategy is Content StrategyHaving built that twelve-month calendar, you might be outlining your book and deciding on its structure at the same time. Simply enough, each month’s topic is a different chapter of your book.

Chances are, you’ll be building off your brand anthem—unless, of course, everyone at your firm just happens to have a Ph.D. in the same, unrelated subject and wants to write about it. But more likely, you’ll be drawing closely from your brand anthem with whatever topic you tackle.

With that in mind, you can generate an outline from your brand anthem and pencil them in quite easily. If you just did a chapter on your hero, well, next up is your hero’s problem. If you just did a chapter on the guide, then move on to your unique solution and how that unlocks a new level for the hero. Next up? The outcome…

And so on.

Or mix things up a bit.

However you slice it, twelve months should give you twelve themes for you and your partners to talk about… and twelve fresh podcasts, (or if you’d rather not publish them as podcasts, interviews…) Or twelve wells of thoughtful, quotable content, perfect for blog articles, email newsletters, social media, or mini-marketing concepts. All for each month of the calendar year.

How’s that for a book writing hack?

But Why a Book?I want to peek behind the curtain of your future here.

Assume you’ve sharpened up your brand anthem.

Imagine that you’ve interviewed twelve knowledgeable people, (or even, three co-authors four times each).

Take one more leap and imagine you’ve published it.

Why have you published it?

Believe it or not, and unless you’re extremely lucky or super well-connected in the New York City publishing world, you didn’t necessarily publish the book to sell millions of copies… enough for an advance on the next book and a ranch in Montana.

In fact, you probably didn’t even publish it to sell thousands.

Bear with me: you published your book to establish your firm, build your credibility, and show people why you’re unique beyond any shadow of a doubt. If you think about it, those co-authors you brought on board are probably among the foremost leaders of the unique way you approach and do business. By mining their experience and expertise, and by writing it up and publishing it in a book, you’ve distilled their unique view, their philosophy, and their way of serving clients into a satisfying, readable product.

That speaks volumes about your firm, and even reminds people that your firm truly is remarkable.

I’m not saying that the book isn’t a product in and of itself (of course it is, even if you’ve given away much of the content for free in monthly blog posts or podcasts)… but it’s not the overarching fruit of your intention.

Of course there are strategies to recoup the cost of writing, editing, publishing, and promoting it… but think of those benefits as incidental to the real value: establishing deep credibility for your brand.

Writing a Book Makes It Official In a way, it really does.

The effort, time, planning, knowledge, and elbow grease that goes into a published, thought-leading product often speaks for itself. Hand someone a book and you’re a lot more likely to get invited on their podcast, or to give a lecture at a conference coming up…or win the contract with a new, big client.

That’s because a brand book shows people your unique, remarkable process, and what it looks like crossing the finish line.

Now THAT’s a business card.

What a way to tell, and show, and, insofar as you get some readers, continue telling them about your unique process, your unique solution to the hero’s problem, and your one-of-a-kind position in the marketplace.

Going around and saying you have a unique position unfortunately, means nothing.

But having written and published a book about it usually means you’ve lived it. It means you know that position from every angle, and furthermore than you’ve owned it through experience.

All this to say, a book isn’t the only way of telling people that you’re remarkable.

I’ll probably talk more about publishing in another article, but a book lends itself to a number of mediums. As part of the publishing process, there’s plenty of room to branch into an audio version, an e-reader or digital copy people can share or download… or like I mentioned earlier, a sign leading back to those twelve months of blogs or podcasts.

Adding a book to twelve months of existing content is in many ways, a force multiplier.

Need Help Planning a Brand Book? You’ve come to the right place.

Having planned and written a book on B2B branding with some pretty amazing people, I can tell you all about the ins and outs of gathering audio content, getting it into words, and organizing those words into a publishable, potent, brand anthem product.

It’s no cakewalk, but I believe it’s worth it.

If you think planning a book would be a worthwhile part of your brand’s content strategy, and if you’d like some help or consultation with that, the Resound team stands ready. Give us a shout.

You can even check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon to get a sense of what I’m all about, and why I love helping brands and companies share their story with the world.

So dream big.

And don’t forget that you are remarkable.

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“Do you have videos? Videos are the best! Oh you’ve got to have videos,” … said every SEO and marketing guy ever.

For the most part, and in a world that’s increasingly defined by phone screens, video uploads, and short, watchable content, I’m on board with that.

Of course, I’m not talking about tapping your inner Hollywood director and going wildly off color—if you’re a highly-ranked law firm with a long standing reputation, would you really run a cheesy, late night T.V. commercial?

Or if you’re a no-nonsense wholesale store, do you really want to post Tik Tok videos with customers getting their twerk on? Maybe you do… but I digress.

Having made the case that every brand should be telling its remarkable story in the form of a potent brand anthem, I will say that video, more than any other mass media or medium, captures that anthem in a shareable, authentic way.

More to the point, and remembering that your remarkable brand identity boils down to you, video far surpasses written copy, visuals, or even audio as a way to show your authentic self. Provided it’s done well, and built on the truth of your brand story.

Keep reading and I’ll gladly tell you why.

https://youtu.be/qtfnej5C4pQ

Brand Video Taps the SensesWhy are videos so effective? A short answer is that they tap into two of the most important senses people have—hearing and sight—at the exact same time. When it’s done correctly, (and you don’t need $30,000 cameras to do that), video weaves sight and sound together in a seamless, memorable way.

That being said, I will say that at least half of a video’s effectiveness is actually the sound. Being able to hear someone speak without interference, or choosing the right music track to go behind the visuals might be just as important as what people see when they watch your video. Recording garbage audio usually makes for a terrible video, even if you’ve got A-list actors, perfect lighting, and so on.

Of course the visuals are important—I’m not talking about radio shows or podcasts. Video is, of course, visually moving, unlike still graphics and illustration. As such, the visual, even in the old time, black and white motion picture sense, is stirring.

If we think of brand video as a trifecta that brings our senses together, its elements would be visual, audio, …and the story expressed through both of those things.

More on Brand StoryYou might have a great video. Killer sound, a visually compelling subject that captures the eyes with style and color… but if you’re completely missing the final element of storytelling, you probably won’t be holding anyone’s attention spans.

On that note, they’re increasingly short and getting shorter by the day.

More than written content, visuals, or even audio in isolation, a video with a story packages all those elements together in a way that quickly gets someone’s attention and then keeps it long enough for you to show your brand anthem.

What’s in a brand story?I talked more about this in previous articles, but here’s a recap. In your own brand story, you’re not the hero. Rather, your customer or client is the hero, and you’re the guide, the one making the difference that enables the hero to achieve their goal and make the world a better place.

When you set to making that Oscar-worthy brand video, remember this template: hero, (your client), guide (your brand), the hero’s problem, and solution.

The solution, the thing that solves the hero’s problem and enables them to cross the finish line, is what you offer: your benefits, what you deliver, and what makes it unique and suited to the hero.

On a deeper level, it’s also the benefits you (through the hero) deliver to others at the end of the story. What’s the difference that you, as a guide, make in your hero’s world? In the broader world for your customers and your clients? Framing your video’s message and any marketing content within a story makes things crystal clear for anyone watching.

Authentic IdentityAuthentic identity should shine through every brand video. Authenticity engages people and resonates in a way that much of the video content being uploaded every day does not.

Rather than straight information, how-to videos (‘three easy steps to fix your clogged sink,’ anyone?) or the coming tons of AI generated video b-roll that will no doubt be dumped on the internet on every conceivable topic in the coming years, brand videos that bank on story, and show real, authentic people will be the ones that stand out.

Think of the last time you broke through the automated customer service hotline to a human voice. Brand videos that tell a relatable story with authentic people in a memorable way, can activate trust. And in getting your brand or message to stick in people’s minds after they’re done viewing, trust is no small thing.

Trust and MemoryUsually, our strongest memories are the ones that stirred our emotions in an unforgettable way. In fact, I’d put it this way: our memories are embedded by emotions. I talked about how video captures the two most important senses: sight and hearing.

I mentioned brand story as a way to communicate effectively and bring an authentic level of trust. But most importantly, and even on top of all these important qualities, video captures the memory of the viewer by evoking emotion.

When you call someone, you hear their thoughts and single reactions in real time through tone and inflection—and you don’t get those things in a text message. In a video call, you get both of those things, and you also get the added subtleties of facial movement.

It’s in our communication wiring to trust the responses of people we can see and hear; we’re less in the dark about who they are, how they communicate and what they are, or are not saying.

Brand Video Captures MemoryRemember, our memories are embedded in emotions. This means videos are memorable because they evoke emotion. Where written content or even audio just tells you, they show. Why do short, random videos, like videos of cats doing ridiculous things, dominate our break time? Distract us from work? Because they stir our emotions.

If a video is funny, sad, thrilling, or awe-inspiring, that comes with a powerful emotional draw that makes the story, visuals, audio, and whatever content all the more memorable in our eyes, ears and mind.

Our emotions are deep-seated, and even if someone’s only got a few seconds of video playing time to capture them, they can do it through repetition, through showing us the same kind of funny, touching, or thrilling content more than once, in a way that links to our senses, emotions, and memory.

For the record, I don’t recommend that brand videos go for negative emotions… even if a negative emotion (like the dread, disgust, or surprise evoked by a good horror flick) tends to stick.

Stir Emotions by Evoking MemoryBut touching on memory through emotionally engaging videos, and doing that in a way that makes your video seen again and again is a way to make your brand anthem stick. In most cases, someone’s not going to pick up the phone or fill in a lead gen form the first time they see your video.

But if your brand video tells a story, shows the authentic you, and stirs emotions in a small but decisive way… the more someone sees it, the more familiar they’ll become with your remarkable brand.

In short, through compelling brand videos, someone will get to know you and your brand in an intimate, relatable way long before they interact with you… assuming of course, that your videos and brand story are all showing your authentic self.

Lest we forget, and like I usually say in every discussion, you’ve got to know your authentic self before you can communicate to the world.

If You’re Making Your Own Video…Watch out for distractions. By ‘distractions’ I don’t mean rounds of minesweeper. I mean anything that can get in the way of your brand anthem, the emotions you want to evoke, and your viewer.

A word of warning—if you’re putting together your own brand video, you (and in the end, the viewers you want to reach) are up against a world of distractions. What I mean is that writing, location scouting, shooting, editing, and publishing each come with their own set of hurdles…and in the final analysis, every little detail matters.

If you’re doing everything yourself, and assuming you’re clearing each hurdle on your way to the finish line… you’re probably going to get caught up in all the details of what you did.

If you’ve seen an amateur video, you can tell immediately that something’s lacking. Whether it’s bad video, wrong music choice, terrible acting, bad editing, or extra black space at the end… those distractions stick out like a sore thumb, and the emotional connection that will embed that video in your memory is distorted at best, or outright broken.

Consider Hiring a ProIt’s a lot of work to craft videos, and edit out any missteps or distractions. That’s probably a good pitch for all the professional brand filmers and videographers out there.

Of course, anyone making videos for their brand can learn and practice those elements piecemeal, but with the time and attention that takes, many brands hire outside pros for shooting, editing, or even brainstorming and fleshing out their brand story in a visual way.

If your goal is to be authentic, and to produce a video without all the potential distractions and small stumbling blocks… then you’re probably going to want to invest in somebody who knows what they’re doing with a camera, with a microphone, and with editing software. Unless you’re going for some dancing interns in grainy footage that won’t really matter on Tik Tok.

Whatever you choose to do, it’s worth asking what is the point of this video that we’re about to produce? Is this just a quick hit for social media fodder? Is it a piece of your brand story really quick with a human element? Or is it an event or a human interest project highlighting the staff, an update, or the release of something new?

Or are we talking about a longer, informational recruitment or training video, something that’s essential for people on your team but also meaningful, authentic, and memorable?

Take your time to brainstorm. Outline. Write the ideas out in a treatment, a creative brief, or even a short script. Then give yourself the advantage of finding the talent you need to produce and finish it.

However you Edit, Authenticity WinsBrand story, brand identity, brand expression—brand video ties so many elements together it’s incredible. Done well, and cleared of distractions for a memorable final cut, brand videos amplify your brand in an unforgettable way.

They’re much more than putting a set of values together on your homepage, or slapping an amazing new logo or tagline on everything. Videos are powerful because when they come together, they’re authentically you.

Authenticity, and showing who you really are, (don’t get me started on cheesy stock video clips instead of actual footage of your team) is critical to building relationships with everyone around you. If you’re able to show people who you are, it’s almost like they’re meeting you before they ever talk to you. If people can see and hear it, and if it taps their memory by stirring emotion, then they know inherently.

They feel it. And if they don’t feel it, or if a rushed brand video throws the whole experience off with terrible audio…then it’s just another distraction. One of the billion and half videos out there right now.

When you make your brand video—do it right from start to finish. Be aware of what you’re saying, the emotions you’re evoking, and the story you’re telling. That’s the way to cut through to people.

Need help along the way?For brand builders with video ideas, and an honest sense of what they need with scripting, shooting, editing, and publishing, I’m all ears. From dairy co-ops to tech companies and on to nonprofits, the Resound team has shot, edited, and shaped award-winning brand videos that help remarkable brands tell their authentic story. Here’s a few we’ve produced recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44RVYTAzn0Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw9xpRgcELE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wu4J2M2U5c

If you’d like to see your brand anthem in a killer brand video, give us a call—or check out the articles, videos and podcast on our website. You can also check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon. Until next time, don’t forget that you are remarkable.

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When you think of the American National Anthem, what comes to mind? Is it the melody? Or the first lines that many of us sang in grade school, or before a baseball game with thousands of people?

‘Oh say, can you seeee…by the dawn’s early light.’

If you’re more pedantic, you might think of more lyrics and the imagery of the ‘bombs bursting in air.’ Or if you’re into history (like I am), you might think of the context—author Francis Scott Key, who watched the all-night bombardment of Fort McHenry from a British vessel in the Chesapeake Bay, and then scribbling down the words when the Fort’s flag was still flying in the morning.

All those things touch on the anthem in meaningful ways.

But if you think about it, a country’s anthem is really more than the words, the melody, the history, or even our own memories of it. All of those things spring from it, but stripped to its core identity, a country’s anthem is a collective story—a lyrical one to be sure. It’s a story that embodies national history, values and aspirations, but also, and more powerfully, the feelings, ideas, and associations people have, and share about their country. Pride, camaraderie, historical events collectively remembered, honor for those who sacrificed for their country—everything’s wrapped up in that story and what it means to people.

You’ve probably heard another country’s national anthem…but unless you’ve lived or spent some time in that country, hearing it probably didn’t prompt all of the thoughts and feelings that come with hearing your own national anthem.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

The point is that people are wired with deep, personal loyalties, and those loyalties are tied to stories. Just like someone who appreciates a national anthem, a good brand builder does well to understand that.

https://youtu.be/7xW8aeSrQCw

Brand Anthem Defined I know what you’re thinking…great topic for the Fourth of July.

Fair enough.

But when it comes to thinking about your brand’s story, how you tell it, and how that telling of it makes people think and feel, thinking in terms of a national anthem makes sense.

With that in mind, your brand’s ‘anthem’ is more than good content, great marketing, or obviously, an incredible product or service that keeps people coming back. Rather, it’s your unique, remarkable story, and telling it in a way that unifies all those things with personality, emotion, and authenticity that people relate to.

I’ll talk more about this later, but I will say that one of the best ways to express and share your brand anthem is through video. As far as putting your brand anthem out in the world both visually and audibly, it seems to be a natural way to do that. Obviously, you can do that in other parts of your brand, your website, your collateral, and the way that you talk to clients, but the video side is an optimal way to capture and communicate it.

Of course, there’s a temptation to cram everything—every service or product you offer—into your brand’s communication. But more than likely, that will come across as confusing or overwhelming to your audience. If you find yourself cramming everything in, take a step back, because you shouldn’t be.

A solid brand anthem video dodges that problem while communicating something evocative—starting with your brand’s story.

A Good Anthem Starts with Story As I’ve said and written about before, your brand story is the foundation, the starting point for everything you’ll communicate through marketing, visuals, and a cohesive brand expression. Along with your brand’s purpose, history, and mission—your brand’s story is no small ingredient in your brand’s anthem.

There’s any number of storytelling formulas. For more digging, I’d recommend reading up on Joseph Campbell’s (no relation to Campbell’s soup) template called the Hero’s Journey. Campbell based his template on what he found after looking through thousands of stories spanning ancient history to the present.

The Hero’s Journey breaks down into twelve steps that many novelists and screenwriters swear by. But for those looking to build a brand anthem, we can translate a few aspects of traditional story to the business environment.

Two characters: the hero and the guide.

The first element in every brand anthem should be two characters—the hero of the story, and that hero’s trusty guide. If we think of the very first Star Wars movie as a classic template, it kicks off the journey with these two characters: Luke Skywalker, the hero, and his guide, Obi-Wan Kenobe.

While Luke eventually meets his second guide in Yoda, we can safely say he wouldn’t have made it off his home planet and successfully rescued Princess Leia without that first guide.

Every hero needs a guide, and that’s where your brand comes in.

You’re the guide to your customer, who is always the hero.

The hero has a problem.

What’s really interesting about heroes in stories is that they have a problem.

When we think of Luke in the first Star Wars movie, one of his main problems is that he has this power called the force. When Obi-Wan introduces him to it, Luke is bewildered. With a little training, he sets off on his journey, but he still hasn’t mastered it… that doesn’t happen until he’s done more training with Yoda, and then tested himself by facing Darth Vader two movies later.

The guide offers a solution

So both Obi-Wan and Yoda play huge roles in shaping Luke, mentoring him, and passing on their knowledge of the force. With their guidance, Luke masters the force, a power he had from the beginning, and even before he was aware of it, but could not have possibly mastered on his own.

Along the way, and with both guides helping him, Luke becomes the Jedi Knight he was meant to be.

However you look at it, it’s an engaging story. And there’s a lot more brands can learn from Star Wars, or a few elements of the Hero’s Journey when they start telling their stories, and then using those stories to craft their brand anthem.

Craft a Compelling Brand AnthemOne last thing about Star Wars and why it resonates—Luke doesn’t just become a master of the force. He becomes the savior of the galaxy. He overcomes Darth Vader, the evil emperor, and leads the rebellion in a war of liberation.

It’s ultimately satisfying because by overcoming his problem, Luke empowers those around him. He makes the galaxy (or at least, his corner of it), a much better place.

So, all the way back to brands. Brands need to tell stories with a hero and a guide. But the big challenge I see is that a lot of organizations confuse who the hero is in their story. They often think, well, the hero is the focus of the story, so, therefore, that should be us. Our brand should be the hero. But remember, the hero is the one with the problem; the hero is stuck in some way, shape, or form, and the guide is the one with the solution.

If your story is about how your organization is stuck and how you can’t overcome the problem that you’re trying to solve… that’s not a compelling story to anyone else. That might be a story that’s important to you, but that’s not your marketing story—and while solving your problems and fulfilling your brand’s purpose might be a great story that’s worth remembering, it’s not the basis of your outward facing brand anthem.

Rather, your brand anthem should be the story of how you, as a guide, help your clients overcome their problems and realize some new state of being. That could be growth in their business, a promotion, a hassle-free cooking experience—whatever they’re defining as success.

It’s hard, but worth it to figure these elements out. Thinking, and building your communication in terms of hero (your client), guide (you), the hero’s problem, and solution means understanding what your audience will see about themselves, their concerns and problems, and how you can help them achieve a new state of being when they encounter your brand story.

What Comes Out of a Brand Anthem?Having worked through your brand story, and from the point of view of your client or customer as the hero… you’re in much better shape to start telling it to people.

Does the story you’re telling paint the picture of how you help heroes overcome their problem and realize a new state of being, and make their corner of the world a better place? If so, you’re on the right track—and that’s the story you’re going to tell through your brand anthem.

How does telling your brand story play out in terms of content, marketing, and internal communication?

Here’s a few ways:

A specific hero

You can’t be all things to all people. Even if your brand offers multiple services or sells products in different industries, your brand story can’t be about how you grew to offer all those services…remember, you’re the guide, not the hero. Over time, most companies specialize, offering sophisticated products or services to a specific demographic… and even if that’s not where your business is headed at the moment, you can apply that principle to your brand story.

Through customer personas, or your own research and client feedback, narrow that story down.

As the trusted guide, who are you helping, and how, specifically? What’s unique and remarkable about how you help this hero on their journey or mission? What will be better and different about their world as a result?

Brand taglines

Take your story and shorten it to an elevator pitch.

What do you offer, what’s unique, or different about it, and most importantly—who is it for? Who do you help and why?

Don’t forget the elements—hero, guide, problem, solution. If you’re a financial lender, maybe those elements go something like, we empower entrepreneurs for long-term success by loaning them the working capital they need to break ground.

If you can get your tagline as short and memorable as Nike’s mantra… ‘Just Do It,’ even better.

For the record, ‘Just Do It’ applies broadly to Nike’s whole team and organization, but it’s foremost an exhortation to every customer. If you can frame your tagline with the point of view of the hero and their journey, that’s even better.

A memorable mission statement

Similar to the tagline, a mission statement is a short, sweet sentence with active (not passive) verbs. A memorable one captures the mission and even touches on how an organization empowers the hero or seeks to usher in a better world… but it’s mostly for the troops.

Crafting a mission statement that tells your story, and one that everyone in your organization can know, relate to, and apply to what they do and how they interact with others, is one way of crafting a cogent, compelling internal-facing brand anthem.

Think of it as one of the most memorable lines of the anthem.

I could spend more time on the do’s and don’ts of company mission statements, but they’re worth mentioning as a way to buttress your brand anthem with a brief, rallying statement that embodies your purpose and story for everyone onboard.

Here’s a few that leave an impression:

Linkedin: ‘To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.’

Tesla: ‘To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.’

Ever seen a TED talk?

The TED organization has their mission statement down to two words: ‘Spread ideas.’

Marketing content for a website and collateral

A brand anthem that’s narrowed down to the constraints of your business, and built on a truthful brand story should capture everything in a concrete, creative way.

Working from the story in mind, and the elements of hero, guide, problem, and solution, a brand anthem can be built outward into compelling, catching copy for your website, printed marketing materials, and social media accounts.

When it comes to offering more specific expertise, promotion, or products and services on your website, unifying everything under a brand anthem makes your story clear to anyone who sees it. More than that, it reflects collaboration and thoughtfulness while speaking to the client (hero) on their terms, about their journey and the solution they’re looking for.

Content for a great brand anthem video

As I mentioned earlier, a brand anthem takes your purpose, your story, and the flair and associations people will make with your brand, and packs that into a killer visual format that people can share.

Along with short videos or clever commercials, you can elaborate on your brand anthem through a regular podcast, or through multiple episodes that break your brand story down—one about the hero, one about the guide, another about the problem, and so forth.

The Anthem for Your Remarkable Brand There’s plenty of ones to generate content from a brand anthem, and then drip that content out through videos, articles, podcast episodes, or even a book.

However you do it, remember that your brand anthem will be more compelling if you talk to your audience about them—not just about yourself and what you offer. By considering their problems, their challenges, and what they need to grow, flourish, and become who they want to be, you’re setting up your brand as the trusted guide the hero needs.

One really interesting part of the brand anthem process is that it forces you to figure out who the hero of your story is. It can’t just be the whole world, everyone, or humanity in general.

With any luck, and while you won’t be for everyone, your brand anthem will show people the exact guide you are—and that you’re intrinsically remarkable.

Need a Guide? Every firm has an intrinsic remarkability to it.

I know I use that word a lot, but it’s the truth. There’s remarkable, and one-of-a-kind traits that come together in every brand or organization, and it might take a lot of digging to discover them.

But once you’ve unlocked the process and found your authentic brand identity, building a brand anthem that condenses these elements in a creative, compelling way is quite the journey.

If that’s a journey you’re on, and if you’d like a guide whose purpose is helping B2B’s unlock their authentic identity, then you’ve come to the right place.

Browse some of the articles, videos, or podcast episodes on the website, check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’ on Amazon…or give the Resound team a call.

And remember, you are remarkable.

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More than ever, everyone works, meets, and shops online.

It’s no surprise that companies which previously insisted on a brick and mortar location for their workers are now almost completely remote.

But regardless of that steadily encroaching fact, your brand’s geographic, physical location still matters. In fact, and for a few primary reasons, I’m going to spend this month’s article arguing that it matters even more than you think.

The main reason why location matters—and a kind of catch-all summary for more reasons—is that we’re physical beings…obviously. We exist in physical locations. Even with the likes of e-commerce, virtual reality, and opportunities to work online embedding themselves into the fabric of daily life, geographic locations and all their sensory, historical-cultural, and experiential particulars still pique and intrigue us—or in some cases, repel us. You don’t need to look very far to find examples of this, (unless you’ve been dutifully under a rock this last month.) If you think physical locations and all their colorful baggage don’t matter, look no further than people and companies moving from coastal states to other states in record numbers. Or just look at all the hype and controversies that surrounded Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

As the old realtor’s adage goes, there’s no beating—or at least, no factoring out—location, location, location.

Fair enough.

But what does all this have to do with brand building?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ1H7SugaeY

Brand Location QuizHere’s a brain-teaser.

Each of these brands and companies drew closely from a physical location for their name and brand identity. Can you guess that founding location for…

1. Patagonia (outdoorsy clothing based in California…but where does its name come from?)
2. Haribo (gummy bears)
3. Big Sky Brewing (glug, glug)
4. Cisco (digital technology and communication)
5. Valero (gas stations)
6. Carrefour (a French grocery chain…no hint with that one)

And, last but not least:

1. Bank of America (a little trickier…but worth looking up if you don’t know the answer)

There you go. I’ll include the answers at the bottom of this article…scroll ahead if you can’t wait to see them.

As you can probably tell, I really enjoy this topic.

In fact, I wrote and published a previous article on location branding, how important it is, and how B2B’s can incorporate their location into the winsome mix of an authentic brand identity. Here, I’m keeping this topic up-to-date with a more horizontal focus on location, and its role in your organization’s day-to-day, operational landscape.

Even if your workforce is all remote–or if you’re like most companies in that you’re still trying to figure out this work-from-home, shop-from-home, some people back in the office hybrid thing out–your location matters.

Even if you’re an e-commerce business that sells to customers who don’t interact with you, and who simply buy your product without ever coming into any kind of physical, real-world environment.

Nevertheless, depending on your brand strategy and perhaps to a lesser degree than other circumstances, location is still important.

With that in mind, the question I’ll be focusing on is how.

How does location matter to a brand or company?

In what ways and to what extent?

Geography and Location Basics As it usually turns out, the branding’s in the details.

Historically, and before it became hard to find a company’s physical address on their website, physical location embodied a large part of a brand’s identity. More than that, claim to a particular location often, and still, shapes a brand’s strategy and expression, playing on how people around the world perceive that location. While that claim takes many different forms and shapes a brand in countless ways, a lot depends on branding efforts that might or might not be taking location into account.

Because locations are intriguing and evocative, many brands go with loud, on-the-nose ties to a certain location as an optical effort to market themselves.

Nothing wrong with that.

Some Modern, Well-Known Examples of Location-inspired BrandsFrom Arizona Iced Tea (made by a company in upstate New York) to Texas Roadhouse restaurants (owned by a company in Kentucky), there’s a huge number of brands and products that claim a location as their name without having existed there. Texas, Hawaii, Florida, Japan, London—any iconic location that captures people’s imaginations in certain ways finds itself in a product name…and for good reason.

In terms of pure brand naming—and by the way, even the word ‘branding’ comes from location, from the act of branding cows with a symbol to tell them apart from one ranch or another— certain locations punch above their weight.

If a hot sauce company puts ‘Texas’ or ‘Louisiana’ in their name, that conjures up a world of sensory, and in this case, culinary associations in people’s minds. In effect, that hot sauce company might be saying: ‘we’re a flavory, cajun kind of sauce,’ (Louisiana) or rather, ‘think of us like you’d think of a mouth-watering Texas brisket, served up in a roadhouse with sawdust on the floor’ … and so on.

We might roll our eyes, but chances are we’ll get the idea.

To some extent, that’s also why we might drive a ‘Tucson,’ a ‘Sienna,’ or a ‘Sedona’ …but probably not an ‘East St. Louis.’ Invoking a desirable location gives a flair and a cadence to products that we otherwise wouldn’t think about.

To that end, and whether or not it’s always based in fact, location is a guiding force for marketing strategy, conversations, and brand expressions that resonate with people. It’s not for nothing that companies who may or may not be from Florida ask questions like:

“Is our company a Florida brand? Do we have a laid-back, sunny-tropical day kind of vibe? Or are we more of a rugged, Rocky Mountain kind of brand?”

Drawing from a Location Can Convey Essential Ideas About Your Brand IdentityIn terms of value, aesthetics, norms, and associations that people quickly recognize, location means a lot. If a location syncs with a brand’s values, identity, and authentic expression, that meaning will carry over and we’ll see it—regardless of where we’re working, shopping, or browsing.

This also raises the question of whether or not location is a simple way to tack-on an association that bears no relationship to the actual product.

It certainly could be.

If your brand is adopting the style and swagger of a place it has nothing in common with, then you should probably rethink that approach. In the end, people don’t respect copycat brands, or anchorless, superficial brands that try to be everything to everyone. With few exceptions, tacking on a location just to move more product is a losing, short-term strategy that doesn’t build a loyal audience over time.

One way to avoid this pothole is owning the place that birthed, or influenced your brand’s history and values in indelible ways.

Owning Your Brand’s LocationOf course, many companies wear their original locations like a badge.

More than that, they take that location’s associations and let them define the company’s brand identity, brand expression, and growth and marketing strategy. Where everyone else is pressing for a digital, or international flair, sticking with one’s hometown is a bold choice, but not a surprising one.

There’s pros and cons to doubling-down on where you came from. Companies like Chrysler have even tried it with Detroit—a bold, calculated move because most people don’t find Detroit exotic, evocative, or even positive as a location.

But in a world where it’s harder to pin a brand down to a particular location, drawing from geographic roots to develop one’s brand identity has clear upsides. Of course, people want the option of working from home, or from anywhere in the world, but that leaves us craving a sense of sensory physicality that zoom meetings and even virtual reality increasingly lack.

Rather than simply being a way to imbue meaning into a product, location, and even local culture, both matter to brands and their customers.

After all, brands are made of people…and people have to live somewhere.

Location for the Remote Workplace If you’ve gone fully remote, or if your workers and customers interact online from different corners of the planet, places still vibrate with meaning, flavor, and identity.

That’s because, while workers and management, or customers and vendors, may not be ‘located’ together, in a sense, everyone’s in ‘locations’ together. Think of your last few work-related zoom calls. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet that you, or someone you spoke to on zoom asked something like “Hey, how’s the weather where you are?”

Or at the very least, (and if they didn’t already know), someone said, “So where are you calling from?”

Even if we’re gathering online from different places, geographic location still piques our curiosity. Places are a common point of connection in the online workplace. For online companies who want their workforces, team members, and ultimately their brand to thrive, recognizing, sharing, and celebrating locations is a smart move.

And even though the remote workforce presents considerable challenges, there’s ways that brands and companies can turn everyone’s location to their advantage.

Try Local Culture One of our values at Resound is local culture.

Even though our workforce meets online every day, and even though our roots are in Tempe, Arizona, aren’t always visible publicly, tying local culture to our mast means wanting all of our team members to flourish in their own local communities.

In the work-from-home era, and with an office in Tempe and remote workers around the world, we’re still learning how to do that.

In conversation, and in monthly meetings, we talk with team members about what’s going on in their neck of the woods. We celebrate when they celebrate, and in the other direction, we tell them all about what’s happening where we are. As an added boost, and as something we proudly incorporate without a front-facing name like ‘Arizona Iced Tea,’ we’re deeply connected to our location.

Many of our clients and colleagues are also in Phoenix. In more than one case, they’re right down the street, or in the same building as our office.

Caring about communities and taking an interest in them comes from our willingness to celebrate our own location, to fly our hometown flag wherever we can. Just like we want Tempe, Phoenix, and the state of Arizona to flourish, we want our team member’s communities in Idaho, Ohio, Kentucky, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere to flourish.

Tapping in to Physical LocationFinally, and in a time when people working and shopping remotely are craving physical, in-person experiences like never before, location can be a tactical advantage. Whether it’s front and center in a brand name, or present in undertones and accents (like a ‘Texas drawl’) physical locations come through in a number of ways, letting people connect the dots as they form their impression of a brand’s history and personality.

Done well, and with a clear approach that reflects a company’s identity, location helps people experience brands in a particular, potent way.

People who experienced formative challenges in a particular place and time, (say, raising a family, playing on a football team, or studying together to survive a particular medical school), bonded from those in-person experiences. They bonded because physical interaction with touch, smell and other physical people builds memories in a way the digital world can’t…and probably never will.

Sorry, Metaverse.

Nothing personal.

To a lesser degree, walking into a store or an office is still inherently different and much more memorable than buying something online. In a zoom chat, nobody shakes hands. Physical location brings in elements (like more of the five senses) that are hard to incorporate in an all digital experience.

In fact—and even if you’re not launching your own flashy copy of the Apple store or the Rainforest Cafe—there’s a huge opportunity to flip the ‘all digital experience’ on its head by offering some kind of real-world experience for your customers.

A remarkable one that only you can offer.

Even if you don’t have an office or a physical headquarters, can your brand create some kind of pop-up or temporarily real experience that has a sense of location to it? If so, that might be a way to offer something people are increasingly craving: physical locations and experiences that offer variety, entertainment, and in-person interaction.

All in a specific place and time.

Online or In-Person, You are Remarkable I’m all for working and doing business online. But I could talk about location (yours, mine, or the site of future World Cups to name a few) all day.

People, more than ever, crave physical experiences, even as everything goes digital. This means location still matters, and that brands need to think carefully about their ties to geography, their physical presence, and what those things communicate about them to their customers. Owning, recognizing, and embracing location (whether it’s a real-historic one or one you’ve adopted) in authentic, purposeful ways helps your brand resonate with physical, location-based people.

And that’s a good thing because your brand is remarkable.

If you need some help working through your remarkable identity, building it into a strategy, or shaping it into a thoughtful, confident brand expression that will grow your customer base, check out the resources on our website or give the Resound team a call.

And we’ve got plenty of wind for your sails in our B2B branding book: “You are Remarkable”, available on Amazon.

Wherever you are… and wherever you’d like to be, we’d love to hear from you.

Happy branding.

P.S. Here’s a few quiz answersGet your red pens ready.

1. Patagonia operates out of Ventura, California. But its name comes from the far-off, southern portion of Argentina and Chile.
2. Haribo, believe it or not, is a German candy company based in Bonn, Germany. The name ‘Haribo’ comes from the first two letters of the founder’s name—Hans Riegel—along with the first two letters of the location.
3. Big Sky Brewing – Missoula, Montana. Home of big skies.
4. Cisco – As the name (or should we say, ‘nickname’ implies), San Francisco, California.
5. Valero – Founded in San Antonio, Texas, and named after the full name for the Spanish mission there: Mission San Antonio de Valero.
6. Carrefour – If you know this one, you’re really up on your international brand history. While you’ll find a Carrefour in far off places like Indonesia, Africa, and all over South America, the grocery chain was founded in Annency, France, near a crossroads.

And finally,

1. Bank of America was originally the ‘Bank of Italy,’ founded in San Francisco by an Italian immigrant in 1904. The actual ‘Bank of America’ was founded in Los Angeles around the same time, but Bank of Italy acquired the name. Very American, in the melting-pot sense.

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Here’s a riddle…although if you’ve been reading or listening recently, it’s more of a review question.

What do slick, wildly successful brands like Salesforce, Nike, and Apple have in common with England’s historic royal families? Aside from hype, hefty name recognition, sky-high valuations that might compare to the Windsor family’s personal fortune, what’s the common thread?

Give up?

From a brand-builder’s perspective, there’s a right answer—they’re all distinguished, organizational, or ‘household’ brands that stamp their values, history, and reputation on every product.

Or in the case of the Windsors, every family member.

When we think about branding for individual products versus branding for organizations, household brands present one kind of overlap.

Usually, it’s the good kind.

Whether they’re putting out a new pair of basketball shoes, a line of kids’ athletic shorts, or an app that can track your biometrics while you work out, all of Nike’s products are clearly Nike. Though varied, built for different purposes, and even aimed at different audiences, each product reflects Nike’s core values. Those shoes, sorts, and app all exude its mantra of just do it, and carry that same reputation for stylish, athletic excellence. Each has the swoosh logo in a place where you can see it.

In other words, that strong, overarching brand carries a lot of weight and communicates a distinct identity. But while they all get a lift from that household brand, all of those individual products need to maintain trust and consistency.

Of course, Nike, Apple, and even Disney are not indestructible.

If a company with a high-flying reputation puts out one bad product, and then another…soon enough the entire brand will suffer.

https://youtu.be/k2T7EFVG5g0

Moving on From Product Branding Last month, I talked all about product branding, and how making really amazing products (or, if you’re a business to business company, offering really amazing services) is a prerequisite, but not enough. Without a cohesive brand expression, marketing, and a strategy for gaining the trust and attention of those who might need that product, or service, chances are few people will know about it.

To that end, thoughtful product branding strategy hinges on the audience.

Knowing who your audience is and what relationship you’re building with them by way of your service is the starting point—and for many successful companies (Jeep, for one, comes to mind), it’s one way to build a widely recognized organizational brand.

People get to know that overall brand, and in the future, they return to them, because of their relationship with a product or service they really love. The association of the product transfers over to the household brand, and hopefully to more products or services that household brand might offer.

While this makes sense if you’re building outward for a product, or a service, there’s another, and I’d argue, a more advantageous way to approach branding for an organization.

Branding Your Organization Starts With…Your Organization.No, I actually mean that.

While it might sound somewhat corny or on the nose, please bear with me:

Rather than starting with the audience (as you might with product branding…or as you’d probably have to if your whole brand is wrapped up in one product), start with yourself.

I’m not saying your audience, your customers, or the corner of the world that you’ll be interacting with day in, day out is irrelevant.

Don’t throw everyone else overboard while you go on some pilgrimage to another dimension.

Instead, do yourself the courtesy of realizing you, your team, and your entire organization is remarkable. From there, start digging…and just like you’d examine your audience, their needs, their history, their location, their purpose, their unique traits, values, likes, and dislikes as if you were marketing a product, examine those things in your own organization.

Take the time, and possibly take the whole operation through a discovery workshop, and come to a clear understanding of your history, location, purpose, unique traits, values, likes and dislikes…and so forth.

While audience may be the biggest consideration in product branding, organizational branding starts closer to the famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘To thine own self be true.’

True that, Polonius.

Building a strong, organizational brand that will lend coherence and name recognition to your products while relaying your values and purpose starts with building on your own true identity. While I could (and while I have in previous articles) run through all the pitfalls of building a brand on anything other than one’s truthful, authentic, purpose-driven identity, the short and quick summary is that brands built on truthful identities resonate with people.

And at the organizational level, overarching brand identities that resonate lend that authenticity and clarity to every product or service that reaches someone.

Getting Down to B2B BrandingYes, let’s do that.

After all, product and organization branding for business to business (rather than business to consumer) companies comes with its own particular flavor. Even if principles—like building on a truthful identity, or strong organizational brands giving a lift to that brand’s individual products—carry over, the specifics are worth looking at.

Assuming you’ve done the hard work of building an authentic brand identity for your organization (with all the soul searching and elbow grease that goes with that), there’s a number of things to know about branding an organization based on services.

Again, and to circle back to some aspects of product branding, this is where your company’s identity, values, and truthfully crafted brand expression meet and build relationships with an audience.

In the B2B sector, customers need services for a variety of reasons.

If you think of an accounting firm, for example, it’s clear that people hire them in different capacities, to different degrees, and for a number of reasons.

A small business, or even an individual—say, a freelancing graphic designer—might need tax filings come February. So they’ll hire an accounting firm to complete those filings.

But a larger business, or a family with considerable wealth to manage might hire the same accounting firm that does their taxes to track their day-to-day finances and consult accordingly.

The conversation might even sound like: ‘Hey, our bookkeeper is just not cutting it. Can you do some bookkeeping for us and fine tune the process?”

And if that same business is growing, merging, or moving across state lines, the question becomes: ‘can you help us with state tax and local tax issues?’

And so on.

Your Brand Name MattersWe begin to see why strong organizational B2B brands (again, Salesforce comes to mind), offer different services, or even bundle services into different packages. When a new situation opens up an opportunity to help someone with other problems…each solution stands ready. And the stamp of the household brand offering that convenient service becomes more trustworthy.

While each service has its own identity, audience, and purpose, it stands within the larger brand identity—and customers can find them, identify them, and understand what they’re getting because they have some familiarity with the organization brand.

One that’s built out those services from a clear, truthful identity, but tailored them to reach and help people in different ways.

Putting It All Together Like the old chicken and the egg analogy, it’s hard to think of product branding and organization branding as existing in the abstract.

Organizations exist to offer services and products to a distinct audience…but those services and products would not exist without the underlying organization and its purpose, values, and identity.

When the rubber meets the road, organizational brands who know themselves (that is, they present themselves truthfully and their products and services are in sync with that true identity) will present themselves and their services to the right customer in a targeted way.

If they’re an accounting firm specializing in corporate finance, chances are, they’ll know how the CEO wants to be approached about a solution to tax issues. Or if they’re in the business of helping car dealerships, they’ll know what’s on the mind of the guy managing the lot…and knowing his needs, they’ll approach him with the right solution.

Brands that offer different solutions will know that those solutions need to feel like they’re part of the same family, like they belong together.

That brand’s tone, voice, brand expression, and marketing strategy will all cohere under the household’s purpose and values.

And if they’re successful, people will see it and hear it a mile away.

What About that Newest Product? Done well and with an eye on both a product’s audience and how that product carries the household brand, a strong organizational brand helps people fit what they see into a larger story. Values, history, and a purpose built on authentic identity all pay dividends when a customer goes: “Yeah, that makes sense. I understand why you guys offer that.”

One last warning would be keeping an eye on new, flashy services or products that companies hope will take off. The temptation is to spin a new product or service as the latest, greatest thing…but how will that newest thing feed your larger brand and drive it forward?

If it’s wildly different and confusing for your audience, or if it has all the success of a tissue fire, how will that affect people’s perception of your other products?

Of your brand as a whole?

Building and maintaining a solid organizational brand is no small task. And while most companies offer new products or services at some point in their history, that shouldn’t be done in a way that detracts from other services or products the household brand might offer.

There’s even times when launching a wildly new product means considering a new brand to fit that product…or even rebranding.

But outside of those cases, new products and services should cohere with everything else, and they should strengthen your brand’s image in your corner of the world.

Remember What’s RemarkableHere’s a few concluding thoughts to wrap up product versus organizational branding.

-It’s important to understand how branding a product differs from branding an entire organization.

-When a product fits within the organizational brand well and resonates with customers, you can build a strong relationship with them.

-Trust and a relationship can help you house similar products and services within your organizational brand…but only insofar as they represent your brand well and make good on its promises.

-While organization branding starts with yourself…always consider your audience—what they need, how they want to be approached, and the relationship they have with you through your services, products, and brand expression.

That’s all for this month.

For more resources on discovering your remarkable identity and building a brand that resonates, give the Resound team a shout. Or check out my book ‘You are Remarkable’, available on Amazon.com.

Until next time, happy branding.

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Is your brand imprisoned by a single product? 

Don’t worry…we know someone on the inside who can help you escape. Some guy with an insane plan and a blueprint of the prison facility tattooed all over his body. 

Once you’re out you’ll be on the run, wanted by the Feds—and of course, you’ll be caught up in a steamy love triangle. 

But don’t worry…we’re gonna get you out of here.  Let’s Try This Again.  All right.

Now that Prison Break’s out of my system…let me properly introduce this month’s branding topic, along with the overarching question. 

If your company finds itself branded all around ONE product, how does it pivot away from that? 

Should it? 

If so, then how does a company with a Johnny-One-Note product line rebrand itself so that people see a unified, authentic, corporate identity that stands behind all of its products? 

To anchor this in a real-world case study, how does a company like Axon, (formerly Taser International, the company known for building Tasers comes to mind…) steer away from being overly defined by one product in the first place? 

Tough questions…but if you feel like one product or service has put your brand in prison, here’s our thoughts on making a break for it. 

https://youtu.be/lgof12A0QPw Before You Rebrand Count the cost. 

Rebranding your entire organization is a huge endeavor, so before you go down that road, think broadly and strategically. Consider the big picture of your brand, your products, and where you might be heading.  

A little more about Taser International, which dominated the market for Tasers and then, (surprise, surprise), became singularly identified with selling Tasers. While Taser had other products, breaking out of the one-product prison came at a price — rebranding their entire organization as Axon Enterprises, a supplier of body cams, drones, and all kinds of law enforcement accessories. 

While we can chalk up Axon as a success story — one of a challenging, but necessary rebrand from a single product brand to a broader corporate identity — consider them an exception.  

They’re also a good case study of why establishing your organizational brand clearly, purposefully, and early on can give you a sense of where you want to go beyond one product.   Brand Like an Extended Family If your company houses multiple products, define your brand in a way that allows it to house all of those products in a cohesive, authentic, and yet recognizable way. 

Piece of cake, right? 

We grant that it’s not a trivial undertaking. But if your company houses multiple products, developing your brand into one that can lend full support and identification with all those products is well-worth the thought and planning. 

When it works, it’s pretty phenomenal. 

If you think of companies like Apple or Nike, you see that this strategy of an overarching, organizational brand is one that drives demand for all the products they sell. Sure, the products themselves have their own brands, many with their own unique identities. But they all carry traits of the overarching corporate identity. 

They’re all part of the family. 

For a fun analogy, you can think of a household brand as similar to the royal families that ruled England in an unbroken dynasty. Every member of the family shared a recognizable surname, not to mention a set of colors, a legacy, and a distinct family crest. While some of those royal families had to rebrand themselves (I’ll tell you about how the Windors of Windsor Castle weren’t really the Windsors some other time), the concept of a royal family name leads me to another situation — one where companies and brands need to be careful because the single product is a person.  When Everything’s in A Name  You’ve probably heard of Dave Ramsey. If you haven't, he's a financial guy who became a household name for his advice about getting out of debt. He’s also known for Financial Peace University. But while his main thing,

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Last month, I wrote about how authentic brands that last and endure build a loyal community. This month, I’m tackling a logical, highly relevant follow-up question. Given the polarization that’s put everyone in our country under increasing pressure to take sides, can authentic brands be canceled?

It’s possible… and with an ever-increasing list of notable examples, brands facing backlash and cancellation are becoming less and less of an anomaly.

While there are many ways to embroil your brand in some kind of viral, meme-worthy controversy, (if that were my topic, that might be a fun article…) the question I’m asking is: how do authentic brands serve their customers and continue to resonate, even amid a highly politicized culture war? 

Furthermore, aside from walking the tightrope of not offending—or to be realistic, of offending some people in a way that doesn’t do lasting damage—how do brand and company owners know when it’s time to speak up or stay quiet?  

When it comes to politics, conventional business wisdom says always stay out of it. While I see the level-headedness and caution inherent in that approach, it’s actually not a one-size-fits-all for every brand.

So, is there a right time to take a stand?

If there is, and if they must wear one jersey or another, how do authentic brands do it without getting canceled, forgotten, and booed out of existence by everyone in the stands?

It’s a thorny question but, by all accounts, a good one. Like many thorny branding questions, the answer takes us down to motives, intentions, and the extent to which a brand or company, its team, and even its customers understand identity. 

https://youtu.be/S5i79bVKKLI To Thine Own Self, Be True Believe it or not, the first and foremost defense against getting canceled is a good offense. 

Brand companies that, for any number of reasons, step away from the consistent, authentic identity that they’ve built to score political or social points pay the biggest price…and usually see the biggest backlash. 

The rule of thumb here can be expressed in a simple question—does taking a political stance (or refusing to take one when it's all the rage and the pressure’s on) make sense given who you really are? Given your brand’s authentic identity?

Is it a clear and logical extension of your values, who you are and who your customers know you are, and the overarching purpose behind everything you do?

If not, and if stepping out into a dicey conversation has no connection to what you do and who you are, should you expect that new, controversial website banner or political hashtag to come across as genuine?

Probably not…and chances are, it won’t.

What if commenting on something does align with your brand? On the other hand, if your band has had a clear ideological strain from the beginning (brands like Ben and Jerry’s, Chick Fil-A, and Rolling Stone magazine come to mind) and if your values, message, and actions have reflected those political leanings for a long time, taking a stand might be consistent with your values. Chances are, the customers you resonate with will recognize that and the outrage that leads to calls for cancellation will be minimal.

In short, and to the extent that any first line of defense is probably a good thing, a brand that knows itself, and navigates political winds in a way that’s consistent with its purpose and core values, is more likely to keep an even keel.

Even, as you sometimes hear when war breaks out, the game goes to overtime, or a jury goes to deliberate, when all bets are off.  In the Crossfire As we increasingly see political stands and calls for cancellation on both ends of politics in America and even the world, more and more brands are getting caught in the crossfire.  

Running with my first premise—that a brand which is authentic, which has done the hard work of finding its frequency, knowing its purpose, its values and who it is has a built-in defense against ...

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How do you truly connect with your brand's audience? Through story. Great stories stick with us...and the reason why is no great mystery.

They resonate.

From Star Wars and The Godfather to the plays of William Shakespeare, a great story survives time and change because for audience after audience, something true and potent sunk in. Star Wars and Brand Story That is, if we break apart the plot of the first Star Wars film, we see a template of events that are millennia old — a young hero who yearns for adventure is pried from home after a trusting guide, and a chaotic chain of events thrusts him into the innards of the Death Star itself. The events are both deeply familiar and yet invigorating...because, on some level, we see our own life parallel the hero’s quest.

So we watch. Story Involves and Motivates Your Brand's Audience In other words, stories like Star Wars don’t exist in a vacuum. They land, and land well, with their brand's audience...and with subsequent generations of audiences who love the story so much they consume fan fiction, dress up for conventions, and in some countries, lobby to make Star Wars an official religion.

If you’re just joining us, don’t worry. This article isn’t part of a Star Wars series and we won’t be talking about the new Obi-Wan show.

Rather, it’s a series on authentic B2B branding...and my point is that potent brands reach people with the posture and messaging of a timeless classic story. If you’re just joining by the way, you can read more about how the elements of a brand that guides its customer (the hero), mesh with the elements of story by reading this article on how to tell a remarkable brand story.

https://youtu.be/jgXdwIebNHA The Final Piece of Your Branding Effort Riffin’ on story brings me right to the heart of it.

On the top of the branding pyramid, way above the foundation of a true, authentic purpose —  and above the narrowing, rising layers of personality, metaphor, archetype, history, location, and brand story — we find a sharpened, or…if we’re still talking pyramids, a crudely sharpened capstone. As magnificent as it may look, the whole structure is pointing at something:

Your brand’s audience.

Every author knows that when you’re telling a story, you need to pay attention to your brand's audience. The same applies for a large corporation, a regional B2B branding agency like Resound, and your own company.

Who’s your brand's audience? Which hero are you aiming to guide to the finish line?

While most companies have a good, or even a statistically sharpened understanding of who they’re trying to reach, the question is worth asking again, and as simply as possible, from a brand and brand story perspective. Your Brand's Audience Squared You might respond that I’m forgetting one thing — your brand or company has more than one audience.

Take it easy.

If you’ve got more than one audience, (or more than one product), you’re in good company. In fact, even if you create one product or offer one service, you’ve probably got a few audiences already in the bag.

When we think of any given brand story, four distinct audiences come to mind:

Your customers (or clients, or whomever you serve) Your employees (or volunteers, or members, or whoever is on your ‘team’) Your investors (or partners, or shareholders, or whoever your biggest stakeholders are) Your community (the people who share your location, geographically or otherwise)

Depending on your type of organization, the specifics of each of your brand's audience will vary, but the categories will remain roughly the same.

For instance, a non-profit doesn’t have shareholders, but it does have donors who make a financial investment. An ethnic grocery chain’s “community” may not only be its neighborhood, but also the ethnic community in the city in which it plays a role...and that “community” probably includes other competing businesses in the grocery industry.

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This is it, remarka-fans. How to tell a remarkable brand story

This month, I’m cutting right to brand story—the heart of a brand’s posture toward the world and its customers, and the final piece that ties a brand’s expression, identity, and strategy together. 

If you love a good story, (seriously…who doesn’t?), and if you know that telling one can mean the difference between scaling your brand dramatically or getting little traction with the same old strategies… then you’re in the right place. 

Welcome to the writer’s room. 

If you’ve been following my series on discovering your brand’s purpose and remarkable identity, and then using it to build a winsome, potent brand expression, then you might sense that we’re nearing the summit. 

And if you’re just joining in, that’s also swell… and if you enjoy the view then you’ll probably find the previous stages of our branding journey worth your time. All of the tools we’ve discussed so far, from your brand’s archetype, metaphor, and location to its own slice of history, culminate in your overarching remarkable brand story. 

A well-developed brand isn’t an image.

Or a tagline.

Or even a killer color scheme. 

Those are ways of expressing the brand…but they’re no substitute for its story. In many ways, and when it comes to what the busy world sees and hears, a brand is its story. 

https://youtu.be/CZ7FflRDxJ8 Whittling Story Down to a Remarkable Brand Story Hollywood screenwriters and those who study ancient civilizations love to tell us that there’s only one story. 

Maybe two… and on the note, the variations I’ve heard are: 

1) a stranger comes to town. 

2) a stranger goes on a journey.  

But if you’re a fan of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, then you’ve probably had a taste of how much debate, speculation, and back-and-forth exists amongst story and movie buffs. 

Seriously. 

There’s enough of it to fill a thousand masterclasses. But the good news for B2B’s is that the elements of story sharpen down nicely for those building a brand. 

A classic story has five key elements: the balance, the unbalance, the quest, the crisis, and the new balance.

In plain English, here’s what those five elements look like:

The balance is the “normal” state of the world at the beginning of the story, its status quo. The unbalance is the new event, intrusion or “problem” which disrupts the “normal” state of the world and sets the events of the story in motion. The quest is the pursuit by the protagonists (the “heroes”) of the story to find some solution to the problem or other ways of settling the unbalance. The crisis is when the drama of the quest and the drama of the underlying problem comes to a head, the key event which will determine the outcome of the story. The new balance is the resolution to the story in the aftermath of the crisis, which becomes the new “normal” for the end of the story, or the new “balance” to be upset again at the next stage of the story. 

Shall we try it?  The 5 Sentences You Need to Tell a Remarkable Brand Story The key elements of any story can be stated in five sentences following this format. 

Balance: Once upon a time there was a quiet village where a humble dentist minded his own business. 

Unbalance: Suddenly, a dragon started attacking and burning down the buildings. 

Quest: The dentist went on a quest to find the dragon’s lair and slay the dragon. 

Crisis: He found it, and the dragon was about to kill him in a blaze of fire, when he noticed the dragon just needed a few root canals to relieve the pain in his mouth. 

New Balance: He helped the dragon and brought it back to the village as his loyal pet.

To give another example… one in which you can pick out the elements for yourself:

Sometime in the distant future, the crew of a starship is exploring the galaxy for signs of intelligent life. 

Suddenly, they are attacked and boarded by a horde of three-headed alie...

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There’s any number of highbrow ways to kick this article off. 

Where to start? 

In going with a splendid example of a no-frills metaphor, I’m torn between: 

William Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage.” 

Vincent Van Gogh: “Conscience is a man's compass”

Dr. King: “We will transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony.”

Eminem: “You don’t get another chance / life is no Nintendo game.” 

Simon and Garfunkel: “I am a rock. I am an island.”

And finally, assistant to the Regional Manager Dwight Shrute: “Always the Padawan, never the Jedi.”

Decisions, decisions… Intentional and Artful Whatever you pick, an artful metaphor can prime our minds with a clever, inventive shortcut. If the comparison is clear, obvious, or something we use every day, we don’t even think about it.  Although there’s no harm in slowing down to ponder the fact that an elephant in the room—an ultra-obvious, overriding fact or secret no one wants to talk about—weighs down the atmosphere, and creates the same claustrophobic tension as a seven-ton mammal wedged against the walls.

Of course, metaphors aren’t literal. 

Ones that try too hard, make no sense, or get their wires crossed end up on internet lists of ‘worst metaphors written by high school students.’  

Take THAT to the bank and smoke it! 

It was one peach cobbler of a tax audit. 

The backyard oak tree was a proud, brown, twelve-foot column… with branches and leaves.

I could do this all day…but I’d rather pivot to how B2B companies, national brands, and pretty much everyone presenting themselves or their services to the world can, (and should), use metaphor to help people grasp their remarkable identity.   

Built thoughtfully, and with the truth in mind, a good brand metaphor fleshes out an organization’s qualities, strengths, values, expression—everything that helps someone resonate with that brand’s story. 

https://youtu.be/ReIOEXKW1iI Metaphor Brings Clarity to Your Brand’s Story In previous articles, I discussed all the components of building an authentic brand identity. I followed that up with a series on understanding your brand’s story through the lenses of a brand’s history, location, and archetype. 

Assuming you’ve done the work of pinning down those aspects of your brand, how do you go about actually composing and narrating your brand’s story? 

Lots of ways, actually. 

But the one way I’ve found especially helpful is the brand metaphor.

The literal story of your brand, after all, is often not something that most people can grasp on an intuitive level…even if you’re able to see how your pest control company is the hero of a grand epic tale about termites and roaches. When you try to tell that story literally, the focus is going to get stuck at just killing bugs. 

Nothing wrong with killing bugs. 

But your brand story should be told in a way that resounds outward in distinctive visual and verbal expressions—something that can be uniquely expressed by a logo, a choice of typeface, or a company name. “We kill bugs” is not unique or distinctive. So, instead of a brand story that ends at what the brand literally does, in most cases, I try to work with a brand metaphor. Like a College Basketball Coach Metaphors work because they help us understand something unfamiliar through comparison to something familiar. Ditto for something abstract; we understand it better because a metaphor makes it concrete. 

Most of our language is metaphorical at its roots… and even the word ‘roots’ is a metaphor from plants. So a brand metaphor is a tool for understanding a brand’s story through a comparison— one that makes me feel the same way that people should feel when I interact with your brand. A Metaphor is Not a Perfect Analogy. Not everything in a brand’s metaphor has to correspond to something in the real company. Rather, the similarity is in how the metaphor makes me feel.

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Unless you work in the candy industry, you probably didn’t know that M & M's only became a household name after selling their candy-coated chocolate exclusively to U.S. Servicemen in World War II. When the servicemen came back home, demand for those orange, yellow, and red candies we all recognize skyrocketed.  You probably don’t know that M & M’s were the first candy eaten in space, or that there were no red ones between 1976 and 1987, when a bogus study linking red food dye to cancer scared the American public.   Would the M & M’s you see at every counter be as famous, or as big a part of everyone’s life if World War II never happened? Perhaps the vast majority of people would have never heard of them, or perhaps they’d know them by a different brand name. While we’ll never know, it makes you wonder. If you think about it, the story of each brand we use and recognize is deeply tied to the historical events that shaped it over its lifetime. Along with a brand’s location or setting, a brand’s history leaves an indelible stamp on how that brand expresses itself, how it grows or shrinks, and how the world around it experiences and recognizes it.  Even if no one aside from a brand’s founders knows that history, the events, trends, economic demands, and cultural appetites make a mark nonetheless.  And in deeply important ways that contribute to a brand’s story, and even its eventual success or failure.

https://youtu.be/MSdjavA0NLs Brand History Means Context  The context of a brand’s story is not only its place, but also its time.  If you’ve done the hard work of figuring out your brand’s identity, values, and core purpose, and if you’ve factored in the ways your brand’s location shapes everything about it, then a final step would be taking note of what’s happening all around you.  Consider the recent years that have seen your brand grow, begin, or change course, and ask yourself:  What’s been going on in the world? Have there been any major shifts in the status quo? Or is the world ready for one? What’s going on in your world right now?  And what’s going on in the industry?  What historical context helps define the changes in society, culture, or your industry? How did all these changes get to where they are?  Answering these questions should give you a sense of your brand’s historical context… and your impression of recent history prepares you to ponder the follow-up: What does all this mean for your brand?   How does recent history, or everything that’s happening today, contribute to your brand’s story and expression? How does it shape the way people think about it or respond to it?  It may not be so easy to distill the answers… or to separate how time and history have influenced your brand from how your brand’s geographic location has.  But a good way to practice, and no doubt a good exercise in and of itself, would be asking how our own individual histories shape the people we are today.  Starter Questions for Understanding the Past   We’re all shaped by the memories of our own history. No exceptions. How we think about ourselves has a lot to do with the story we tell of what has happened to us, and how we got to the present moment. Our fears, aspirations, and present behavior patterns are often echoes of what worked for us in the past. For organizations, looking back and reflecting on their history is an important component of their brand story… and with a handful of direct, but not necessarily easy questions, that history can be unlocked.  When was your brand founded?  Why was it founded?  If the company has been in business for 30, 50, or 70 years, how has the industry changed?  How has the company changed? How did the world change?  What were the big, emotional moments in that history, either the successes or the failures, that shaped the way your company operates today?   How did you react to big events that happened within your business, or on your team?  Following Memories and Feelings

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Here’s our elevator pitch—Star Trek on a pirate ship. 

Same cast. Same plotlines… but instead of the outer reaches of Deep Space Nine, everyone’s cruisin’ around the Caribbean. 

Or suppose Star Wars took place on an elementary school playground. Or Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? 

Apparently, some have tried it. But setting informs a story as much as the characters do, and changing a setting obviously changes the entire story. 

The where of a story gives off a certain personality, just as much as the who and the what. The elements of a location, an environment, or a unique time and place shape how characters relate to each other, navigate the world, and compose the stories we watch, read, and listen to. 

The same is true of your brand’s story, culture, and overall identity.

Trust us… locations shape a brand’s story in ways you wouldn’t expect. That includes our own story as a Tempe, Arizona-based branding agency—and that’s something you can read more about in our new book ‘You are Remarkable’ authored by our founders.

Back to you and the simple, overarching question: ‘where are you from?’

https://youtu.be/xr0KW1Fe30c Not Forgetting Setting While everyone’s got a distinct nature, nurture (i.e. setting) still makes its mark. 

Of course, it helps to know your core purpose, what you value, and your organization’s vision for making a small corner of the world a little better. And while you’re at it, you need to know your character archetype. 

But knowing, and owning your setting is non-negotiable. The environment all around you, not to mention the values, history, and customs of the place where you set up shop matters more to your brand’s identity than you might think. 

Forget setting, and you ignore a huge chunk of what makes your organization remarkable.  Having Roots in Two Locations  So what’s the setting for your brand’s story? 

Is your location local? Regional? Global? 

Where, and just as importantly, when does it begin?

One thing you often find out when you’re getting to know someone is where they’re from. Sometimes, it’s straightforward, but other times, not so much. In fact, if you think about it, many people are from at least two places. 

First, the place where they grew up—the locale or community where their formative years were spent. The place that, to a large degree, probably influenced what they see as “normal” in the world. Somebody who grew up in the Midwest has a different “normal” than someone who grew up in Los Angeles.  

Second, the place where they currently live, which influences and constrains their current choices. Somebody living in rural Kansas has to adapt to a different physical, cultural, and economic environment than somebody living under the clear, hot skies of suburban Phoenix. 

The same is true for a brand or an organization. 

When your customers are getting to know your brand story, part of learning that story is knowing where you and your brand come from.  Location Influences All the Details  Directly or indirectly, people will get a feel for the values, culture and customs of the place where your business started. They’ll also get a feel for where it is currently located or headquartered. 

This may be overt, in the way that Portillo’s Hot Dogs are explicitly from Chicago (even when they’re in Arizona), and Alaska Airlines explicitly serves Alaska (even if their hub is in Seattle). It can also be unconscious or implicit, such as when people get an intuitive feeling that a brand is southern, western, urban, rural, European, or even Canadian. 

Speaking with a customer service agent on the phone, it’s not too difficult to detect the politeness of Missouri, the gruffness of Philadelphia, or even the clipped, British pronunciation of someone in Mumbai or Bangalore.  

You probably know a ton about where you come from. But if it’s not that clear how setting influences the day-to-day life of yo...

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If you watch a popular movie or read a best-selling book with your brain turned off, you’ll probably get some déjà vu. Whether it’s following the hero’s journey, or some eerily familiar character—an unlikely wonder woman finding her stride, a wise-cracking sidekick, or even a calm, motivated villain out to wreak some serious havoc—it’s not necessarily a bad thing if you recognize a pattern from somewhere else. What we’re saying is that life, like books and movies, scatters unique characters everywhere… and that there are types of characters that we instantly recognize. In fact, any historian or mythology professor will tell you that certain types of stories and characters appear over and over again in stories told across time and culture, from ancient myths to modern comic franchises. The highbrow term is archetype, a type of character that appears, behaves, and functions in a certain way… from epic myths to heroes in a graphic novel to stock characters in a blockbuster franchise. It’s no accident that Captain Jack Sparrow has a lot in common with Han Solo, from his blatant self-preservation to his foolish, underdog bravado to the charm and swagger that fans can’t resist. They’re both light versions of the anti-hero, a bad boy archetype that stretches out to darker examples like Dexter, Tony Soprano, Breaking Bad’s Walter White, and even Shakespeare’s Macbeth. All good fun—and yes, we know what you’re thinking… what do character archetypes have to do with branding, brand development, or sharpening a brand’s personality? Much more than you might think. https://youtu.be/XJaXqXFX920 A Brief Recap If you’re just joining us, this is part two of a seven-part series on practical tools for developing an authentic brand and sharing it with the world. Checkout out part one! Once you've got your organization’s values and vision squared away, the next step is clarifying and expanding on that personality with a brand archetype. There’s a whole list of archetypes that many branding agencies borrow from. These personas act as models, and sometimes, they lend themselves perfectly to the finer details of a brand's personality. If you ask us, brand archetypes are perhaps the most helpful tool in our belt for putting handles on how a brand acts, thinks, behaves, functions… and how they can share those remarkable characteristics with everyone. To dig a little deeper, let’s explore some common examples we find particularly helpful. But first… a Little More on Archetypes Before they applied to movie characters, the theory of archetypes was developed by the psychologist Carl Jung, who held that archetypes were innate categories of thought. He argued that certain archetypal figures formed part of our innate way of categorizing the world. When we tell stories with one another, the “roles” in our stories are often filled by these archetypal characters—the hero, the anti-hero, the antagonist, the wise guide, or the damsel in distress, respectively. They come with patterns we all instantly recognize. But this isn’t screenwriting class, and we certainly won’t claim to be accurately representing Jungian theory here (although we do find it interesting). For the purpose of categorizing brands in a helpful way, and drawing on brands we’ve worked with, developed, and sent off into the world, we’ve found these twelve archetypes to be the most helpful.

The Executive An ‘Executive’ brand leads with confidence and conviction. It values a clear sense of process and order prioritizing tasks. An Executive brand can express a regal or traditional personality, making sure that the ‘rule of law’ is upheld, and the organization’s processes and values are maintained as an enduring legacy. On that note, Executive brands love a sense of accomplishment, getting things done, and moving forward.

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Not all brands have a personality, but the ones you remember do.

Walking into a Mcdonald's is different from walking into a Chipotle. Sprouts feels different from Trader Joe’s. You get a different vibe from IKEA than you do from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. These large corporations have put attention into their brand personality—everything from their name, colors, and logo to their use of space in a retail store. Everything is designed, all the way that people communicate with one another (we’re looking at you, Chick-fil-a).

In most cases, the personality sticks in our minds because it’s consistent… and if it’s consistent for an entire population, a brand’s valuation can soar into the hundreds of millions.

Or much higher than that.

But when it comes to fine-tuning a brand that people can appreciate, trust, and resonate with, you don’t have to be some high-flying, list-climbing conglomerate.

With some sleeves rolled up, and the hard work of figuring out a core purpose that rises above everything else, companies large and small can take seven practical steps to build a brand expression worth remembering, and a brand personality that delivers on its promises.

https://youtu.be/YkvbEo2KxmE Time for a Recap: Our last series focused on some of the ‘don'ts’ of branding.

If you’ve been reading along, then you know all about the precarious terrain of easy-looking solutions—superficial branding, copycat branding, or inventing a brand from scratch.

Like those houses built right on the edge of a cliff, quick fixes start to crumble over time, or whenever the pressure’s on.

Let’s assume you’ve already identified your deep why and sense of purpose as a company, use that to determine your values and vision, which should then go on to shape your goals. With these in mind, how do you nail down the identity of your brand in a way that you can easily communicate to customers, employees, or even the marketing team?

How do people identify your company in a way that matches what you’re really about?

While every organization is unique, we find that seven tools tend to help with brand definition:

Personality Metaphor Archetype Setting History Context Brand Story

These may not cover every situation, but as far as building a winsome, thoughtful, consistent brand expression goes, they’re toolbox essentials.

Let’s start with our favorite, which is a brand’s personality. Personality, not Persona Brands have a personality, just like people do.

And by “personality,” we don’t necessarily mean a persona.

The word persona is a term for the mask worn by a character in a play, or for the character themselves. An actor can slip on a new persona and create a new character at will, if they’re talented enough. If you think about it, many people do just that every day.

That is, they act like a different character in each different aspect of their lives.

Some brands do that too—they have a public-facing persona, an investor-facing persona, an internal-facing persona, or like Lays Potato Chips, Olay, or even Axe deodorant spray, a different persona for specific markets or regions.

The term personality, on the other hand, has to do with those qualities that make something personal, as opposed to impersonal. Personality is what makes me feel like I am dealing with a real person. The concept of a “person” is derived from a persona, but instead of referring to the outward mask, it came to mean the face under it.

The person.

The individual’s fundamental self.

Personality denotes an individual’s nature; the distinct characteristics that make me, me, and you, you. Somebody’s personality is what allows you to recognize them as the distinct person they are, to feel familiar with them, and to have that sense that you really know them.

And if on that level, everyone’s unique and remarkable, the same goes for every organization, company or business.

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Bold vision separates the active from the passive, the fine-tuned brand from the scattered brand.

Had he not imagined sailing into the warm waters of a faraway port on the Indian coastline, Christopher Columbus probably wouldn’t have made the two-month slog across the Atlantic Ocean four times.

But while bold visions can enrapture us and bring some motivation to the inevitable long haul, they don’t account for everything.

Rather, visions sail toward reality (or in Columbus’s class, toward a different continent than the one he had in mind) on the shoulders of clear values, concrete goals, and an overriding purpose that answers the question ‘why.’ A Recap: In last month’s article, I talked all about how remarkable organizations like yours have a unique identity, a frequency that can be fine-tuned and shared with the world. I also talked about how finding that frequency starts with asking ‘why?’

Why sell cars, insurance, or ice cream?

Why risk everything to open up a direct trade route to India?

Answering the question ‘why’ means following the clues to a clear, motivating vision of how you want the world to be. If you’ve done the hard work of getting that far, you’re getting close to unlocking an authentic brand identity that will resonate with your team, your clients, and those who need you as you really are. Read on as I walk through: Beat three: Letting your Purpose define your Values

Beat four: Letting your Values create your Vision

And lastly,

Beat five: Letting your Vision set your Goals Starting with Values Once you’ve identified your purpose and your why, it’s time to move on to your values.

Your values are the things you care about, the things that matter to you, and motivate you.

A value isn’t just something you happen to like or appreciate. You might like egg salad, but unless it’s the last sealed lunch on a stranded spaceship… you surely don’t value egg salad. A value is something that you value for its own sake, and other things have value in light of those higher values.

An authentic value is something you’re willing to make sacrifices for. A parent values their children: that means they’ll sacrifice sleep, money, and free time for their sake. The things you sacrifice other things for are what you value most.

When it comes right down to it, values are what ultimately determine your ethical stance as a company. The principles or rules you lay down, along with the boundaries and lines you’re not willing to cross, are things you establish to help you keep and promote your values. The kind of character traits, qualities, and decision-making you want your team to develop are all things you base on your underlying values.

So what does your company value? Speed? Accuracy? Customer service? Suppose your company values speed.

If that’s your value, then you’re going to make decisions to try to maximize speed, decisions which another organization might not make. A different company might value, say, being thorough, but if that’s also one of your values, you won’t sacrifice accuracy for speed—but you will make the choice to be more methodical.

Small companies often don’t explicitly state their values, because they’re inferred from the founder or leader: the company values whatever the person in charge values. Over time—and assuming the founder isn’t always around to course-correct—values become a navigational tool for exploring new, uncharted waters, and for bringing new people on board. New employees encounter them in the interview process. Discerning values and making them explicit is part of the natural process of growth.

What we’ve found, however, is that, while most established companies have a set of values, their stated values don’t really express their distinctive purpose.

Instead, laziness leads companies to copy values from other companies, or to pick the most basic value which everybody can agree on, go-to phrases like: “We value integrity and honesty!

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If you’re breaking ground with some new start-up in Austin, Texas, or in Silicon Valley, you’re in a place that eats, breathes, and sleeps disruption. If you’re a regional supplier for farming equipment, your world’s probably a bit more seasonal.

But while we give a lot of attention to the outside culture, location, and market demands that shape a business, the factors working on the inside are just as vital.

Every organization has an identity. Not something invented or made up out of thin air, but a genuine self that distinguishes it from other organizations.

While optics, impressions, and outward expression go a long way, your identity holds everything together. And it’s how others recognize you. It makes you unique… and whether or not you know it yet, it makes you remarkable.

https://youtu.be/0EsH06kCMxo How Do You Find Your Brand Identity? We call the first step in the process finding your frequency.

Ideally, a process like this would start with your brand identity workshop, where an experienced brand consultant could work through exercises with the leadership of an organization in order to better understand its underlying purpose and values. Because no two organizations are exactly alike, it’s impossible to create a step-by-step guide in a book that works for everyone.

Still, I’ll give an overview of the five main ‘beats’ in the process of helping organizations figure out their authentic identity and how best to express it:

Beat one: Discover your ‘Why’

Beat two: Let your ‘Why’ determine your Purpose

Beat three: Let your Purpose define your Values

Beat four: Let your Values create your Vision

Beat five: Let your Vision set your Goals

In the rest of this post, we’ll cover beats one and two—how discovering your ‘why’ helps you understand what your organization is really about. The Big Why Understanding your brand identity starts with why.

Why does it exist?

This isn’t the same as asking: ‘what are the values of your organization?’ as well as ‘what’s it’s character and personality?’

The why captures all of that. A different why creates a different organization.

Organizations are kind of like a cross between people and blenders. Wait. Hear us out.

People have a kind of purposefulness in themselves. A person’s job might involve landscaping yards, but that doesn’t mean the person exists in order to landscape yards. It’s the person who gives a purpose to the landscaping—not the other way around.

On the other hand, blenders have a very clear purpose written into their name: blending food. But blenders are made out of plastic and metal, and so they can continue to exist even when they’ve been tossed in a box and stowed in an attic. An organization is like a person...and a blender. Like people, organizations must be driven by a purpose because they’re filled with people. But like blenders, they get their purpose from what they are made for.

An organization’s purpose defines it’s identity. But unlike blenders, organizations are composed of people, not plastic, and those people act intentionally and care about the purpose of what they’re doing. The moment that sense of purpose is gone, the organization disappears. Let’s think for a moment about the differences between a bank, which exists to make money, and an amateur hockey league, which exists for fun, recreation, and that occasional bout with the gloves off.

If an amateur hockey league started holding money for people and then lending it out at interest, it would be a bank.

If a bank got out of the money business and instead its employees spent all day skating on the ice and scoring goals, it wouldn’t be a bank anymore.

What you do defines what you are.

Even if some parts of an organization feel pointless, or even as fake as one of those North Korean propaganda villages, the scarcity of resources like time and money or the hard-wiring of human psychology guarantees that there is some ultimate reason why...

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"Smart" people make things complicated. Effective people start with a simple plan they can understand. And then they build on it. This is especially true in marketing, where you can't know how your audience is going to interact with your message on a particular media channel. Even experienced marketers can't really be sure most of the time. So what's the solution? Hire a confident marketer who knows lots of fancy words, but can't really explain what they mean? Or do you start simply, even without research, and build from there?

https://youtu.be/BFsmVCFMNS8 A Working Hypothesis is Thinking in Action The simplest way to get really, really good at anything is to gain an understanding of a simple plan and build on it. Just make a plan and make it work a little bit. Then build on what success you have.

Learning to code? Make a "Hello World" program. Learning to do a home remodel? Watch some Youtube and try the paint out on an inconspicuous area. Learning to market your product? Make a simple landing page that lets them buy, and make a simple ad campaign that points to it.

A Working Hypothesis Avoids Bottom-Up Thinking Your working hypothesis means building a simple plan, that, if your assumptions are correct, should work. It's not like they told you in school that you should "find out everything you can" about a topic. This is going only based on what you know right now.

No hours spent on research that takes you down rabbit holes and eventually has you watching funny youtube cat videos. Just a simple plan, based on what you know. Top-Down Thinking Keeps You Grounded It's the same reason old people tell you to read old literature, like the Stoics and the Bible. It's simple information that, if it makes sense to you, teaches you to think for yourself. If you can grasp fundamental truths, you can use those truths almost everywhere. They give you a sense of proportion that looks like wisdom and knowledge. And they help you to test every bit of information that comes in. Bottom-Up Thinking Makes You A Slave But if you immerse yourself in information, you're overwhelmed. You start accepting facts before you're able to evaluate them. It's like in any cult -- or in college if you're not very, very careful -- they give you one point of view, fill you with information that backs it up, giving you no context or sense of proportion. And pretty soon, you find yourself lost. And even though you know something's wrong, you don't have the words to express exactly what. Think before you Research Research isn't bad. But be sure your brain is in critical-thinking mode before you start accepting data. This will keep you objective and allow you to see things in proportion.

It's like in closely held political arguments; we get caught up in the emotion and the need to be right. We accept things we'd never believe if we weren't so bought-in politically. But what if every American thought about right and wrong before they heard all of the opinions and framing? What if, when you heard that a politician did something wrong, you backed up and thought about it non-politically, like they're someone in your everyday life who did that.

Now you're thinking, rather than being told how to think. Apply it To Marketing So let's say you're making a marketing plan. Who's the person in your life who would buy your product? If you didn't know him, where would you advertise? Facebook, an online forum, a sponsorship? What would you say in the ad? What would make him click on the ad and go to your landing page? What would you say on the landing page to convince him to click and buy?

Now, you have a working hypothesis. Make sure you can test each part of that interaction, so you know at least the number of people reached by the ad, the number of people who clicked to visit the page, and the number of people who bought. And adjust from there. Simplicity is Objectively Right Trying to seem smart is a trap.

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Why would you trust a copycat? Unless you’re looking for something cheap, shoddy, and just waiting to crumble, you probably wouldn’t buy something from one. The discount brands you find at dollar stores are intentionally trying to look like copies of better-known brands—and before long, they fall apart.

When trends evolve, copycats lag behind, looking for something new and flashy to rip off. The worst ones are outright frauds, like fake universities, or airlines that suddenly go under and strand their passengers or restaurant chains that drain investors but never open.

There’s probably not a faster way to undermine your organization, discourage your team, and break trust with your customers than being a copycat.

When it comes to branding, the high road is also the best one.

Rather than going superficial, whether that’s scraping something together arbitrarily, mimicking whoever leads your industry, lying, or outright copying—doing the work of discovering your authentic identity gives you the foundation for a brand and look that will connect and resonate with those around you.

After all, you’re remarkable.

And your potential clientele needs you as you are.

https://youtu.be/gkuDNBA51MU Stealing from Another Brand is… Stealing You’re not a criminal.

You wouldn’t steal someone’s laptop, car, purse… or even an Amazon package leaned against your neighbor’s front door (besides, there’s a good chance that one’s got a glitter bomb with a camera inside).

But when it comes to superficial branding, ripping off logos, color schemes, concepts, or whole stories—well, that’s different, right?

Not really.

Even if you don’t face charges for it (and you might).

Copying someone’s brand comes quick and easy, and probably masks an organization’s insecurity about itself, its values, or what it offers. It gives the impression of having solved something, but just like that knock-off denim from the dollar store, it fades and frays real fast.

It’s often easy to produce “copycat creative” — ways of expressing your brand that are duplicates of whatever seemed to work for somebody else. Imposter syndrome expresses itself through copying, rather than being genuinely creative.

Because you’re not comfortable with your organization’s real identity, you try to shield or deflect people from it by displaying an identity that you think they’ll like better. You’re Different. Act Like it. “Copycat creative” might mean using a variation on a color scheme that a company you admire uses. It might mean trying to write in the same voice and tone and that your competition writes in. It might mean using a certain template you’ve seen somewhere else, or choosing images that you imagine your competition using.

It’s googling, “what brands do millennials like?” and forwarding the results to your marketing team with the message, “do that”.

If a certain brand expression is working for your competitor, it isn’t as though they have a magical logo or website layout. What’s working for them is that their brand matches the reality their employees and customers experience, and so it produces trust.

You’re different from your competitor. Maybe it worked for them, but it probably won’t work for you. Tell Your Own Story Let other brands tell their story. It will get exhausting trying to keep up appearances and live out a story that doesn’t fit you. Your identity has a grain to it, like a piece of wood, and it will wear you out to constantly try to cut against the grain. Tell your own story.

Other companies are just as capable as you are of copying and pasting whatever the industry leader is doing. Copycat branding is as easy for your competitors as it is for you.

All things are as valuable as they are rare, and so people only pay a premium for preeminent products. If you look and feel basically like all of the other competitors you have, then the only way you have left to compete is on price.

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“The world needs you as you are.”

Sure, you’ve heard it before. You’ve probably rolled your eyes.

It’s hard not to hate that message when everyone from YouTube personalities to TikTok influencers collect millions of likes, shares, and subscribes by standing in front of their cell phones and doing a Fortnite dance as a way of being unique and expressing themselves... and for some strange reason, it seems to work.

If everyone gets a trophy for just existing, then what’s so special about the trophy?

But regardless of what everyone else is doing or saying, the truth is still there.

Your entire company is stocked with skills, talents, ideas, personalities, and core motivations that equip you to serve others in a unique way. From the services you offer, to how you interact with clients, cohorts, and other entities, you can’t be replicated.

In other words, you’re remarkable. And it’s a loss when your branding, marketing, and whole organization chases after trends or copies someone else. Especially when you do this instead of telling the truth about who you are and what you offer. It’s a surrender of your own creative agency. Regardless of the trends, people respond to truth, consistency, and authentic communication.

In this article, we'll examine the dangers of superficial branding, and the indispensable alternative of authentic, truthful branding.

https://youtu.be/y0Uy62sFSmg Facing Outward Superficial branding defines a company based not on anything inwardly true about itself, but on an impression it wants to create outwardly.

Superficial branding is “fake it ‘til you make it” branding. It defines a company by its perception of what people expect it to be.

Most often superficial branding shows up as copycat branding. Mimicry of others who have been successful in the same industry. A company brands itself much like a high school student, copying and pasting an encyclopedia article into their term paper.

Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but it’s also the easiest way to be accused of plagiarism.

Superficial branding doesn’t fool anybody and it isn’t hard to detect. It stands out like bad acting in a documentary. Superficial branding has three aspects:

It is caused by “Organizational Imposter Syndrome” Is expressed as “Copycat Creative” And results in undermining your team

Superficial branding is dishonest. While it aims to attract people, it ends up scaring them away. One of the most attractive traits a person or an organization can have in a virtual world of carefully crafted appearances is honest depth. Being an Imposter Comes From Doubt Many people approach branding as nothing more than a recipe for marketing based on what sort of customer they want to reel in.

They think: “In order to attract that kind of customer I’m going to have to talk like this and look like that.” My audience wants something like that, because that’s what all my competitors are doing, so that’s what I need to make myself into.

But the truth is that this rests on a shallow perception of how people actually make decisions. It comes from the behaviorism of the early 20th century, where customers are Pavlov’s dog—ring the right bell and they’ll salivate.

This approach doesn’t give customers enough credit for being able to recognize and understand something new. It wrongly assumes they won't be able to detect something fake when they see it. Unlike dogs, customers won’t keep on trusting you after you trick them.

The deeper problem beneath shallow branding is what we might call Organizational Imposter Syndrome.

For individuals, “Imposter Syndrome” is an eerie feeling of inadequacy around one’s equally successful peers. Those who suffer from Imposter Syndrom often believe their success must rest on some mistake, a stroke of luck, or fraud. In practical terms, it means constantly doubting oneself and hiding differences in order to avoid being revealed as a fake.

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We've been talking about why a real brand can't be invented out of thin air or tailored specifically to meet a certain market demand. Remarkable brands are built from the inside out. If you find this article helpful be sure to catch our first article here and our second here. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ4tXHUqxmI

Taking shortcuts and sidestepping integrity can only take you so far.

Whether it’s creating an online presence for your B2B, fine-tuning a management philosophy, or even sticking to a diet and workout routine, going against reality is not a good long term strategy for success.

In the TV miniseries ‘Chernobyl,’ a lone scientist named Valery Legasov fights to understand why and how an RBMK nuclear reactor, a design deemed indestructible by the Soviet Union, exploded like an atomic bomb.

Finding himself testifying before a grand central committee and all his colleagues, Legasov does the unthinkable—he tells the truth of how the Soviet State hid a known design flaw in the reactor.

Knowing he’s a dead man, Legasov goes further. He calls out the whole social and political culture of his country, a system built mostly on lies, shortcuts, bribery, and nepotism.

Before he’s taken away, he takes a parting shot:

"What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all."

It’s a sound warning—and one that B2B services should take to heart.

Avoiding the pitfalls While short-circuiting your brand identity probably won’t (in most cases), cause a nuclear meltdown, there are real, long-term consequences to plowing ahead without knowing what you’re really about.

In previous articles, we’ve covered the signs, science, and pitfalls of arbitrary branding.

Arbitrary branding—a brand identity, presence, and expression that’s outdated, neglected, picked at random, invented ad hoc, or outright copied—means selling yourself and your clients short. Ultimately, it’s making promises you won’t be able to keep; it’s presenting an image that doesn’t reflect your core identity, and it’s offering what you’re not able to deliver.

In the end (and even in the short term) arbitrary branding makes impressions that no B2B wants to make.

It runs the risk of making others think you are being:

-Pretentious

-Random

-Deceptive

-False

Of course, many companies that fall into artificial branding don’t fall into these categories on purpose.

Time shortages, competition, and other conflicts can force companies to put something together at the drop of a hat, or to stick with something simply because some forgotten individual made the decision eons ago. We grant that poor, rushed branding decisions can be driven by doubt, skepticism, or frustration with the creative process.

But whatever the reason, artificial branding means doing yourself a huge disservice. The hard, messy work of discovery and of telling the truth is what wins out—and pays off—in the end. “It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.” 

• G.K. Chesterton   Going with truthfulness As G.K. Chesterton points out, there’s only one way of doing things right.

Truthfulness is at the heart of authentic, effective, and winsome branding. While getting there can be tough, going with truth from the very start means you’ll be able to communicate it downstream, in all the avenues where your organization presents itself.

As we’ve discussed, an organization can’t spontaneously invent its core purpose as a company, make random choices about how it expresses itself as a brand, or create relationships with its customers out of nothing.

While improvisation can be a great tool for discovering a brand’s story, improvisation is not a good navigator for trying to reach the destination of genuine branding. A real brand’s story can never simply be dreamt up.

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A reputation for lying is the only thing worse than a reputation for bending the truth.

Either way, getting caught doing it obliterates everything—trust, careers, and not the least of all, relationships. From the still-smoldering fallout of the Ashley Madison email hack to notorious, tabloid-worthy cover-ups, lying creates a situation no person, business, or company ever wants to be in.

And as we’ll see in this blog, the same principle applies to branding.

Last month, we looked at why brands can’t be arbitrarily invented. From the carelessness to  pretentiousness, we touched on the importance of building a meaningful brand identity.

Aside from working gradually, and thoroughly, to understand every aspect of what your organization does, there’s no way to capture and present a brand identity that tells the full truth. As we’ll discuss in this blog, being fictitious, or outright deceitful, is the fastest way to destroy a brand or company that people can trust.

https://youtu.be/Gn3_G4rKEds In dating or branding, misleading people is just plain creepy Imagine for a moment that you’ve been trying for a long time to find that special person, so you decide to download a dating app. You’ve heard some success stories, so you’re giving up on the real world and heading online.

So you open up the app and search some profiles, swipe left a few times, and find some others interesting. Then you find one profile and you say, “Oh wow! That person is really cute. I like that photo.” You read the bio, and you think: “Yeah, definitely, it seems like I'll click with them. What they’re saying resonates with me. I like The Lord of the Rings too?! I’m excited to get to know them.” You send them a message, and they send one back. Before you know it you’re on your way to your first date.

And on that first date, you discover that . . . they look nothing like their profile photo. You’ve been catfished!

The bio you read? Most of it was fake. Some of it was exaggerated and some was made up to sound good.

That sense of connection? The feeling you could relate with them? A complete illusion. You just happened to be in the “target demographic” this person was hunting for a date with.

You find yourself wishing you could swipe in real life.

Even if they turned out to be pretty cool in their own right and had an interesting life story, or even if they had a lot in common with you, it wouldn’t matter to you anymore because they lied to you. Any potential they had for being trustworthy would be gone.

The whole charade is just plain creepy. Lying About Your Brand is Just as Bad That is how your customers feel when you try to form a fake relationship with them.

You can’t just arbitrarily decide you want to connect with a certain demographic and then change your branding to try to fit what you think they want. It might get them in the door, but they’ll leave quicker than they came in. You can’t present your business as something it isn’t.

Real people are naturally adept at spotting fake people. We can recognize the stock photos on a website and artificial smiles from employees who hate their jobs. We feel cheated when the fun-loving tone of your Twitter feed doesn’t match the robotic operator we get when we call expecting to talk with a live person.

The way you express your brand publicly, whether through a website, a newsletter or social media, is an invitation to extend a relationship. But a business can’t simply invent the people who are part of its team or the kind of relationships it wants with the customers it serves. It has to carefully and painstakingly hire and train that team to align with its values, and it has to grow relationships with its customers through authentic and honest communication.

“Dating” your customers in the real world takes a lot more work than creating a profile page with some beautiful photos and inspiring text, but those genuine relationships will pay off in loyalty and commitment.

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How often have you done something because everyone expects you to?

Probably once a day—if not more. While doing what’s expected is part of life, it’s another trap for B2B companies when it comes to solid, authentic brand development.

In our last article, we wrapped up the mistake of ‘accidental branding’ based on temporary aspects of a company. We also discussed how false beliefs lead to non-branding. A third approach we often see is “arbitrary branding,” which is motivated by the same doubts and skepticism as non-branding.

Situations come up that force companies to paste together a brand strategy of some kind—perhaps your marketing team insists on it. They recognize that  “having a brand” and “brand consistency” are important, but they don’t want to invest any thought, time, or money into figuring out what the brand actually is. Arbitrary Branding is when a brand defines itself because of expectation, making a random decision, and then sticking with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIMxbPPWJR8 The Problem of Arbitrary Branding What makes a decision “random” is that there is no ultimate explanation or story behind it, it simply reflects a pure act of will by the leadership, the marketing team, or the intern tasked with designing a logo. If you ask, “why?” there is no real answer. Core elements that compose a brand can’t be “invented”, “made up”, or “improvised” on the spot.

They are discovered, not invented. Companies are mistaken when they think that:

The purpose of an organization can be invented arbitrarily. The brand expression of an organization can be invented arbitrarily. The relationships with an organization can be invented arbitrarily. The story of an organization can be invented arbitrarily.

These four building blocks of a brand aren’t arbitrary. While the decisions of leaders and others are all part of a brand’s story, they do not “make up” a story or narrative. A brand’s story is non-fiction.

In this article, we’re going to tackle the first two pitfalls of Arbitrary Branding—pretentiousness and randomness. You Can’t Invent a Purpose (and It’s Pretentious to Try...) Your purpose is something objective and enduring, a real part of what makes your company continue to exist. Your company’s underlying, unifying purpose has real weight and substance. It explains how you choose to operate in the present and where you want to head in the future.

Yet we’ve seen so many companies who try to make up their purpose out of thin air. They don’t have a lot of time to put thought into it—they’re too busy selling. Inventing a “purpose” is just a step to giving a pitch or getting some investment. A lot of startups do this: they think they understand branding. They’ve read some branding books, made something up in an afternoon, and it sounded clever. They checked the “mission and vision” box. Maybe it got them to a name and a logo, and that’s good enough. “Whew! Glad we got that out of the way. Time to move on to something that actually matters.”

Brands with arbitrary purposes are everywhere. It’s the vague statement that doesn’t quite mean anything or the repetition of trendy buzzwords. The noble idea that nobody follows through on, the lofty vision irrelevant to the everyday. The company which says it exists to “Be the greatest at what we do.” There are “mission statement” generators online that sound about as authentic. An arbitrary purpose is a “pretend” purpose. No one believes in it, and no one follows it, because no one really cares. Your Brand's Purpose Isn’t Invented It has to be discovered. You have to search the world around you and figure out why it needs you, distinctly. Why does responding to your customers’ needs motivate you? Why does it motivate your team? Your leadership? You have to observe not only your current passions but also your enduring cares throughout your history.

Coming to a shared understanding of your organization’s purpose takes time.

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The Problem of Non-Branding In our previous article in this series, we looked at the problem of ‘non-branding’ for B2B companies. We looked at the various reasons why so many companies (and the people that make up the company) are skeptical of branding, think that it’s just not that important, and therefore end up not really branding which results in what we at Resound call a ‘non-brand’.

In our decade-plus of working with B2B companies to build authentic, lasting remarkable brands, we’ve learned a few things about why companies fall into this ‘non-branding’ trap. There are really four main causes for non-branding:

The company believes it has no purpose. The company believes it is inhuman, not made up of people. The company believes it is not unique. The company believes it has no story to tell.

None of these beliefs line up with reality. They’re false and untrue. But they can be deeply held and hard to change our perspectives on. Last time we unpacked the first two of these causes. You can check those out in Part 1 of this series. But now we’re going to tackle the other two causes of non-branding.

1. Your Company Is Truly Unique Because a unique collection of people make up your B2B company, your company actually is unique. The particular services or products you provide might not be unique, or the markets you sell to might not be unique. But because people are unique and act in unique ways, the way your business does what it does will inevitably be different from the way another business would do it.

We’ve talked to prospective clients before who have said to us, flat out, “There is really nothing interesting about us. We’re just like everybody else.”

What a lie! Our clients may believe that lie, but it is still a lie. No two people are the same: even the two most average, normal, typical, conventional people you can imagine are not duplicates of one another. Two twins who share the same genes are still very different people. So, no two companies of people are the same.

A company might feel the same as everybody else, of course. It might not look or sound unique. If the organization hasn’t put much thought or energy into branding, it may not be articulating or presenting its unique identity in a unique way. Look around and you’ll see plenty of bland and boring brands. Blanding Sometimes bland branding (call it, ‘blanding’) results from neglect or a holdover from the past. Maybe the organization started with a brand expression that was quick and easy at one point in time, like naming themselves after the nearest street, river, mountain, or landscape, and that was good enough because there were more pressing problems to deal with.

Other brands are bland by choice: they’re self-conscious about seeming unique in any way. They’ve chosen the most unobtrusive, “just like the other guy” look-and-feel possible, maybe because they actually feel a little inferior to the “other guy”.

Other brands just don’t think they need it. They’re satisfied with the personal referral business they’ve built and the portfolio of recurring revenue they have and see no need to change things.

Still, hiding under that bland and boring brand is always going to be different people, with a different way of handling things than the company down the street.

We’re not saying it is necessarily wrong to have a bland and boring brand if the company has clear reasons for doing that. Sometimes, when it is an intentional choice, it can be the most authentic and best-fitting representation of the company. Most of the time, though, blanding is a tragic waste. There is so much more to the company than they are giving themselves credit for! Companies that endure over time, which build referral networks and loyal customers, do so precisely because they are different and people recognize it. So, why hide it? 4. Your Company Has a Remarkable Story You have a purpose because there is some reason you are in business.

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The Problem of Non-Branding At Resound, we believe branding is all about uncovering your authentic identity. But many people (especially in a highly technical B2B company like manufacturing, technology, or engineering) don’t believe in “branding”, or don’t believe it is capable of reflecting anything like an “authentic” identity. They think of branding as a B2B company’s way of “putting lipstick on a pig”, and want nothing to do with it.

We call this “non-branding."

https://youtu.be/TeJJ0PTeNO8 What is Non-Branding? Non-branding is when a “brand” consists of nothing beyond an arbitrary name and logo (though the logo may just be the name in a stylized typeface). The B2B company has no interest in knowing or communicating what it is outwardly, usually because of skepticism that there is anything authentic about its identity which could ever be known or communicated. The brand is an empty shell and doesn’t really think of itself as anything more than an empty shell. Why your company might be skeptical about branding:  First, some people in B2B are skeptical about branding because they’re skeptical about their own B2B company. They don’t actually believe in themselves. They’re discouraged by the lack of purpose and vision. They doubt that there is anything beneath the surface to be discovered about its identity. They just can’t buy into the idea that there could be anything authentic, genuine, or intrinsically remarkable about the identity of the company itself. The company really is just a piece of paper filed with a government entity and maybe a couple of bank accounts.

Second, some B2B industry folks are skeptical about branding because they’re skeptical about everybody else’s companies. They’ve seen “branding” before, and it’s all a massive hoax to them. Branding to them is empty, deceptive, and profoundly inauthentic. “Branding” is just a bit of hocus pocus a marketing team makes up with no substance to it. Maybe they’re afraid that “branding” wouldn’t really fit them. When you see a lot of superficial branding pasted on that doesn’t match anything underneath, the most honest approach might look like not branding at all.

Obviously, we’re biased. As a B2B branding agency, we don’t at all share these doubts. We truly believe there is something remarkable about every B2B company which continues to survive in a hostile world where, as W. B. Yeats wrote, “things fall apart”. The 4 Causes of Non-Branding for B2B companies: There are four primary beliefs causing non-branding:

The company believes it has no purpose. The company believes it is inhuman, not made up of people. The company believes it is not unique. The company believes it has no story to tell.

All four of these beliefs are false. We argue that companies can and should take themselves seriously, and find their authentic identity. 1. Your Company Has a True Purpose You have a purpose. If your B2B company has survived more than a few years then it inevitably serves a purpose in the larger marketplace or community. Some people must find you valuable, and you must hold true to some sort of values.

The faster you spin a ball on a string in a circle, the stronger the string must be to keep the ball from flying away. The centrifugal forces pulling people away from one another in a modern world spinning at an ever-faster pace are so powerful that it takes a very strong bond to exert the opposing centripetal force needed to keep them together for any length of time. Whatever faults a business may have, it has at least succeeded in keeping people together. That bond that keeps the business from flying off into pieces is some sort of purpose it serves. A Company’s Purpose Doesn’t Have to be Flashy or Profound Not every business exists to, say, cure cancer or solve the AIDS epidemic, or end homelessness. The purpose your company serves may be fairly modest: it might exist to serve its customers by giving them a better way to organize the...

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The world needs your brand. Your brand is unique, dare I say, remarkable. So your brand needs to resonate strongly with its authentic identity. But we all know a lot of brands (especially B2B brands) that don’t feel remarkable. They don’t seem very unique. And that’s what I want to dig into today —  the dangers of doing branding wrong, especially accidental branding.

Last time we looked at the first two ways that companies can fall into accidental branding. Those two ways were:

Confusing their brand’s essence with their business goals. And confusing their brand’s essence with their competition.

Now I want to look at the second set of ways companies can fall into accidental branding. This risks a lot of confusion with their customers, staff, partners and ultimately creates a short-lived B2B brand.

https://youtu.be/Tzsn0do7OD4 3. Leadership A company’s leadership is the most prominent communicator of the heart of a company: its values, its mission, its purpose. The way leadership presents its values and purpose reverberates throughout the company at every level and resounds through its employees. Attempting to work out a company’s brand without the support of its leadership is almost always fails. Ultimately the leaders of a company are in the best position to recognize what does and does not fit with their company’s driving mission. Leadership ≠ Brand Having said that, an organization's leaders themselves are not its brand. Unless we’re talking about the founder of the company, anybody else in leadership, no matter how amazing or influential or publicly prominent, is merely accidental. The present CEO is not the company’s identity, and the CEO’s personal tastes should not drive brand decisions. “The boss likes this color” or “The boss loves this typeface” are not brand-based reasons to make any decisions. The same is true of any other outspoken or prominent person in a business who may want to influence the brand around pet projects. The brand is not about them. Leadership Based Branding is a Rebrand Waiting to Happen The leadership of an organization often drives its brand towards the leader’s fantasies rather than the organization’s real abilities! The leader badly wants something, and the organization must transform its identity to serve as a tool for the leader to get it. When rebranding accompanies a change of leadership, often it is a sign that the former “brand” looked too much like the personal seal of the former leader. Unfortunately, the “new” brand often seems uncannily shaped to fit the predispositions of the new leader. Customers and employees feel the dissonance as the brand shifts and look for excuses to leave the brand until a new leader re-invents the business yet again. Divisional Distractions Leadership structures, like departments, sub-businesses, regional offices, or teams of people, are equally bad drivers of the brand identity of a business. Your customers usually don’t care much about internal politics, and your org chart tells them nothing about who you are and what you’re here for. Authentic branding will instead help them have consistent and seamless experiences across different divisions, offices, or teams. Exceptional Founders The founder of a company is the one possible exception to this rule. The founder of a company is essential to the company: without the founder, it simply wouldn’t have existed. There is no Ford Motor Company without Henry Ford and no Apple without Steve Jobs. The values and vision of a founder are often identified with the values and vision of the company. Still, even the founder of a company is never the whole of its identity. The company aims to outlive its founder, just as Ford and Apple persist to this very day. A founder’s job is to create something larger than themselves. The brand will ultimately take on a life of its own. So, even a founder is not infallible when it comes to recognizing when choices fit or don’t fit with an organization’s ...

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Without a structured approach, strategic planning fails to touch the ground. Here are the three ways a well-structured brand strategy workshop — and importantly, the deliverables — give you everything you need to turn your vision into an organized, almost-tangible set of tasks.

https://youtu.be/db369Hm7FhE Intro Strategic planning is great, but what happens when everyone leaves the planning meeting? The excitement is gone and the work needs to start.

Stakeholders change their minds. As time passes, stakeholders forget the focus they brought with them. Stakeholders never bought in. People didn’t really understand the purpose when real life hits because they were never really involved. No follow-through. Ideas were exchanged, but nobody had a plan and a clear process. Nobody really gets it. Nobody has time, especially since they don’t know which part was theirs.

Explanation:

It’s a bummer when people show up not really understanding the meeting topic and then are expected to be involved. They soon lose interest, failing to contribute and take ownership. Especially when their comments are off-target. But a good workshop offers an explanation, creating consensus, accountability, and confidence. Consensus Among Leaders Without agreement among leaders, nothing downstream can be done with any confidence. And without the ability to examine ideas and communicate them — test them against goals, running them through the gauntlet of several points of view from your team and ours — it can be difficult to a) feel like you’re in agreement and b) actually be in agreement, even if you think you are.

The solution:

Define the goal. A conversation that leads to a strong idea of where you are and where you need to be. Verify unanimity. Diversity is great for some things; but you need everyone on the same page when it comes to goals. There’s just not much room for interpretation here. So ideas about the goal need to be brought quickly from the various versions that are in everyone’s head, in a step-by-step fashion, onto a whiteboard. Refine. Once you’re sure you have clear agreement within the leadership, you need several opportunities to clarify, object and refine.

Deliverables: To reach this goal, you need a clear process that brings the thinking onto a whiteboard with clear decisions having been made for each thing. At Resound, the typical brand workshop brings together brand values, personality traits and brand story, so you know how to tell everyone about your brand.

How do we do it? Without getting into detail, let’s just say we use Sharpies, Post-its, a slideshow, whiteboards, worksheets and a lot of hard work and engagement on the part of the participants. And there’s no reason you can’t do the same for content strategy, brand strategy or even product development. Accountability for Leaders Without agreement and involvement, leaders can’t be held accountable. They can go their own way, letting someone else make the decision. And if it doesn’t work out, they can parachute in and accuse the other person of failing.

And this doesn’t just happen in big, evil corporations full of self-serving executives. It’s also practical. Remember, everyone’s trying to do a good job, and when you’re busy, you can’t do everything. So if some bright-eyed marketing director sends you an email with brand values, colors and a logo, you have to decide, “Is this really worth a bunch of my time and energy?”

But a brand workshop invites everyone to collaborate, in real-time. It’s a chance to make decisions for the company and to engage with colleagues. It brings all of the leaders on the same page. And if they don’t engage, everyone in the workshop knows it. But if they do decide to engage, bringing their unique point of view to the table, you now have consensus, on which you can build accountability.

Now that the leaders have participated in the day-long workshop and have had the chance to disagree and tes...

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We talk a lot about how the world needs brands as they are at Resound. Meaning - a company should be itself - have its own unique and true identity - and not try to be something it is not.

This comes from our fundamental belief that - just as individual human beings are intrinsically remarkable - so are the organizations that human beings come together and create. And if you want to find out more about this belief and how we see it play out in branding and marketing, you’ll definitely want to grab a copy of our upcoming book, You Are Remarkable: How To Unlock Your Authentic Brand To Attract Loyal Customers.

This is all really important because if you’re not working to understand your organization’s unique identity - get to its real essence - you can quickly find yourself branding the wrong way. This can lead to many unintended issues that will hamper your marketing and communications and ultimately your organization’s growth.

https://youtu.be/HzGmXcK208g Accidental Branding We like to call this lack of depth in finding an organization’s identity “Accidental Branding.”

Accidental branding happens when you base your brand on something currently useful or interesting, instead of doing the hard work to deeply understand your company’s unique identity. It might reflect some aspects of the company here and now but it doesn’t really get to the heart - or essence - of the brand and will certainly not stand the test of time.

Accidental branding can happen for a variety of reasons - and some of them may even seem excusable. Maybe there’s a rush to get it done to meet some arbitrary deadline, or because those involved in the process have little stake in the outcome, or maybe because no one wants to think super deeply about the organization’s ultimate purpose. No matter the reason, accidental branding will leave your brand without depth or a lasting purpose. What happens when a company goes for the “quick and easy” solution to branding? There are four things they’ll mistake for their true identity:

Goals Competition Management Structure History

Now don’t get me wrong: these things are important to your brand as you craft your brand story. But it is a big mistake to confuse any of these by themselves as the essence of your brand. Why? Because these things are all temporary: they will all change (and quickly!) This will create tension between the new state of the company and your branding. And that means you’re back to rebranding...again. Which leads to confusion with customers, staff, and vendors, and a weakening of your brand’s value. Two Common Accidental Branding Pitfalls: Goals When someone is asked to introduce themselves in front of a group of people, they usually describe themselves based on their current stage of life. They might share where they went to school. They may also share where they currently work, their current role and where they live, whether they have kids (and how many, and what ages), and maybe a few things that they like to do for fun. Introducing themselves in this way allows other people to draw conclusions about their current motives, desires, and goals. We can take an educated guess about how somebody will respond when we know their current situation. Your current stage of business isn't who you are. You know your true motivations, what really drives you, how difficult it is to summarize yourself in a few words. And you also know how your current life circumstances don’t really capture the whole of who you are. Maybe you even resent it a little bit when marketers try to sell to you based on your demographics. Just because you make a lot of money doesn’t mean you like luxury watches. Just because you gave birth to a child doesn’t mean you want “mom” products. You know who you really are. The same is true of businesses. When you are introducing your business to a potential client or vendor, you may try to communicate the basics of where you are currently.

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The abundance of interesting articles makes it tough to cut through the clutter and get your message into the hearts and minds of your audience. But newspapers have it figured out — and they have for a long time. They’re famous for delivering information quickly, speaking to the lowest common denominator of people: the skimmers. The good news is that you don’t have to write for every reading style. Because if you can get the skimmers, you can get everyone. Let’s talk about how to organize your info like a newspaper.

First off, let’s give newspapers the credit they deserve: they model a great information hierarchy. And we can use this, especially for our busy B2B customers. We create messaging that will get to the point quickly. Not because everyone absorbs information in that way, but because if you can get skimmers, you can get other readers.

Apply this to your email newsletters, website, and social, and you’ll watch your substance come to the front.

Clear Headlines Clear headlines summarize the whole article. There’s no guessing and no click-bait - exactly what skimmers love. So how do you do it?

Say it straight (then, if you can, say it “great”). Tell the whole truth really quickly, without trying to be clever. If you just landed a contract with a big company, and you want to tell people about it, consider: “Blimey Construction Wins $50 Million Bid to Build Cardinals’ Stadium.”

Then, once you’ve said it straight a few times, add a superlative like “killer,” “best,” “top,” or give a number. Tell people exactly what you’re going to tell them to do. For instance, let’s say you want to talk about how to set up a manufacturing line for ice cream, but you want it to sound interesting, and not like a manual.

You could say: “How to Set Up a Killer Manufacturing Line for Ice Cream.” Or you could say: “5 Mistakes that Will Lead to a Meltdown on Your Ice Cream Line.”

Mistakes to avoid: Whatever you do, create tension with the headline. The first example above might sound happy and optimistic, but the second one sounds more interesting. Everyone wants tension. Tension organizes a story and makes you want to know more until your questions are answered. Make sure you build a little tension in the headline by telling them what they can get — or even lose — from the info in the article.

Remember, you can’t make people interested if the topic isn’t relevant. But for those for whom it’s relevant, make the topic feel so clear and organized that they can’t help but click. Inverted Pyramid A clear opening paragraph/summary — the first or second paragraph in any news story — expands on the headline, giving slightly more detail on each aspect of the headline. Like an upside-down pyramid, a clear opening paragraph (working with a clear headline), puts the bulk of the information at the top, not the bottom. It lets people know if they’re wasting their time or not.

Example from the Wall Street Journal:

Headline: Grand Jury Subpoenas Sent to John Bolton’s Publisher and Agent

Nut Graph (first paragraph): Federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to former national security adviser John Bolton’s publisher and literary agent on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, launching a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton mishandled classified information.

Notice that the nut graph expands on information contained in the headline.

How it can work for you: In any article you write, you want people to absorb the information. Write the problem first, because that’s what most people relate to, then talk about how you’ll solve it with your article. Give them everything you can right up front by summarizing.

Mistakes to avoid: Remember that newspaper articles are written to fit into a newspaper. They put the good stuff up top in the article, but leave the details toward the end. Why? Because the editor might cut the end to jam in another article on the page,

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Decision modes affect communication. The method and mood people bring into decision making affect their reasons for buying and how they need information delivered. This brings huge implications to the area of business-to-business sales and marketing. If you can figure out how to connect better with your customers on the basis of their need, delivering the truth in the way they need to hear it — not just based on their personality, but also their capacity/role when they hear it — you win.



What are Decision Modes? What are “decision modes?” Decision modes reflect personality styles represented in buying behavior. Think about going to the store and browsing. Now think about going to the store to buy something specific you need for a timeline-driven project you’re working on. Even though you’re the same person in both situations, you display two different kinds of buying behavior. In a business-to-business capacity, that’s just magnified.

The problem is that most B2B messages fail to make this distinction or make it without realizing what’s really going on. They either speak to themselves (whoever the owner is) or go too attribute-driven (no-nonsense, brass-tacks, impersonal, and sometimes braggy to seem confident). Why Decision Modes Matter Marketing has 2 main parts: media and message. And they both have to work.

If you create the right message (copy, look, feel) for your audience, but deliver it in the wrong media choice or to the wrong audience, you waste money. If you hit the right audience, but fail to speak to them in a way that resonates, you waste your money.

B2B buyers are buying for two reasons: what you can do for their company and what you can do for them. Do you ever wonder why B2B websites sound so stuffy and boring, bragging about themselves and telling you what you’ll get? It’s because they need to be logical.

Not because all business people are logical, but because, in the end, business people need to look like they’re making responsible business decisions. They want to trust that you’re going to make them look good if they choose you or even just recommend you.

So how do you get there with your message? Sorting out how to speak to different people in their roles at work can seem difficult, but if you understand a few basic things about how people think in their roles at their company, things could become much simpler, much more quickly. B2B Buying Is a Team Pursuit Think about all the people you’ll need to satisfy.

Accounting/finance will want reliability and predictability with cash flow. Operations will want to see that you have processes in place to move things forward quickly and that you’re well-supported. Legal and PR will want to make sure you won’t get them in trouble, either directly or by association.

Think of it as a business version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Start by checking the above boxes. Make sure your website has testimonials, for example. Make sure you have work samples, showing that you’ve done this type of thing before. Let your site show that you’re focused and speak intelligently on all your outward-facing communication.

Obviously, your website doesn’t show details about how you operate, but a well-organized and well-functioning site that has the basic boxes checked will get you past the first hurdle.

This corresponds to Maslow’s “physiological” and “safety” requirements. They need to know they’re safe with you. So if you’re super-clever, great. But that might not be what comes out on your website. Don’t let your desire to be clever overshadow your dependability. Dependability and professionalism is safety in B2B.

Hey, we’re a branding agency, so of course we care about the rest of Maslow’s pyramid. In fact, we think everyone should be offering reliability and structure with their special, secret sauce that sets them apart from their industry. But we have to get the basics right so that you’ll have a chance to meet them and b...

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Comparisons help contrast two things, bringing out differences and showing how each is special. Why does this matter for businesses? Without bringing out the differences between you and your competition, your understanding of the difference will be mushy. And it’s hard to explain to others an idea that is mushy in your own mind. The mushiness comes from two places: your inability to call things what they are, and your lack of information. In other words, you will struggle to differentiate your brand from your competition. This process helps you deal with both: we focus only on the information you can know, and we analyze it in a way that forces us to make decisions and distinctions.

Here's how we'll do it.

Step 1: Write a SWOT Analysis First, organize what you know. Don’t let lack of information stop you: You don’t have inside info, so look at the outside:

What does your competition say? How do they present themselves? Describe their messaging, creative, and positioning efforts. What actions are they taking? How do people feel about them? What do their customers say about them publicly?

Workflow: After collecting this information, turn to your own business. Write down the following:

Detail your operational strengths as an organization. How are you able to serve your customers well? What are your weaknesses? What about your company gets in the way of serving your customers? Describe your opportunities. Are there obvious opportunities out there in the market? What makes them such a good fit, given your strengths and weaknesses? What are the threats to your success?

Market factors, like the economy. Indirect competition, like replacements for what you do. Direct competitors, who do the exact same thing you do. This is what we’ll focus on in the next step.

For a more complete treatment of the SWOT, check out this article. Step 2: Review threats and your strengths Compare Yourself to Them Here’s where you really draw distinctions. Write down why you think this other company is a threat. What is it good at that makes it competitive to you? How do you compare favorably? How do they nullify your strengths by being better in that area? This last one is huge because it requires honesty. You have to admit that this other company is better than you at something you think you’re good at. Worry about how you’ll overcome them some other day. Today is a day for honesty.

A good example: Let’s say you listed customer service as a strength, but another company has a better reputation for customer service. Be honest and realize that you can’t compete on that alone. Test Your List (Eliminate and Develop) Now, come up with all the strengths you have remaining, after you’ve eliminated some. Is there something you listed, like the ability to deliver reliably, that your competition has trouble with? Maybe that’s your big difference.

Also, before we leave customer service off the table, let’s also think about what we mean by customer service. Your competition may have great scores in an area like that. But if you can deliver unique value, you might be able to cut them off.

For instance, let’s say they lean on great customer service scores in surveys and they plaster it all over in their advertising. But even with that, you know they have wait times. And you don’t. This could be an easy way to differentiate your brand. So if customer service is so valuable to your market, you could advertise zero hold times, offering a more-specific and believable promise.

Be careful though. If they own customer service, it can be tricky to win it from them. Make sure it’s worth the investment. Step 3: How do your comparative strengths differentiate your brand? Let’s review: Comparative advantage is the measure in B2B, not absolute advantage. There’s a difference.

Absolute advantage is where you’re better than everyone else (in your market).

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Competition. What comes to mind? An epic struggle between two teams on a sports field? Candidates vying for an open position at a fast-growing, exciting tech company? Perhaps something more biblical, say, David vs Goliath?

For most of us leading and building B2B brands, the first thing that comes to mind is the other companies vying for our customers and clients.

The competition is ‘the other guys’ and we often know something about them. We may even have seen them at an event, met them, we may be friends with them, and quite possibly used to work for them.

And in my experience running a creative branding agency in Phoenix, as we work with, advise, and help build remarkable B2B brands, the activities of the competition (especially of the marketing variety) are something my clients care very much about. They follow their press releases, size up their booth at the tradeshow, and maybe even set up a friendly meeting with their counterpart in the other firm, and both attempt a little competitive-but-friendly game of digging for dirt.

Researching what competition is up to always seems to sound like a good idea. Stay ahead of the curve. Keep up with the Joneses. Get a leg up. Don’t get left behind.

And I certainly don’t disagree. In fact, I think there’s an incredibly crucial place in your B2B brand strategy for competitive analysis. But that said, I think many brands misplace the energy spent on keeping tabs on their competition. So let’s talk about that for a minute.

How Remarkable Brands Think About Competitive Research Think about the remarkable brands in your industry — or really in any industry. Maybe consider a Nike, Apple, Amazon, or Coca-cola. Think for a moment about Southwest Airlines or Chick-fil-A or Barry-Wehmiller.

Now answer the question, “Do these companies focus more on their own brands or their competitors’ brands?” I’m pretty sure the answer is the former: they are far, far more focused on their own brand than what their competition is doing. Chick-fil-A doesn’t primarily train its staff by showing them what McDonald’s does and then saying ‘do the opposite’. They teach them how to act the Chick-fil-A way first and foremost. They create their own culture, not just ‘someone else’s but different’. ‘Outside-In’ Branding The opposite of these brands’ strategy (when it comes to the competition) is ‘outside-in’ branding. That’s when you’re far more worried about what everyone else is doing than what your brand is doing. Your brand is less about what’s really true about your organization and more about how to position it amongst or against the competition.

I do think there’s value in making sure you’re looking around to see what everyone else is doing (just like a runner in the lead has to take quick stock of the pack every now and again). And we’ll get to some approaches for doing that right later in this article. But I think there’s a lot of temptation for brands to focus way too much on the competition, causing them to lose sight of their own authentic (and compelling) identity.

The real fundamental issue with ‘Outside-In’ branding: you are forever a follower. Your brand never leads. It can’t. It’s created from either the negative space between your competitors or from some herd-mentality (or some mutated amalgamation of the two). Here are some specific issues that arise for ‘outside-in’ brands:

Moved by the competition. Because in some way, shape, or form your brand is really built on what your competitors' brands are, what they do causes your brand to shift - whether actually because you choose to shift or just in terms of perception in the minds of your customers. Reactionary. Very much related to the point above, you are put into a position of reaction. Everything you do is really just based on what your competition does. And this means they control you to some degree. Low-grounded. You can’t hold the high ground if you’re not in the lead.

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If you’ve got a B2B brand - selling your products and services to other businesses - then you know that there are some very unique challenges to marketing your business-to-business brand. A lot of the branding lessons out there are great - and some certainly translate to B2B. But most of those lessons are built on business-to-consumer marketing. These lessons often fail to connect to the B2B world.

I’ve learned a few lessons for B2B brands working with business leaders building and growing remarkable B2B brands leading our creative branding agency. And I want to share some of these lessons today and hopefully help you grow your B2B brand.

Here are three unique challenges to marketing a B2B brand and some ways you can overcome them:

1.) B2B brands are built on human-to-human relationships first. Unlike many B2C brands, the first meaningful interaction a potential customer has with a B2B brand is with a person. Many B2C brands can get all the way from the first ad or marketing message to the first purchase transaction without the customer ever interacting with a human representative of the brand.

Consider how you buy a new drink. You might see an ad on TV and then maybe some sponsored social posts about the product. Then while at the store (or online), you see the product and its packaging, get curious, and put it in your cart to purchase. Even if you deal with a cashier or salesperson, they don’t directly represent the manufacturer. In fact, they probably don’t have any specialized training from the manufacturer to tell you anything more than what’s on the packaging or the Amazon product page. (Having worked retail sales at a big-box electronics store in college, I can tell you the training I got on digital cameras definitely was less than half of the info you can find on a standard Amazon product page these days.)

Now let’s consider a B2B brand - perhaps a manufacturer of industrial machines. It’s highly likely you’re not seeing ads on TV, YouTube or social media for the product. It’s just too narrow a market of potential buyers. Instead, you might discover the brand through a tradeshow, conference, industry publication or direct marketing. You'll likely have a conversation with a brand rep pretty early in the purchasing process. Perhaps even right there at the tradeshow. And you certainly are going to have even more conversations in the research and final sale phases. B2B marketing requires tight integration between messaging and brand representatives. B2B marketing requires a much tighter integration of messaging and the people who directly represent the brand. We'll take a look at some of the reasons for that later in this article. But the core of those reasons is that B2B marketing involves more human interaction than in the B2C world. These human-to-human interactions happen much earlier in the marketing and sales process than B2C and are much more crucial to the customer experience prior to any kind of transaction.

The relationship with the customer becomes difficult to build if the messaging between ads, marketing collateral, platforms, and the people on the ground is off at all. Trust is threatened and it requires a lot of work for a sales or account rep to catch up. The brand and the people have to all be singing the same song. They should sing with their own personal voice and have the ability to flex to the specific needs of their customers. But all need to be singing the same familiar song.

This is why brand assets like taglines, a Brand Story, and visual guidelines are so, so critical. Without these (and some solid training of how to use and integrate them) representatives of the brand are left without a clear understanding of the story the customer has already been told in other marketing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from sales reps who are so frustrated with the marketing of their own brand because the story they’re telling customers is so different from what they’ve b...

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Your brand story touches off a story in the mind of your audience that involves them and sets you apart as the only one they'll trust to solve their problem. But if that's true, why are so many stories lacking empathy, focus, values and seriousness? Today, we'll talk about these things as well as 4 areas your brand story will come up big.

Too many people are caught by surprise without any kind of brand story. Ask them what they do, and they give you a weird and confusing story about what they do with almost no indication of why they do it.

We wrote a post that goes over the creation of a brand story. But before you get started, let's talk about why you'd want it and how you'll use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhqIFa-2HAQ What’s a Brand Story? Great brand stories do actual, real work. They give your hearer focus. If you can do that, you can take them down a path. And if your path makes sense, you might even use that valuable attention you got (read: earned) from them to offer your solution.

A brand story, like any story, needs tension. So usually there's some kind of problem that exists for your customer or client. The story needs characters and those characters have to make sense to the hearer. And it needs a solution that involves you. Two Ways Your Brand Story Helps You This is how you create consistency in the communication of your brand throughout your organization. Deliver with Confidence People who lack confidence fail to impress. But it's really a matter of trust than anything else. Because if you fail to impress, people may still like you. They may even feel sorry for you. But since everyone's dealing with their own issues, when they need someone to help, they're looking for someone strong, reliable, focused and dependable.

Your brand story, if delivered confidently, shows others they can trust you. It impresses them with the commitment you show toward good values and a real, actual plan to help others, not because you're out for cash, but because it's a way you can make money and help people based on your values.

The funny thing is, when you're the kind of leader, in the kind of brand, whose values reside not in the opinions of others, but in the fact that you live according to your values, it at the same time doesn't matter as much what they think, and, on the other hand, makes them more inclined to trust you. This opens the door for more opportunities for you to serve others.

Not because you need them, but because you live out a commitment to help. Spur Interesting Conversations Your clarity of goal -- your ability to know what you do, how you do it, and how it helps others -- captures the imaginations of other people, sometimes even reminding them of why they first started their business.

After all, most people don't go into business thinking "this is gonna suck, but at least I'll make some money." Usually, you have some pretty cool visions of what's possible. But then you get busy. And work starts to become transactional — a little more about getting the work done and getting paid than about feeling satisfied with your work.

But your brand story feels deeper, because it is. Your brand story is bursting with your "why," even when you don't directly talk about your values.

And when people think you're talking about their problem, and you really understand their problem, it shows that you get it. It also shows that it matters to you. And while lots of people can claim they care, when your concern is anchored in your deeply held values, then you become a real, viable solution to their problems. At that point, who else will they trust as much as they trust you? When to Use Your Brand Story There are a few things you do in business that provide amazing leverage. They're things with low investment, but extremely high long-term value. Your brand story is one of them. Here are a few ways your brand story pays off in the long run. 1) Pitching a Product

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Brand values give you confidence and set you up to know how to move your company forward with conviction -- like there's a spine of steel going through your company. How do they do this? By showing you what you stand for and holding you accountable to it. And with the right process and commitment, you're not only defining values, but also carrying them out, both through your actions and your employees'.

But how do you get there? Before we start, we have a worksheet that you can download here. It contains a four-stage guided process. This is the exact same worksheet that we use to direct our paid workshops.

Ground Rules for Defining Brand Values First the rules. These rules help you avoid some common misconceptions that could both weaken your defined values and cause you more work than you need. And that's not efficient. 1) Values aren't benefits: What do I mean?

"Results" "Success" "Profitability"

These things are all good. But these are the outcomes. Without your special, secret sauce, all those measures of success will be more difficult to attain. 2) Avoid values that are too obvious. What do I mean?

Integrity Service Honesty

Those values fail to differentiate you. Everyone's likely to claim those values. Heck, most companies even exhibit those values consistently. 3) Avoid values that just aren't true. What do I mean? Determination, for instance, would be a false value if you had a really weak work ethic. It would raise serious questions within the company and outside of the company. And you don't want confusion, because confusion doesn't lead to confidence.

It's pretty straightforward, but make sure you can think of examples of how you exhibit values. If you can't, then maybe you should seriously question those values. Framing Questions The first section consists of framing questions. If you can answer these questions in sufficient detail, then you wouldn't really need to do the rest of this workshop. But for most of us, these questions are here to help you understand the purpose of all the following questions and show you where you are right now.

What's your brand's passion? What do you care about? What gets your brand out of bed in the morning (if it were a person)?

What does your brand fight for? What evil is it fighting? What good is it fighting for?

These questions can help frame and show you where you're at right now and then help frame everything that follows. Elimination Section The first big exercise is all about elimination. You go through a sample list of values and remove them until you get to 20-25.

If you're using our worksheet, you'll find almost 4 pages of values listed.

Print that out. Set a timer for two minutes. Cross out the ones that don't seem true. Repeat two times until only 20-25 words remain.

Fine-Tune Your Brand Values In this step, you'll further reduce and organize until you're down to three to five values. Here's how you do that.

Write down 20 to 25. Match similar words and then combine those into one. Prune the stragglers that don't seem as relevant anymore and anything that doesn't attain top-5 status.

Define Your Brand Values Once you're done with that, you should have three to five values for your company. And here's how you do it. You don't just look up the definition, but you write down what it means to you.

So if someone were to say authenticity, you wouldn't define it with "we are authentic." Instead, you would say something like "We wear our heart on our sleeves."

"Show, don't tell." Here's a rule in writing that applies here. Stronger verbs usually make a more impactful statement. It avoids modifiers (adverbs and adjectives) and uses actions instead. You'll notice that the stronger definition uses a strong verb, not "We are authentic," but "We wear our hearts on our sleeves."

Pro-tip: If you're struggling with how to define your values using strong verbs,

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Authentic brand values are one of the most critical parts of your brand strategy. Most companies have some version of them posterized on a wall in their often - often labeled as ‘Core Values’.

So many companies find it necessary to have these values but very few of them actually have ones that are distinctive - truly authentic to the brand they’re building.

Think about it: how many times have you seen companies with values like ‘customer service’ and ‘quality’ and ‘professionalism’?

It’s like all these organizations use the same 10-word handbook of ‘core values’ and then just pick their favorite 5 to 7. And while these values aren’t usually bad, in and of themselves, they leave everyone (leadership, employees, customers, and even vendors) wanting something more.

Authentic Brand Values are Different True, authentic brand values help inform everyone about the core beliefs and ethics of the organization. They flow from the purpose of the company. And when they’re expressed deeply and creatively, they become something much more powerful than a list of words that everyone learns on Day 1 of employment and then never thinks about again.

Let’s take the example of Southwest Airlines for a moment. Here are their values: Live the Southwest Way:

Warrior Spirit Servant’s Heart Fun-LUVing Attitude

Work the Southwest Way

Safety and Reliability Friendly Customer Service Low Cost

What can we notice about these values? They start with ‘why’ and are highly internalized. They’re specific. And they are unique.

Look at the first one: ‘Warrior Spirit’ brings to mind resoluteness, tenacity, and action. It helps us identify that this is not just about behavior (outward actions) but a mental state. It shows us how the value can be internalized and then expressed outwardly.

Southwest could have just said: “action” or “tenacity”. But these would have only guided us to an outward behavior. Instead, they depict the frame of mind representatives of the organization need to be in - and if they’re not, no outward action will be quite right.

And when we think about the experiences Southwest has built, they reflect that their brand values start from within. They’re not just surface level, superficial beliefs that everyone in the organization talks about but doesn’t really believe or internalize.  No, it's clear that most staff and leadership, in most situations, really believe in these values. And that leads to truly authentic, resonant experiences that keep customers coming back again and again. Gutcheck Your Values So maybe you’ve got some brand values already. How deep do they go? Are they truly unique and different? Do they help everyone in your company really understand the mindset of the brand? Do they inspire people to create experiences that ring true to the brand?

If the answers are not a resounding ‘yes’ it might be worth revisiting your brand values. And as you do, here are two common missteps in discovering your true brand values. This will help you discover and communicate your values with authenticity and clarity. Misstep #1: Mistaking Goals (or Outcomes) for Authentic Brand Values I often find this misstep with companies with strong, visionary, action-oriented leaders. These leaders mean well - and they are great at getting everyone on the same page about where they want to go as an organization. They see the world in outcomes and goals - what are we trying to achieve? And then point everything back to these future achievements.

The problem is that values are intrinsically not goals. If they were they would constantly need to change. Instead, we should think of values as beliefs or ethics or viewpoints on the world. They are lasting guideposts for how a brand should behave.

Here’s a common goal that is confused for a value: ‘Success’.

You might be asking, “That actually sounds like a decent brand value. I mean success isn’t bad, right?

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Differentiating yourself in the market is a process, much like a high school grad going to college to find himself. Luckily, you're a business, not an Adventure Education major (yeah, that's a thing), and we don't need a year, months or even weeks to get to the bottom of this. Let's talk about how we can get to 5 brand personality traits in as little as 5 days.

Most brands already have a personality, but without a formal process of realizing it, you don't know how to live it out. Likely, you already have places where it comes out. And people like it. But because you don't want to alienate yourself or embarrass anyone, you hide your brand personality. Your Process to Define 5 Brand Personality Traits in 5 Days So let's get to it. The goal of this article is to give you an example process, so it'll be easy to do it on your own or manage the process effectively if you hire it out.

More formally, the goal: create and develop a list of 3-5 brand personality traits that can be translated into your communication, making you super-interesting to your ideal target audience.

Why should you care? Because when you're considering working with someone, you want to work with people who think for themselves, who fulfill their promises and have some kind of sense of humor. People who get things and just seem to understand what's going on around them.

Don't you? Just Imagine I might be a little Archie-Bunkerish when it comes to John Lennon, but let's take a page out of his book anyway. Let's imagine.

What if you were that business that everybody wanted to work with? That business that gets it? The business that is just clever enough in its communication and just interesting enough to be followable? That brand that knows the difference between what the industry is obsessing over and what's actually important?

In other words, for those who identify with your business and your way of doing things, what if you could be considered the best?

Because when you're that brand, you have a point of view.

You're telling them in economic hard times, they need to be thinking about today without ignoring the good times that are ahead. During a pandemic, when everyone's empathizing, you're the brand that says it's not okay to stay scared. During an economic downturn, when everyone's blaming, you're telling people to take responsibility, find hope and work hard.

But you'll never do it if you're too shy, if you haven't developed your personality and built your business on it and clients who expect it. The Brand Personality Traits Process This process yields 3-5 personality traits that you can then formalize into a list of traits that guide how you communicate and even the kinds of products or services you make. Plan It

Start by downloading the personality traits worksheet from Resound. Schedule a time to get everyone together, ideally five of your most senior people, and go through the worksheet together.

Section 1 Go through the section "Which most closely represents your brand and why?" and make sure to talk about why you chose what you chose. For instance, you have a choice of sodas that represent your brand. But if you choose Fanta, that doesn't mean your brand is Fanta. Remember: WHAT you chose is less important than WHY you chose it. And it's your job now to talk about why you chose Fanta and why it represents you. Section 2 Choosing the words in the next step can feel like a lot of work. But you can make it go fast. Set a timer and make everybody move through them quickly. Don't think, just circle. As you pare things down to your final words, you'll be looking for between three and five of your top traits. Section 3 You'll take these traits and you'll say which ones are your current traits and which ones are your desired traits. Take your current traits and then turn them into sentences. Those sentences represent your brand personality traits and why. Section 4 Optionally,

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Great branding impacts your entire brand presence, including everything you say and do. Your brand's personality is an important — and very visible — part of your that presence that builds favor and trust with your customers. These 4 principles for discovering your brand personality will help you as you nail down your own unique, authentic brand personality.

Good Shortcuts and Bad Shortcuts can be good. As a kid, I was always looking for a shortcut to the store, so I wouldn't have to walk around the block. But branding is a process. And when you don't understand the process, the shortcuts you choose could actually waste your time and money, at best. And at worst, they could sabotage the whole process, stealing punch and conviction from your results and from the buy-in you'd otherwise get from your stakeholders.

The good news is that most of us have a head start. We see our brand personality traits peeking out every once in a while. But just as soon as that happens, we worry we'll be criticized for being quirky. "Stakeholders want to see responsibility," we say. And then part of our unique personality dies.

But not permanently. It turns out that when this happens, your personality is only mostly dead (thanks, Miracle Max). And a solid process for discovering your brand personality can bring that personality back to life and organize your traits in such a way as to make them usable. Even powerful. Our Goal: 4 Pitfalls to Avoid and Make You Look Smart With Your Brand Personality Traits In fact, it's more than that. Because these are just some basic, but high-leverage, rules to make you smarter about branding. Why Do You Care? We almost forgot the most important question. For some of you, this is just a refresher. But have you ever worked with someone who consistently communicated confusingly and it made you not trust them? You could tell they didn't have the character to really follow through on what they were promising. You don't want to be that brand.

Then there are those people who seem solid and trustworthy, but they don't seem to really be that savvy with their communication. They might even have a ton of experience in their field, but they just don't seem to quite understand you. They struggle to sort out what you know and don't know and how you think. Although it is a much better situation than dealing with people who lack morals, it's not ideal. It's especially not ideal for a consultative relationship where you'll need to communicate and develop a sense of understanding so that you're not constantly clarifying things for them. Because that's tedious and takes forever.

You don't just want competent people; you want people who get you and who you get in return. Your personality is what tells potential customers that you are competent and understand them.

Brand personality pays dividends. But is it Really Relevant in B2B? We might think brand personality matters more for Business-to-Consumer brands. And it definitely has its own character - B2C brands can get away with more because of sheer numbers in their advertising. Their niches can be smaller in proportion to the total world population, while still being large enough to sustain a business. You can see how a B2C company can hyper-specialize with a sense of humor that can gain a cult following. This is a little harder to do in B2B. But it is possible.

In fact, there are some brands that have built a following not because they just happen to be in the right place at the right time, but because they really know who they're talking to and they're not afraid to talk in their language.

For instance, in the defense industry, they might talk about things like "lethality." But you might not talk in such frank and blunt terms if you're talking to a general audience of business people who are more concerned with developing cultures of empathy. But whatever industry you find yourself in you know how your particular audience talks and whether or n...

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It’s hard to measure brand. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important. As practical people, we know better. At Resound, we've worked with some pretty tough, focused brands who don't like to waste money. So it made sense to us when we saw branding elder statesman Marty Neumeier describe his brand ladder. He insists — and we agree — that branding not only increases your value in the minds of your customers, but it's measurable. Let's talk about how.

Neumeier's ability to create concrete philosophy around the value of branding helps everyone in business, especially B2B businesses whose rate of repeat customers and unpaid advertising by customers (free, word-of-mouth advertising), depend on their brand.

But even as you're thinking about measurement, remember that no gimmick or measurement should be your primary focus. All these methods of measurement should lead you to actually deserve return customers and the word-of-mouth the experience generates. How to Think about Measurement First off, let's remember that just because something's hard to measure doesn't mean it's not important. And if there is a way to come close to measuring it or approximate measurement, that might be better than measuring nothing.

Let's look at each one, using Neumeier's terminology, for consistency. "Satisfaction" Neumeier calls it "satisfaction." You call it "returning customers."

The truth is there are a few ways to measure branding. But what are the signs? Because if we know the signs, then we can measure.

Simply put, do customers come back? Do they show signs that they're interested in continuing to build that relationship at least in the short term until something better comes along? This is your first sign that your brand is solid.

A strong brand works from the inside out, putting your team on the same page, singing from the same sheet of music, making success less accidental, and giving ownership to everyone at your company. This, combined with a great external message, both makes a promise and keeps it.

But maybe you think it's a good sales team and a good customer service team. You might say "We don't do branding. We just preach a set of values consistently inside and outside the company that's more than talk, but turns to action, showing integrity in everything we do." Dude, you just defined the most important part of branding.

But sometimes people just want confidence. Think about a big consultancy, like McKinsey. If you want to know whether your business strategy is sound, you ask for their mark of approval. Once you have that, it's almost impossible for anyone to blame you for a bad business decision. There's value in a brand name. Measurement is simple. How many people return? How many consider you their go-to? The simple, plain-vanilla way: You can see how many people come back by keeping good records of customers and their return. "Delight" Neumeier calls it "delight." You call it "referrals."

What the heck is "delight" you say? It's creating a pleasant surprise that the customer wasn't expecting that's in-line with your values and makes sense and extends the experience.

Why do you care? Because it means referrals. Delighted people tell others about you. They defend you in conversations because they feel they know you. And they like you.

Here's where business-to-business is a little different. Although you can delight your customers by making them look smart and furthering their careers because of the great decisions they make, it's not always such a personal experience as if you were an end-customer. In B2B, you're more likely to get referrals because people want you to know they use you. It might be a status thing that reflects on the company.

Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) and Salesforce users point to their use of the industry-leading software as a badge. They are the kind of company they use an advanced CRM. Mechanics are proud of the tools they use, because it makes them look serious.

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It’s tough for some companies to invest resources in building a great brand when they can instead spend money on making the next sale. And yet, if you ignore why you stand apart, you can be easily replaced. The question is not whether to brand, but rather how much, where and how? So let's talk about the two stages of branding, so we can learn how to focus our efforts.

Note: As we learn what it means to deal with COVID-19, and as we watch to see what the economy will do, this is a great opportunity to talk about tightening things up. That doesn’t mean we stop operating. In fact, it can mean quite the opposite, but with more discipline. And to exercise discipline first means developing an understanding of what you’re dealing with. At no time are organization and optimistic sobriety more important than times like these. So this conversation lays a foundation to help us understand where branding leads. It's the first step in understanding how to allocate your resources, spending precisely what you need on branding and marketing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0rC22ONF4c&feature=youtu.be Branding and the Tough-Minded Business Resound serves some of the toughest-minded, growth-oriented, business-to-business companies in the greater Phoenix area. They don’t suffer fools or indulge themselves in foolish spending. The difference is that these businesses also know what they’re about as people — that flows into their business, causing them to grow in sophistication. Because sophistication comes in the trenches, where you have to make real decisions about whether you’ll do what’s right or what’s expedient.

Businesses that don’t choose to do what’s right never develop the sophistication that comes from that experience. When you fail to avail yourself of each opportunity to do what’s right, you forfeit depth and strength of character. And it’s the same for companies as it is for individual people. What We’ve Learned Here’s what we’ve learned from our experience. I hope it helps you make sense of your situation. Branding comes under fire for being something that only the big companies can afford to do. Yet we can say from experience that our success has not made our clients undisciplined. They make bigger deals and work with better companies because they're worth working with.

They care about money, and they care about operations. But they also care about doing it the right way. And they know how to talk about it in a way that makes them desirable to do business with. Because aside from the ethical problems, companies that don’t care about anything bigger than money or efficiency create for themselves a glass ceiling. They don’t know why they can’t get bigger deals or keep relationships.

It’s the companies with bigger values that see unlimited growth. They’re the ones who seem so generous and joyful, even in tough times. They’re the ones who come out of hard times stronger and usually with a larger market share.

So how do you measure it? If you’re still with me, you agree that branding becomes an outflow of your values and gives you something much bigger to offer the market. The next question is, how do you measure the effectiveness of your brand? After all, it’s one thing to define your values, and it’s another thing to see them inform, coordinate and align your entire culture to the point that everyone, even outside the company, feels the energy of the brand. Two Primary Stages of Brand Effectiveness Marty Neumeier talks about it as a ladder that starts with satisfaction, goes to delight, moves to engagement, and then leads to empowerment. Most B2B companies will be interested in the first two: satisfaction and delight. Stage 1: Satisfaction Satisfaction begins with fairness and trust. They've purchased from you and want to do it again.

They get a sense of closure. You are able to inspire confidence. They enjoy a solid experience with you that feels complete.

Stage 2: Delight

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You buy values with action, not words. You don’t own values just because you put them on your wall or think they’re a nice idea. You own them when they work. So let's learn how to put your values to work every day and build your brand.

Your brand’s values work in your company before you talk about them. If they don’t, they’re not your values, and this is not your brand. It’s a slap-on decoration.

So we've talked about values and how they form the core of what you do.

We've talked about why it’s necessary that those values turn into actions that benefit your values.

We’ve also talked about the importance of talking about what you believe in order to share the “why” that drives your brand forward. And so that people can spread the philosophy.

Now let's talk about how to document these things and how to set up a regular session that allows people to understand what's going on, synthesize them, and then live them out in their jobs. Make Your Brand Touch Lives How do you help your values grow deep roots in your company? You adopt a process that invites everyone to think about the values and then turn them into actions that change the process.

So you do the following:

Talk with people about your values and have them synthesize those values, like in a college lit class (except it’s not for them to determine what those values mean to them; you’re quite literally asking them to own your values, not reinvent them). Work together to find areas you’re not living out those values in how your company works (e.g. operations, HR, customer service). Change your process to conform to those values.

Make what you say match what you do. Revolutionary, right? But you might want a more-specific process. I can help.

First, we work from the top down. Leadership, then front-line employees.

Get in a group of your 3 most senior people every month. Pick a value. Talk about what it means. Each person writes on a sticky note 3 things they’re doing in their departments that don’t live out that value. Group the sticky notes. Have everyone rank them. Take the top 3 and identify the problem. In what way is it violating your value? What’s the cost? Why is it a problem? If it’s worth fixing at that point, decide what you’ll do (who will do it and how you’ll know it’s done). Make it a one-month task, so that it’s done when you next meet.

Note: the next month, add a task at the beginning to go over the assigned tasks and make sure they got done.

Rules for the meeting:

You’re asking people to question policies and actions. If you’re uncomfortable with that, maybe this isn’t for you. Reserve judgment and listen. Allow them to ask the dumb questions (that’s where some of the biggest assumptions-turned-myths get busted) and suggest solutions. They’re allowed to come up with problems without solutions, but the problems don’t get solved if there’s no clear path toward a solution.

Say what you believe and then go do it.

If you’re willing to put yourself on trial before your values, you’re doing what very few companies do and putting yourself on the next level. But don’t do it because it makes you “better.” Do it because it makes the work you do matter in the lives of people. Everyone Wants Values. Not Everyone Wants to Live Right. Most people aren’t willing to do the small things. They want to do the big, exciting things. But if you follow this process, or build your own, your brand can start delivering dividends before you even make a great logo. This is the essence of your brand in its raw form. This is where grand ideas meet operations and employee’s everyday lives. This is where it becomes real. And if it can't become real here, then you have to question whether you really own those values.

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