Guest Post by Sharon Lim, research analyst at StrategiCom, a leading B2B brand strategy consulting company with offices across the globe.
Your brand holds the key to the success of a business in a competitive market that no longer relies in distinguishing products or services based on quality and functional benefits alone. Here are some key considerations when communicating your brand.
- Presence of a brand champion (typically the CEO or founder of the company or any of such stature) and an army of brand ambassadors (key personnel). As the ultimate brand champion, business owners must stand at the forefront of the company and take charge of developing and executing the brand communications strategy. The roles that the brand champion and brand ambassadors play are different but complementary. The brand champion is the “chief storyteller” who develops a “good story” carefully angled to target each of the identified stakeholder groups. Besides developing a “good story”, the brand champion needs to convince employees that as brand ambassadors, they need to play their part in repeating this same “story” to all the company’s external stakeholders. A “good story” also meets the “3 C’s” detailed later.
- Repeatedly communicate brand values. Apart from conducting regular training, devote time for frequent dialogue sessions, display posters with the corporate position statements, utilise notice boards, and circulate internal communication (newsletters, emails, written memos, etc.). Furthermore, non-verbal communication elements such as dress-codes and the way employees are addressed are subtle techniques that could have an effect in encouraging brand-supporting behaviours.
- The three C’s. A “good story” embodies three essential Cs of brand communication – clarity, consistency and constancy.
“Clarity” dictates that a strong brand message is clear and authentic about what it is and what it is not.
To achieve “consistency”, the content of the brand communication should ideally be developed once, then tailored slightly for each medium.
“Constancy” is about constantly reiterating the same brand messages so as to ensure that these messages are not only heard, but more importantly, remembered. In the absence of these qualities, it is nearly impossible for the brand communications strategy to succeed because each ambassador will be telling a different “story”.
Achieving the three Cs of effective brand communications is undeniably no mean feat. However, the reward for successfully achieving this is far reaching.
Adapted from a research paper by Sharon Lim.
Brand Communications – Inside Out Through Your People
Author’s profile
Sharon Lim specialises in Brand Communications and her list of clients includes Hu Lee Impex, Shao Fook Engineering and Chemilink Technologies Group, amongst others. Sharon has been actively involved in various franchise development, intellectual property management and branding projects for clients such as Old Chang Kee, Fragrance Foodstuff and Griffin Kinetic. She is currently involved in a national Employer Branding Correlation Study conducted jointly with the Singapore National Employers Federation.
About StrategiCom
StrategiCom is a global B2B brand strategy consulting firm headquartered in Singapore with 11 offices and 110 consultants & researchers around the world. The industries it serves include Information Technology, Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals, Commodities Trading, Business Services, Pharmaceutical, Medical & Healthcare, Transport & Logistics, Construction & Real Estate, Precision Engineering and Electronics Manufacturing. StrategiCom’s consultants, researchers and proprietary methodologies provide the catalyst for companies to transform from traditional businesses into differentiated brands.
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