Be Real!

If you read the last post and watched the Seth Godin video, you saw the importance of being remarkable in your branding strategy. But there's a caveat...you can be remarkable, but be perceived as fake, just as I would look at the community in the video that is building a giant lava lamp in their community. You may go to see it once, which I concede has some merit, but why would you ever go back?

We believe that an enduring brand has to be REAL and REMARKABLE.

The first component to being real is being true to yourself. Is your business or organization designed around your passion and purpose? If not, what would make you excited about getting out of bed to build it each day? In the Jim Collins book, Good to Great, one of the key characteristics of great companies (and it's backed by his team's research) is that the company is driven by a common sense of purpose and passion. It's critical for long-term branding success.

The second component to being real is being what you say you are to others, in other words, delivering on what your brand promises. Also in Good to Great, Collins outlines how great companies decide what they can be the best in the world at and then diligently stick to that focus, regardless of any seemingly good opportunities that may come their way, but are outside the scope of their purpose. These companies know who they are and that's what they communicate to their customers and stakeholders. They are known for walking the walk and their customers come to understand exactly what they can expect from that company.

Here's a video of Joseph Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy and Authenticity, discussing this subject in greater detail:



Are you perceived as Real and Remarkable? At ICON, our Brand Transformation Process can help you incorporate these elements into your branding strategy. Contact us to begin today!

Be Remarkable!

One of the keys to establishing a strong brand is to be remarkable; to completely set yourself apart from the competition. Google did this when they launched their search engine. Other search engines were becoming more complex and adding more features and Google launched with the intention to be simply the best search engine out there. That and a quirky name was remarkable or in other terms, worthy of being remarked about.

No one explains the importance of being remarkable better than Seth Godin, author of The Purple Cow (completely based on this topic), among other great books.

Here's an excellent video of Seth discussing the need to be remarkable:



In ICON's Brand Transformation workshop, we guide clients through the discovery of what is remarkable or potentially remarkable about their customer experience. In some cases it already exists and just needs to be better communicated, but in other cases there may need to be a change to way the business operates to develop a remarkable aspect. Either way, we can help...just contact us to arrange your workshop.

One note of caution - we don't believe it's enough to be remarkable, as many fads are remarkable, but don't last. More about that in the next post!