Your most important brand strategy: action

Essentially, brand strategy comes down to two core elements: what you do, and why you are doing it. The critical word here is “doing.” All too often, organisations develop a strong brand strategy yet fail to see the revenue uplift they deserve. The reason? Believe it or not, it’s usually because they simply haven’t fully activated that strategy.

If your brand strategy remains in the planning or discussion phrase – or worse, is just a general intention – you simply aren’t going to see the results you need. implementing your strategy helps drive your business through the challenging situations and uncertain times.

Action is the catalyst of success.

The actions you need to take to boost your brand in 2020:

1. Sharpen your purpose

Purpose enables your organisation to align everyone clearly, to remain agile and react quickly, streamlining otherwise cumbersome processes and systems, and transform as one whole entity, all focused on a single objective. Purpose-led transformation happens faster, and what better advantage in a competitive environment than speed of execution?

2. Increase your profits

In the book Firms of Endearment: The Pursuit of Purpose and Profit, organisations with a clear Purpose are shown to have outperformed the market by a ratio of 9:1 over 10 years. Put simply, more meaningful companies drive more profit, by having a higher Purpose. Purposeful brands have also been shown to outperform the stock market by 133%, gain 46% more share of wallet, and achieve results which are twice those of lower-rated brands. This also applies for less tangible benefits, such as staff attraction and customer loyalty.

3. Attract better people

The power of Purpose can also make the difference when attracting better talent. A smart millennial graduate is hardly likely to desire a job at a traditional bank over the chance to work with Google. Why? Because helping to organise the world’s information is inspirational, whereas making wealthy people wealthier simply isn’t. Today, organisations are witnessing a generational influx that is entering the workforce with Google-type values of Purpose over purely traditional motivators of money and perks.

4. Increase loyalty

A classic case study for brand loyalty is Harley-Davidson. Does this company in fact build the best motorbikes? It doesn’t matter. People buy into this brand by the million. They seek to work for the organisation, and simply enjoy riding the “hogs”. Because they feel a sense of belonging to something much bigger than simply the idea of getting from A to B on two wheels. By fulfilling a dream of “personal freedom”, Harley have driven internal and external alignment, accelerating margins, and maintaining passion loyalty. It is no coincidence that Harley-Davidson’s logo is still the second most tattooed symbol in the world.

5. Become the best at what you do

It takes a careful mix of vision, people, and behaviour to define, align and execute a clear Purpose. At the heart of a Purpose is the goal of cultivating a culture of being the best at what you do which radiates from the inside out. When organisations organise themselves around a Purpose, they build a culture of excellence based on their shared ambition and values. You may feel your organisation has already achieved this, but having even clearer Purpose can take most businesses to an unexpected new level.

One action you can take now

The first step to taking effective action is evaluating how strong your brand is right now. CMDi’s Cut Through Test is a quick and simple online tool for assessing the strength of your brand providing instant suggestions on how to strengthen it further – based on years of proven experience.

Or contact me, Dianne Lucas at CMDi to talk about how the Brand Builder and Purpose Constructor programmes could give your brand the boost it needs this year.

Dianne Lucas
Managing Director