This is our third and last installment in this DIY Series on Developing your Brand.  This three-step approach will help you define your brand if you have limited resources to consult the outside expertise of a brand strategist.  In the first posting we talked about where to start.  How do you begin to define a brand and where you find the definition for your brand?  In the second posting we looked at how an analysis of your competition can help you develop a clearer message around who you are and how you are different.  In this final step we’ll look at how benchmarking can help you discover an edge or an approach that reflects what you offer authentically and differentiated from everyone else in your industry.

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A benchmark is a standard by which something is judged.  In this last phase you’ll learn more about your brand by benchmarking brands outside your industry.  Here we begin to look to standards that are upheld by other brands that you admire to see what you can learn from them.  Whether a tennis racket manufacturer, clothing designer, a soap company or a car company, these brands can teach you something.

The process will require you to look at their websites, note the language they use to speak to customers, figure out what you like about how they present themselves to you and take note.  Similar to what you did in the competitive review make note of three key elements: content, visual language and the emotion.

Content:
Read what your favorite brand says about their product on their website and/or in their brochures.  Hear what they have to say on TV or in radio ads.  Note their language.  Is their message focused on their customer “we meet your needs” or on their product “we have the highest quality…”.  Understanding the content of their message will give you clues to how you may approach your brand.  If your favourite brands, outside your line of work, focus on customers then perhaps the way you communicate your message should do the same.

Visual Language:
Take note of how your favorite brands present themselves visually.  Are TV commercials fast-paced with dark and metallic colors?  Are print ads on bright white backgrounds with bold text?  Are websites filled with movement and color?  Take a look at two or three of your favorite brands from different industries, like a food company, a sports equipment company and a chocolate company.  What is similar about their visual language?  Note these similarities; it may inform how you want to present your brand to the world.  If the visual language is very different for each then note what parts of it you like the most.  Perhaps you like the vivid colors in one and the wide open space in another.  Then, ask yourself why do I like these visual cues in this context?  A pattern will certainly emerge.

Emotion:
Noting emotion is really about how you feel, not what you think they want you to feel but how you really feel.  This is where authenticity rings true.  As you engage with your favorite brands think about how you feel.  Do you feel trust, power, speed, confidence, luxury, serenity, or energized?  What kind of feeling is the brand eliciting in you?  Take a moment to note which of those feelings you want for your customers.  A respected market researcher, Frank Luntz said “80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect” – focus on the emotion it is what drives us.

Often when the vision for an organization is being held by more than one person, a team or a committee it is difficult to get agreement on where to go.  When I was hired to head up the brand revitalization effort for a large office furniture manufacturer, based in the US Northeast, I used this benchmarking strategy to coach the management team through a visioning session that would help to define precisely what they wanted for their brand.  This company manufactured office furniture that appealed to the broadest customer base.  It was not elite high-end furniture but it did offer a design and functionality that was loved by a majority of the marketplace.  The problem was that the marketplace felt this brand was getting stale.  In order to help the management team create a vision for the brand they could believe in we looked for a company outside of our industry that also appealed to the masses and offered nice design but had a brand that customers were drawn to.  We chose Kenneth Cole, a brand that was known by the management team and admired by all.  Kenneth Cole provides the latest designs to a majority of the marketplace and they’re appealing to the market.  Just what we wanted to accomplish for our brand.  We benchmarked their approach, language, even stores to get inspiration for what we could do with our brand.  Having a benchmark in mind kept our entire brand revitalization team focused on a singular vision.  In the end we accomplished the mission.  In the years following the brand revitalization the manufacturer experienced growth that exceeded expectations and developed a loyal following of customers who are in anticipation of future product launches.

Welcome to the second in a three-part series on how to develop your brand.

In the first posting we talked about how important (and smart) it is to capture the investment of time and money you have put in your company by developing a brand that will build equity for you and your business.  We learned about the importance of developing your brand from within and reviewed some exercises to help you define your true differentiators by looking at the inside first.

Now, we look to the outside world to learn how the competition can influence our brand.  When researching the competition look at their business and how they speak to the world. This will help you gain deeper insights into how to make your brand stronger. To analyze the competition follow these four easy steps:

1. First, choose 3-5 direct competitors.  If you don’t have that many in your market then look to another city or country and find a competitor there – even if you never plan on expanding to that area.
2. Scour your competitor’s website and learn about their products, services and what they are emphasizing.  Note the type of photography they use (people, nature, etc.) and their colors (primary, bright, conservative, funky and so on). If your competitor is a publicly traded company search engines like Google Finance can give you great insight into how your competitor’s company is structured.
3. Note factual details: price, selection, distribution, service delivery and so on.  In the case of a services-based business look at methodology, customer base, geographic reach.
4. Then, start to note the language they use - “fastest”, “best quality”, “luxury”, “softest”, “tastiest” – whatever it is. You will find that all your competitors speak the same way. Note these similar phrases and descriptive words.

If you feel you don’t have any competition then think about a time when you will be very successful and list the companies you know will want to become your competition.  Repeat the fours steps for them.

In summary this research is:

• A definition of your brand that was articulated by your culture and who you truly are (Step 1),
• A picture of your competition – what types of images and colors they are using, overall do they look clean and sophisticated or crowded and confusing,
• A summary of what they offer and how they offer it, and
• A list of the standard phrases and wording used by your competition.

Use this wealth of knowledge to see how your organization IS different from the rest.  If done right, when you layout all this information before you the answer should jump right out at you.

If your competition is talking about luxury, quality and craftsmanship then you should use other words like elite or best-in-class, care, attention-to-detail, and skill.  Be certain to stick to a vocabulary that feels like the right fit for your organization.

It is shocking sometimes how little knowledge some companies have about their competition.  A deeper review of your competition and who you are will build a strong and differentiated brand.  If done with care and focus, how you present yourself to the outside world (your brand) will be both different than the rest (the competition) and a true reflection of what you are on the inside.  When you have this outside-inside match you build trust with your customer and that breeds success!

Everyone talks about developing a brand. Some people understand immediately the return of having a recognizable brand. Some don’t really believe that concentrating on developing a brand name will really help the business or become an asset in the future. I can assure you of one thing. Developing a brand challenges you to understand what is truly different about your company, what you do and how you do it. Those not interested in building a brand either don’t know what truly makes them different or they are too lazy to find out.

If you want to ensure that the time, work, money, emotions, sacrifices and all else invested in your business ends up becoming a respected and known brand then here’s where you start.

Start from within. Two companies may offer landscaping services and yet be very different. The owner/operator of one may naturally be a very jovial guy, a real people person. He knows his work and does a great job but his approach is more friendly. Perhaps his way of communicating is more neighborly or even familial. The second landscaping company operator could be just as skilled but she is more academic in her approach. She is polite and kind and treats everyone with respect but her natural focus is to educate her customers on what is being done on their properties and she has more of a teacher/student-type relationship with her customers.

See the difference? What you see emerging here are two very different brands. Here are some steps to get you started with identifying how your brand is special and unique. In later posts we’ll look at how you stack up against your competition and what you look like compared to your favorite brands. This three-dimensional perspective is going to map out your brand very clearly.

Now, more about you. Answer these questions to start to define your brand.

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Our product:

1. Is our product or service innovative, just better or completely new?
2. What motivated us to develop it? (frustration with existing product, a vision for a new way of thinking…?)
3. When customers have a good experience with our product or service do we want them to be relieved, completely enthusiastic or feel a sense of safety or comfort, or something else?

Our communication:

1. How do we communicate with our customers? Is it erratic, overly communicative, friendly, jovial, distant, educational?
2. Think of someone in your organization (or life) who you really like to talk to and describe their characteristics (friendly, empathetic, and so on)
3. Make a list of the 3-5 basic rules of good manners that are most important to you? (the golden rule, always returning a call within 24 hours, and so on…)

Lay out the answers to these questions on paper, make particular note of the adjectives you use. Take a step back and see if a personality - or a way of ‘being’ emerges. This is what makes you unique and different from your competition. These are the qualities that will form the foundation of your brand.

In the next “Developing your Brand” post in July we will understand how to learn from your competitors. Your learnings will be juxtaposed with your personality profile that you’ve developed here to help you further refine your unique brand.