Engaging and mobilising the entire organisation around your core brand idea is often a challenging task. Different interpretations of the brand or conflicting priorities can often weaken the core idea and can ultimately create an inconsistent experience for your customers.
Here is a simple, though not always easy, way to get everybody from the top to the bottom of your organisation on the same page when it comes to brand.
Create a “Brand Mantra” and shout it from the rooftops!
A brand mantra is a simple construct that tells all constituents of your organisation what the brand is about at its core.
It is composed of 3 elements which sound complicated but when I give you some examples I think it will come into stark relief for you.
The first element is what is called an “Emotional Modifier”. This is a word or phrase that starts to stir the emotions of the organisation and customer and captures what type of experience your brand is promising to offer.
The second element is called the “Functional Modifier”. This creates the strategic guide rails or focus for the brand and it clearly states what territory your brand wishes to play in.
The final element is the “Descriptor”. Here we lock down what your product or service actually is and, just as important, what it’s not.
Here are some of my favourite examples broken down as above:
Disney: Magical, Family, Entertainment
Nike: Authentic, Sporting, Apparel
BMW: Ultimate, Driving, Machine
A brand mantra is a great tool to help explain to internal stakeholders what your brand is trying to achieve and the process of building it can be a shared activity to create the buy-in needed and to begin to galvanise the organisation around your one big idea. It is not at all just a marketing campaign theme but is there to inform the entire business about why you must exist.
Have a go at creating your own brand mantra, work with people outside of your immediate sphere of influence as well and tell me how you get on, it would be great to hear from you.
Bernard Page
25 years experience in marketing will help me quickly get under the skin of your marketing challenge and provide workable, commercial solutions for your organisation. I listen carefully and take the time to understand the critical issues and develop a personalised, honest response designed to drive enduring value at speed.
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