Branding

1. Actively investigate what is important to customers, using research, face to face interviews, questionnaires, suggestion boxes, etc.
2. Understand how customers feel about the products and services.
3. Judge the effectiveness of brand in terms of how it looks and feels to customers – not how it seems to business.

4. Understand the attitudes of customers and their changing views and needs.
5. don’t discount prices in order to attract and keep customers.
6. customers can state quite clearly and simply what is important about the brand to them, and why they think it is different.
7. communication plan includes all the various places and ways in which interact with customers.
8. align organisational structure, operations and culture with brand values.

9. induction programme includes education on brand and the role it plays in enhancing competitiveness.
10. understand in own minds what differentiates brand from competitors.
11. Everyone in organisation knows what brand stands for and can articulate that idea simply and clearly.

12. Everyone in organisation knows what they have to do to deliver on brand promise.
13. Included in performance management systems is an assessment of the contribution each individual makes to growing and enhancing the brand.
14. communications, marketing, service delivery, finance and HR functions are all aligned with brand objectives.
15. Branding is championed throughout organisation, from the CEO down.
16. receive regular internal communications detailing what brand is about.

17. Strengthening and protecting the company’s brand is a fundamental driver behind organisation’s long-term goals.
18. have a brand management programme in place that is continually looking for new and more effective ways to protect and enhance brand throughout the organisation.
19. branding strategies are proactively driven. They do not depend on what competitors are up to.
20. Accounts quantifying the value of brand to business are included in financial systems.
21. Details of brand and the strategy that drives it are well documented and that information is available to those who need and desire it.
22. All key stakeholders are involved in brand creation process.

23. company has systems in place for carefully monitoring the appropriateness, timeliness, integration and consistency of branded communications.
24. view brand as applying to far more than just visual identity and marketing communications.

25. brand includes not just core organisation but also partners and key third party suppliers.
26. regard brand agency(ies) as strategic partner(s) and actively involve them in organisational and communications planning and review sessions.

27. marketing and communications team have an integrated understanding of brand and are in constant communication over brand-related activities and issues.

28. The consistency of brand is paramount. It reaches way beyond just tactical brand campaigns and it is deeper than even key personnel changes.
29. review brand and what it stands for with all agencies at least once a year.

30. If brand did not exist, the vast majority of customers would notice absence and really miss having us in their lives.