E-Zine Volume11 : Branding Your Business :
How to blow your business out of the water by getting a handle on your brand

Branding is perhaps the single most misunderstood concept I have encountered in business, especially in small businesses.

Started on farms as a way to distinguish one cow from the other, branding helps create a distinct space for your business in the minds of your customers.

It’s all about longevity.

Every successful brand that I’ve seen has a brand character. A brand character is a set of human traits associated to a certain product or service.  A brand’s characteristics often reflect the founder’s character, as in:

1. Richard Branson: Virgin (debunker of the establishment)
2. Anita Roddick: Body Shop (animal activist)
3. Jean Coutu: the Jean Coutu pharmacies in Quebec (the humanist)
4. Donald Trump: Trump Casino (larger than life personality)

However, the brand character can be unrelated to the founder’s as in:

1. Absolut vodka- artsy, stylish
2. Oakley sunglasses- cool
3. Diesel- a philosophy of life
4. W network- feminist

Then there are the brands with no clear established character, such as say, Reebok.  In comparison, who do you see when you close your eyes and visualize Nike as a human being? An image of a hard core athlete probably pops into your head immediately.
By contrast, there’s a deep confused silence in all my workshops when I ask the same question about Reebok. Why is that?

In essence, a brand character is a product or service’s internal identity.  All elements of the business strategy actually flow from this brand character.  This is why branding is the most powerful concept in business. When focus and clarity is even more important to small businesses, having a brand character becomes even more crucial.

I’ll demonstrate the power of establishing a crystal clear brand character in a small business with a story about my client Ann*.

Ann had a small jewelry design business she was having difficulty growing.  When I asked her what the human traits she wanted to associate with her jewelry line were, she said the following:

1. funky
2. 40+ year old
3. successful
4. sexy
5. female

Her brand character was coincidentally the same as her target market. 

I want to make a distinction here that the brand character and the characteristics of a business’s target customer don’t have to be the same. Take for example, the moving company “Two Small Men with a Big Heart’. Even though it’s a small company, almost everyone I ask remembers seeing this company’s name somewhere. 

The brand character in this instance is:

1. humorous
2. generous
3. male

It is apparent from the brand name itself.  On the other hand, the characteristic of the customer target might be:

1. female
2. 25-30years old
3. wife of an executive

Do you see how different the brand characteristics can be from the target customer characteristics?

Back to Ann’s story, when I asked her to actually visualize a celebrity who had the same characteristics as her jewelry line, she thought long and hard for weeks. After 3 weeks, she finally came up with the name Susan Sarandon, the Oscar winning actress, as the perfect representation of her brand character.

Prior to this exercise, this was Ann’s business strategy:

1. Marketing vehicle: Ann had been using a blind (unaddressed) faxing service to mass fax black& white pictures of her work to offices in Toronto with zero returns. 
2. Packaging:  She was using clear plastic bags to deliver the product to the customer.
3. Pricing: She’d been selling her jewelry at rock bottom prices.
4. Distribution channel: She would sell at any shop that would take her jewelry, namely mom and pop stores.
5. Brand name:  The name of Ann’s jewelry line was-- of course, called Ann Norton Designs since she thought that all big designers used their own name on their line.

Once Ann locked in on the representation of her brand character of Susan Sarandon, she saw that there was no consistency between how she was conducting her business and what she wanted her product to stand for. 

This is how her business strategy changed:

1. Marketing vehicle: She invested in a stylish website and brochure.
2. Packaging: She promptly changed her packing to a polished mahogany box instead of the plastic bags. 
3. Pricing:  To absorb this increase in cost, as well as to reflect a higher quality, she increased her prices by 25%.  
4. Distribution channel: She only targeted high end stores to sell her line. The mom and pops could no longer afford her goods anyway.
5. Brand name:  Perhaps the biggest benefit of having crystallized her brand character was that the name of her brand became a more fitting and descriptive ‘Timeless’*

Armed with these changes, Timeless has grown into a successful brand that is now only sold at exclusive boutiques and online.  Ann no longer wonders what colour to use on her business cards and what her pricing strategy should be. She just asks herself the question ‘what would Susan Sarandon say, do or be seen in or price herself at?’ and the roadmap to her business strategy is clear.

Here are some other examples of brand characters from clients I’ve worked with:

Don’t feel attached to the actual celebrity, everyone has a different vision of what celebrity’s characteristics are. Most important in this exercise, is that you define the actual characteristics of your brand as any human and make sure you consistently act that way through all aspects of your business strategy.

So I ask you, what celebrity lies at the heart of your business and more importantly—are you being consistent in your business strategy?

With kindness as always,

Chala

*client information has been changed for confidentiality reasons