Building strong brand for your career success

For a great brand, customers will drive the extra mile, pay the extra dollar, and refuse to consider lower priced “me too” offers from competitors.

But what is it that commands this kind of loyalty? The answer is simple: customers are loyal to great brands because those brands deliver great experiences. As it gets harder and harder for companies to stand out through unique product features or technology, strong brands consistently provide distinctive, high quality customer interactions that low cost competitors cannot easily duplicate.

How do they do it? By engaging employees in a continuous strategy to maintain high standards across every area of the enterprise — sales, customer service, marketing, and operations – right down to the fork lift drivers in the warehouse. Those employees are the ones who shape perceptions, by creating the experiences customers value enough to return to the brand time after time.

As a professional, you are also in a “competitive market,” competing with others who may have qualifications similar to yours – all vying for the recognition and rewards that come with outstanding performance. If you interact with your company’s customers, you are also part of the team that is competing to deliver customer experiences that can strengthen – or weaken your company’s brand – and your own.

Though you may not have thought of yourself as having a “brand,” the fact is that people have perceptions of you based on their experiences with you over time. As your customers, co-workers and manager interact with you, they form impressions that together make up your personal and professional brand: by our actions, we are “branded.” We can’t really avoid it. And opportunities for career growth and recognition come to those with strong brands – the ones who have credibility, who are trusted, and who are seen as the “go to” people.

So what’s your brand today? A brand is formed on the basis of impressions over time – shaped by observations of what you do – your role, and even more importantly by how you do it – your standards. Because standards are so visible to others through actions and behaviors, they represent the best opportunity to consciously shape the perceptions and strengthen your professional brand.

Standards. . .The How of the What

To better understand standards, think about the people you know in your work environment, and even whole teams of people. What are they known for? Perhaps you can think of an individual who has a reputation for delivering work that is always accurate and on-time. Maybe you know someone who consistently offers unusually creative answers to problems, while someone else has a reputation for being exceptionally customer focused and persistent in meeting customer needs.

There might be a member of your work team who insists on getting to the root of a problem and is never satisfied with an easy fix or the “good enough” answer.

Terms such as “accurate,” “responsive,” “focused on the customer,” “prompt,” “reliable” – describe the standards that play a critical role in defining the quality of experiences people expect from their interactions others. Standards represent the means of making a unique impression that is exclusive to you. They are an important key to the “competitive advantage” of your brand.

To examine your current brand and look for opportunities to strengthen it, take a closer look at your standards.

What are your Standards?

To discover the standards you are known for – what you want to be known for — involves holding up a very useful, but not always flattering, mirror. The trick is to see yourself as others see you, and to ask yourself some critical questions about your current and ideal standards:

1. What am I best known for right now by my peers, my manager, my internal and external customers?

What are your current standards? Are you known for doing what you say you will do? Is your work known for high quality? Do you show up to help when others need you?

2. Do the current standards I’m known for represent the best quality of performance I am capable of delivering?

Are there gaps between your “ideal” standards and the ones you demonstrate now? Where are those gaps? Think about specific tasks and responsibilities you have and consider how you go about performing those tasks. Does the image that comes to mind represent your own highest standards? How do those standards stack up with what you observer in others?

3. What could I do differently to better demonstrate my ideal standards – and strengthen my brand?

Think about specific actions and behaviors that would influence others’ perceptions of your standards, or actions that would help you reach the standard of performance you want. For example, if you want to be seen as a person who listens to customers’ perspectives and understands their needs, you might hone your ability to ask good questions and be an outstanding listener.

Even though you can’t control what others think, you can guide people to perceive you as you want to be seen, based on your day to day actions and willingness to continually “raise the bar” on how you do what you do – your standards.

Having high standards is not about trying to please everyone. It is, however, about being aware that the strength of your brand in both your professional and personal relationships will be determined by the impressions you make everyday on the people that matter and are important to you.

To the extent that your brand stands out because of your high standards, you will find increasing opportunities to grow your career, while helping your company grow its business.

What is Brand Equity?

A brand is a name or symbol used to identify the source of a product. When developing a new product, branding is an important decision. The brand can add significant value when it is well recognized and has positive associations in the mind of the consumer. This concept is referred to as brand equity.

What is Brand Equity?

Brand equity is an intangible asset that depends on associations made by the consumer. There are at least three perspectives from which to view brand equity:

• Financial – One way to measure brand equity is to determine the price premium that a brand commands over a generic product. For example, if consumers are willing to pay $100 more for a branded television over the same unbranded television, this premium provides important information about the value of the brand. However, expenses such as promotional costs must be taken into account when using this method to measure brand equity.
• Brand extensions – A successful brand can be used as a platform to launch related products. The benefits of brand extensions are the leveraging of existing brand awareness thus reducing advertising expenditures, and a lower risk from the perspective of the consumer. Furthermore, appropriate brand extensions can enhance the core brand. However, the value of brand extensions is more difficult to quantify than are direct financial measures of brand equity.
• Consumer-based – A strong brand increases the consumer’s attitude strength toward the product associated with the brand. Attitude strength is built by experience with a product. This importance of actual experience by the customer implies that trial samples are more effective than advertising in the early stages of building a strong brand. The consumer’s awareness and associations lead to perceived quality, inferred attributes, and eventually, brand loyalty.

Strong brand equity provides the following benefits:

• Facilitates a more predictable income stream.
• Increases cash flow by increasing market share, reducing promotional costs, and allowing premium pricing.
• Brand equity is an asset that can be sold or leased.

However, brand equity is not always positive in value. Some brands acquire a bad reputation that results in negative brand equity. Negative brand equity can be measured by surveys in which consumers indicate that a discount is needed to purchase the brand over a generic product.

Building and Managing Brand Equity

In his 1989 paper, Managing Brand Equity, Peter H. Farquhar outlined the following three stages that are required in order to build a strong brand:

1. Introduction – introduce a quality product with the strategy of using the brand as a platform from which to launch future products. A positive evaluation by the consumer is important.
2. Elaboration – make the brand easy to remember and develop repeat usage. There should be accessible brand attitude, that is, the consumer should easily remember his or her positive evaluation of the brand.
3. Fortification – the brand should carry a consistent image over time to reinforce its place in the consumer’s mind and develop a special relationship with the consumer. Brand extensions can further fortify the brand, but only with related products having a perceived fit in the mind of the consumer.

Alternative Means to Brand Equity

Building brand equity requires a significant effort, and some companies use alternative means of achieving the benefits of a strong brand. For example, brand equity can be borrowed by extending the brand name to a line of products in the same product category or even to other categories. In some cases, especially when there is a perceptual connection between the products, such extensions are successful. In other cases, the extensions are unsuccessful and can dilute the original brand equity.

Brand equity also can be “bought” by licensing the use of a strong brand for a new product. As in line extensions by the same company, the success of brand licensing is not guaranteed and must be analyzed carefully for appropriateness.

Managing Multiple Brands

Different companies have opted for different brand strategies for multiple products. These strategies are:

• Single brand identity – a separate brand for each product. For example, in laundry detergents Procter & Gamble offers uniquely positioned brands such as Tide, Cheer, Bold, etc.
• Umbrella – all products under the same brand. For example, Sony offers many different product categories under its brand.
• Multi-brand categories – Different brands for different product categories. Campbell Soup Company uses Campbell’s for soups, Pepperidge Farm for baked goods, and V8 for juices.
• Family of names – Different brands having a common name stem. Nestle uses Nescafe, Nesquik, and Nestea for beverages.

Brand equity is an important factor in multi-product branding strategies.

Protecting Brand Equity

The marketing mix should focus on building and protecting brand equity. For example, if the brand is positioned as a premium product, the product quality should be consistent with what consumers expect of the brand, low sale prices should not be used compete, the distribution channels should be consistent with what is expected of a premium brand, and the promotional campaign should build consistent associations.

Finally, potentially dilutive extensions that are inconsistent with the consumer’s perception of the brand should be avoided. Extensions also should be avoided if the core brand is not yet sufficiently strong.

Business disaster recovery is critical for your organization

It is vital that the organization takes the development and maintenance of the disaster recovery or business continuity plan seriously. It is not one of those tasks that can be left until everyone has time to deal with it. A serious incident can affect the organization at any time and this includes the next 24 hours!

The contingency plan needs to be developed by a team representing all functional areas of the organization. If the organization is large enough, a formal project needs to be established, which must have approval and support from the very top of the enterprise.

One of the first contingency planning tasks to be undertaken is to prepare a comprehensive list of the potentially serious incidents that could affect the normal operations of the business. This list should include all possible incidents no matter how remote the likelihood of their occurrence.

Against each item listed the project team or manager should note a probability rating. Each incident should also be rated for potential impact severity level. From this information, it will become much easier to frame the plan in the context of the real needs of the organization.

Once the assessment stage has been completed, the structure of the plan can be established. The plan will contain a range of milestones to move the organization from its disrupted status towards a return to normal operations.

The first important milestone is the process which deals with the immediate aftermath of the disaster. This may involve the emergency services or other specialists who are trained to deal with extreme situations.

The next stage is to determine which critical business functions need to be resumed and in what order. The plan will of necessity be detailed, and will identify key individuals who should be familiar with their duties under the plan.