In a previous article, we explained that a brand isn’t the logo, the strapline or the advertising campaign. The brand is your reputation, and it’s the role of the brand team to create a reputation that customers will want to develop a relationship with.

In this article, we’ll outline a simple, three-step plan for creating a brand that will give you an unbeatable competitive advantage.

Could you define your brand in three words? Could you colleagues? Would your customers agree with you?

Most brand executives might find this a bit difficult. They might come up with something generic like “Quality. Service. Passion” or similar.

But unless all of your colleagues – and, crucially, your customers – would spontaneously come up with the same words, and could tell you why your company reminded them of these words, then your brand is probably in danger.

That’s because a company’s employees can’t protect a brand’s reputation unless they know what that reputation is, and how their activities might affect that reputation.

In an earlier article, we defined a brand as being pretty much the same as a company’s (or a product’s) reputation. It’s what people think about when they consider making a purchase.

When a company has a strong reputation – one which is constantly reinforced by everything that it does – customers will learn to like it, and to trust it. Most importantly, they’ll want to have a relationship with it.

It’s no different to how people relate to other people. When someone always acts in a way that makes them likeable, trustworthy and admirable, other people will seek them out for company, for advice and for fun.

For example, Pret a Manger’s values are freshness, passion for good food, and social responsibility. Because they’ve defined their brand values, their employees know how they should act and what decisions they should make in order to protect and build the brand.

Everything they do demonstrates these values. They tell you that they give any sandwiches that are left over at closing time to charities working with the homeless. They also tell you that their sandwich packaging doesn’t include moisture-absorbing nappy pads, because they aren’t on the shelves for long enough to require them. Nor do they print use-by dates on their packaging, because they don’t have their sandwiches on the shelves for longer than one day.

As a result, if you ask someone which sandwich shop’s values are freshness, passion for good food and social responsibility, they’ll probably recognise that you’re talking about Pret.

In other words, they’ve built a really strong brand.

So the task of the brand director is to create a strong relationship with the customer, by ensuring that the reputation – which is, after all, what people develop a relationship with – is admirable, and consistently delivered.

Here’s a three-step plan to enable you to develop a strong brand that will set you apart from the competition and that will enable you to build a powerful relationship with your customers.

Step 1: where are we now?

What do your customers, and those people who you’d like to be your customers think about you?

Whatever it is, that’s your brand right now. Bluntly, the brand isn’t what you, or your CEO, or your brand agency say it is. If your target audience disagree with you, then they’re right and you’re wrong.

So it’s essential to find out what people currently think of your brand. There’s a guide to help you to do this in our ‘guides’ section.

By way of summary, though, you should ask your target audience why they choose to do business with you. Why they don’t, and why some of them prefer the competition. What they like, what they dislike, what emotions they associate with doing business with you, and which other companies they think you resemble.

Once you’ve done this, you should turn your research lens onto your company, and identify any features that could make your company special and unique.

To do this, you should start by researching everything about your company. This is a long and time-consuming task, but it’s vital to take time to complete it fully. That’s because the quality and accuracy of the brand positioning depends on the quality of the analysis. You should include both customers and employees from a wide range of departments in your research.

For tips on how to do this, including the topics that you should include in your research and the people that you should talk to, read our article “Brand development: how to research your brand’s performance”.

Step 2: where do we want to be?

The second step is to distil your results into a clear brand positioning.

This should be a brief, punchy summary of what makes your company unique, how it makes your customers’ lives easier, the values that it believes in and how these are aligned to those of your customers.

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate to all your colleagues in all areas of the company what you stand for, so that they can understand what actions they need to take to reinforce and protect that brand.

This is a very creative step, and it’s usual to get help from a specialist agency. If you’d like to discuss how we can help you, please get in touch.

There are examples of what a good brand positioning statement should look like in our article “How to write a killer brand positioning statement”.

Step 3: How do we get there?

The final step is to make sure that everything your company does, reinforces and protects this brand.

Remember, this is much bigger than simply developing an advertising campaign or updating the copy on the website. Every time your customers come into contact with the brand, they should enjoy an experience that reflects the brand positioning that you have defined – and that includes all the fiddly little areas that are often forgotten but which have a really big impact on the way that customers perceive the brand, like standard letters and call centre scripts.

To do this, start by identifying all the moments when this happens, by completing a customer journey audit. This should cover everything from the customer’s first experience of the brand, right through to the purchase and the after-sales experience.

Each time you identify a contact point, ask five questions:

1. What has led to this point?
2. What does the customer experience at this point?
3. What do we want them to do?
4. What does the customer need at this point?
5. What happens next?

There’s an example of a customer journey audit in our article “How to protect your brand with a Customer Journey Audit”.

For each step that you identify, check that the experience matches what you’d like the customer to see. This includes all the moments that are often forgotten: how does the receptionist at your office’s front desk greet your clients? What happens when the customer receives a ‘payment confirmed’ email? These are the real ‘moments of truth’ that will define your brand in the customers’ minds, and their experience at these moments will erase their memories of the expensive advertising campaign that you might have commissioned.

So while everyone in the company should be responsible for protecting and reinforcing the brand experience, it’s the role of the brand team to do all of the work that we’ve described in this article, and to keep monitoring how well their colleagues are protecting the brand. This requires regular ongoing research. For help with structuring this research, and some guidance about what topics it should include, read our article “how to research your brand’s performance.”

Creating a great brand needs specialist help. Contact me, and we’ll discuss how I can help you.