The inside-out brand-development approach is the only one that guarantees success.
Five Steps for Successful Branding
A successful brand-development process requires five critical steps -- steps that guarantee an outcome and that ensure success.
1. Internal brand discovery. The purpose of this most important step is to answer the four most important questions of brand development: Who are you? How are you different? Why do you exist? What are you capable of becoming?
This intelligence cannot be found on the outside and its outcome naturally leads to claims of distinction. Each claim must be supported with evidence. Why? It's because any company can make any claim it wants (and many do), but few back their claims with facts. Yours must.
2. External brand assessment. This is the research phase addressed earlier. It is a critical component to brand development, but cannot be the only consideration. Focusing on the external leads brands into "me too" categories. Overlapping the internal brand discovery with the external brand assessment is where true brand identification is uncovered.
3. Creating distinctive brand statements. Not to be confused with mission or purpose statements, brand statements define the "who," the "how" and the "why." Not the "what." Brand statements separate you from your competitors and make you a leader in your category.
4. Internal brand adoption. Once the brand is defined, strategies must be created to ensure everyone within the organization buys into the brand, believes in the brand, lives the brand and delivers brand expectations throughout all touchpoints. The internal adoption must be a success before the new brand can be promoted externally through marketing and public relations.
5. Operationalize the brand. A strategic integrated marketing communications plan is developed in this stage to promote the new/enhanced brand to customers, vendors, channel partners, the supply chain community and other business partners.
Other steps involve adaptation when going into other markets and building a brand-architecture model for those companies struggling with the "house of brands or branded house" syndrome. Answers to these questions start with diving into a company's business strategy.
It's the inside-out brand-development approach, and the only approach that guarantees success.
Scott Seroka is a principal and certified brand strategist of Seroka, a brand-development and strategic-communications firm specializing in the health care, manufacturing and mortgage industries.
