Don’t Skimp on Your Identity
Thursday, January 24th, 2008, by Daniel V.
Your company’s identity does an incredible amount of heavy lifting in practically every aspect of your business for the entire life of your business. It’s your foundation and truly the last place you want to cut corners.
Let’s visit a fictitious venture for the sake of telling a simplified story:
Imagine for a moment that you’re a passionate, veteran chocolatier. After years in the making, your pet project is finally a reality: you’ve invented the World’s Best Chocolate bar, hands down.
We’re talking a chocolate bar of astounding caliber. When people eat it, they have a taste experience so profound it verges on spiritual. Everyone who tries your chocolate raves about how great it is; and that “without a doubt, they’d drop $10 on a bar,” which is a good thing considering the high cost in making one.
You know you have an amazing product that people will gladly pay for. Now you need to get it to market. Of the many steps you need to take, you need to create a relevant brand to represent your life changing, hope-you-brought-an-extra-pair-of-socks chocolate bar.
Branding: Skimpy Style
You have no money for branding, so you wrap your chocolate bars in Glad Wrap and scribble on “World’s Best Chocolate Bar” with a felt pen. You manage to get some into stores, selling a few bars here and there mostly from word of mouth referrals. Not surprisingly, very few people who see your cheaply-wrapped bars for the first time are willing to buy them. Ultimately, your venture fizzles before it even starts and you find yourself pushing a shopping trolley full of plastic bags and empty cans around the city streets, rambling and muttering to yourself.
Branding: Quick Style
You have a small budget, so you hire a discount designer who whips up a so-so logo and some lack-luster branding. You sell some bars. But stacked against hundreds of competitors on the shelf, your shoddy packaging isn’t convincing people to buy your chocolate bar. As it turns out, your economy-class logo and dull colors aren’t selling your luxurious product. Unable to differentiate and position The World’s Best Chocolate Bar strongly enough, you end up working 12 hours a day until you’re old and gray, trying to keep yourself afloat.
Branding: Professional Level
You have secured a higher budget, so you hire a brand developer who analyzes your product, your competitors, and your target market to craft a high-quality identity congruent with your high-quality product. The World’s Best Chocolate Bar now stands out from the crowd, in both taste and packaging, because your brand is cohesive in every way.
The result of your professional-level brand investment: more and more people are willing to spend $10 on a chocolate bar. The increased sales revenue allows you to continually focus on the bigger picture and go on to build your business to the next level. You retire a zillionaire in four years when Hershey gives you a golden handshake for a well-built business and brand.
Conclusion
Of course, the above scenarios are simplified. Yet, they mean to illustrate the simple fact that skimpy and economic branding efforts will make all your creative efforts moot. Whereas audience- and industry-relevant branding attracts and engages the people you want to target. Professional-level branding lowers many barriers to sale and allows you to get traction where a weak identity may otherwise fail. Since you will already be spending significant time and money in conducting business, you should never skimp on the face of your company: your branding.
There are plenty of other places to cut corners. Your identity can’t be one of them.
