Brand building is one of the most critical and difficult tasks that any company will have to complete. Branding puts a memorable face on an otherwise
static company--it burns an image of that persona into a customer's brain. Your brand says as much about your company as the product you sell. In industries that sell capital equipment, this couldn't be more important. This is mainly because a customer needs to make a huge investment before ever getting to experience your product. Brand HAS to bridge the gap to ensure that a customer gets to the sales stage and is able to talk about your product from experience.
For many years, branding was more of an organic process--your logo on products,
mugs, t-shirts, business cards, letterhead, and your building. While some of these projects still hold value, it feels as if industrial branding grew up overnight. Branding is now a complex system of combining color, message, logo, logo placement, culture, consistency, frequency, exposure, strategy, psychology, and deployment. It is not just a logo anymore. It is the strategy of how the logo is used in conjunction with every interaction leading up until the sale. Sounds like a big project? It is.
In today's fast-moving world, we have to ensure that the brand is air-tight and always
improving--especially in hard times. It is more important than ever to control the narrative.
Good impressions are a powerful force--bad impressions are even more so. In either case, it spreads quickly and can impact your company in enormous ways. The problem, is that many companies still don't monitor or react to their brand, once it is unleashed into the wild. They might still using obsolete brand management strategies. They might also not be proactive about their positioning. A brand must appear to be swift, decisive, intelligent, and yes--creative. But more important, your brand must always reflect the best parts of the company--it should have reactionary strategies in place to combat rumors and bad press.
It is easy to see why so many companies struggle to maintain a strong brand--let alone build the architecture for a new fresh brand. Unfortunately, many companies are in desperate need a branding face-lift--possibly, for the last decade, or more. Markets are constantly evolving and our brands must change with them. It is a time-intensive initiative--the results will be profound.
Please contact Nesbit Marketing with questions: www.nesbitmarketing.com/contact
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