The Heavy Chef’s 5 Point Guide to Branding: Point 1
by Fred Roed on 25/08/09 at 1:40 pm
5 comments
At a recent Heavy Chef Course, it became clear that Brand Building is one of the most misunderstood segments within marketing, yet we marketers still try to make it more complicated with clichéd jargon. We attempt to dispel the misconceptions with a 5 point overview.
Point 1: Understand what branding means
This is where the problems start. Many marketers don’t actually understand what brand-building actually means, believing it to be interchangeable with the practice of marketing itself. In addition, in the Web 2.0 environment, there is a new-found belief that a company’s brand is no longer controlled by the marketing team. This is simply not true. You have as much control over your brand now as ever. The key lies in the correct definition of the term “Brand”.
Traditional definitions are mostly cumbersome and confusing. The Heavy Chef Project defines your Brand as “the message you choose to convey”. Simple…. yet it is all-encompassing. It relates to everything from your product offering and your external advertising, to your internal communication and the way the receptionist answers the phone. How your brand is communicated via the new tools like Twitter etc. is the consequence of your branding efforts. You do have control over your brand; it’s merely a message. If you send out the wrong message, you get crucified. If you send out the right message, your company will profit.
When we set out to define the message for World Wide Creative, for example, we decided on “we use digital marketing to make money for our clients” – so everything we put out needs to align and support that message. Your brand is your stake in the ground. It’s how you will be measured, and it’s what you hold yourself accountable against. Remember: you choose where to put that stake.
(Read Point 2 of the branding series here)
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Tags: advertising, Brand, branding, Business/Finance, Communication design, digital marketing, Graphic design, Heavy Chef, Marketing, Technology/Internet, Twitter
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