Your Brand Matters

Your-Brand-Matters-Greg-Olson-Delightability

“Brand Matters” is a double entendre in case you missed that subtlety. One interpretation of brand matters is in the verb sense for the word matters. Your brand matters, meaning your brand is important and has significance. Another interpretation uses the word matters as a noun. There is a great deal of work under the topic of brand, or matters related to brand, or brand matters. And so it is with your brand, nuance. There is different interpretation depending upon context, understanding, and perspective. But, how much variation exists?

Confront Unacceptable Discomfort

Brands become out of step with changing teams and times. When there is unacceptable discomfort with your brand among your company’s leadership, then there exists a tension that clouds your operation and impedes progress. Employees feel it, partners feel it, and your customers feel it. When this happens, a new conversation is warranted.

The Goal is Acceptable Discomfort

The goal in reestablishing your brand is to get all of your stakeholders to at place of comfort so that together you can assert your brand across the operation and fully activate it in the marketplace. Once you do this, the velocity of initiatives that rely on it go faster and much more smoothly. Remember, consistency before momentum! Your company’s leadership team doesn’t need to agree on every nuance of the brand, but they do need to find a level of acceptable discomfort. If there is ongoing tension your work is incomplete.

Start a Your Brand Matters Conversation

Your Brand Matters - delightability
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I’ve assembled a “Brand Matters” one page resource for you to reflect on and use in your conversations with your leadership team. Most of the terminology is generic and easily researched for more detail and understanding. At a high level it includes:

  • Brand definition
  • Guardrails
  • Positioning & message platform
  • Identity
  • Assessment & tools
  • Actions
  • Brand leverage
  • Potential payoff

Taking Action to Close the Gap

Your brand matters. Act like it. Whichever way you think of brand, I simply want you to do just that – think. And, if you do have a gap between what your company says and does and what customers think and feel, then I do hope that you will spark a productive conversation within your organization and among your team. Your customers deserve this. Your employees deserve it, and your company won’t be relevant forever, without closing that gap. See Lumpy Snowball of an Organization.

Once you close the gap you’ll be in a great position to go even further by creating a living brand that never gets lost, while at the same time delivering more remarkable experiences for your customers, partners, and employees. But, I’ll leave those subjects for future articles.

about the author

image of author and consultant Gregory OlsonGregory Olson’s latest book is L’ impossipreneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans. Greg also authored The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true.

Greg is a business and marketing consultant who founded Delightability, LLC. with the belief that if you delight customers success will follow. He also believes that we all have the potential to do better, as individuals, organizations, and communities, but sometimes we need a little help.  Gregory served as a volunteer board member for Oikocredit USA, a national support association for impact investor, Oikocredit International.

Is Your Flight Plan Ready for Your Small Business?

What, why do I need a flight plan you say? Because more than half of the pilots involved in mishaps did not file a flight plan before the accident flight. You might not fly a small aircraft but, if you are a small business owner or entrepreneur, you need the equivalent of a flight plan too. Otherwise you may be an accident waiting to happen.

Flight plans for small craft pilots are filed with the FAA so there is a record of where the pilot intends to go. If the pilot doesn’t arrive within a window of time then a search is initiated.  The lack of a flight plan has led pilots and their craft to go missing for days. If you want the benefits of a search and rescue party, you’ll need to file a flight plan.

So what does this have to do with running a small business? Well, you too, should be prepared and know where you are going each and every day. How long will you fritter about before you get down to business? Will you be distracted by social media, the next phone call, the insurmountable email inbox? If you are an emergency room doctor or a first responder your plan might be to respond and react. But, if you are an entrepreneur or small business owner wanting to grow your business, you’ll need to cut through the noise and be more proactive. You’ll also want to identify the people that can help you – your small business search and rescue; these might be customers, partners, or vendors.

Like most entrepreneurs and small business owners, you likely have a long list of things that get shoved off to the back burner waiting for another day when there is more time. But more time never actually does come right?

Today is no different than yesterday and tomorrow will look much the same. You only have 24 hours in a day. When it comes to time, there is no aristocracy of wealth. Genius or laziness is not rewarded or punished with any more time.

So, to make the most of what little time you have you must make a daily plan. At Delightability, I use the daily flight plan. It’s a free download; you can use it too.

The 3 Legged Stool

3-legged-stool of operations - promoting value - delivering value - balanced personal life - Delightability LLC.

There are a few visual indicators at the top of the flight plan that serve as reminders. The first is the 3 legged stool. Any small business owner struggles with balancing between running a smooth operation, delivering on whatever their product or service is, and performing the sales/marketing/business development function. Even if you are good at all three, you’ll struggle with the limited time available in a day. With the 3 legs being all consuming there isn’t much time for personal life – that should be you sitting atop the well balanced 3 legged stool. But, get out of balance and you and your personal life topple to the floor.

The 3 Funnels

Exposure Adoption Loyalty Funnels from Delightability LLC

The 3 funnels visual is a reminder that no matter what business we’re in we have customers to serve. Those customers didn’t start out as customers, they started out as prospects. And hopefully, they’ll move beyond being customers to become loyal advocates. So, the 3 funnels are the exposure funnel where you turn suspects into prospects, the adoption funnel where you turn prospects into customers that are using your product or service, and the retention funnel where you turn customers into loyal advocates. For a bit more read this previous post.

Touchpoints

The other visual reminder are touchpoints reminding us that we can affect the quality of the interactions that our customers have with us. Exceed the customer expectation at a touchpoint and you have the recipe for delight. Check out the previous issue of the What’s Next newsletter to learn more about the Delight-O-Meter model and see a couple of examples.

Week Numbers

Other items on the daily flight plan that can help you get about your business are the weekly calendar that goes 3 months at a time and the Guiding Principles. You don’t want your business to end up like the small craft pilot that landed with his gear up. So, download your flight plan, use it daily, and check it frequently. Use it to note the people you’ll reach out to whether they are customers or consultants.  You might not get any more time in the day but you’ll make the most of the time you have available and make a bigger impact along the way.

Book Project Update

image of one page overview - The Experience Design Blueprint by Gregory Olson
click image to open one page PDF book summary

The Experience Design BLUEPRINT is now available. The first section of the book is about making the invisible visible. You’ll learn about the experience honeycomb, experience hoop and halo, and how to model experiences, whether those are for customers, employees, voters, members, investors, patients, clients, etc. You will build a rich experience vocabulary that is relevant to your audience and to your organization’s health. You’ll learn from everyday consumer examples and then learn how to apply filters, lenses, and levers to improve experiences of any type.

In the second section of the book, you’ll learn to visualize your promise delivery system, better navigate change, and improve your skills in overcoming the barriers that plague innovations and customer experience improvement initiatives. Click here or the image to download the one page book summary along with author contact information. Please reach out if you’d like some help.