Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM MAY 2019 44 S olving your "brand challenge" will help you solve just about every other challenge facing your business. But if you don't solve your brand issues, just about everything else in your business will suffer: your sales, culture, marketing, and your ability to attract and retain loyal customers and the right employees. Here's what will happen when you fail to solve the brand challenge. You'll be forever chasing customers, compromising your values, selling your products and services for less than premium prices just to stay afloat, and working hard on innovating, only to see your wonderful new offerings fall short in the marketplace. Most challenging of all, however, is that even as you're working hard to keep the organization humming, your audience will be confused and your staff will be disengaged and forever on a different page than you are. If you're beginning to think that the brand challenge is actually an important business challenge – you're right. The bright side is that, just like all the other challenges in your business, the brand challenge holds both danger and great opportunity. Your brand and your business are inextricably linked, because the brand lives inside the business. Your brand is the sum total of what your organization believes, how your culture behaves, how you express yourself visually and verbally, how you innovate products and services, how you market, and how and what you communicate to the world. If your business were a human being, the brand would be its beliefs, attitudes, personality, character, and the cumulative effect of all of these attributes applied consistently over time – let's call it your reputation. An evolved brand is one where the organization very consciously builds a brand that creates a measurable line through your leaders, your culture, your products and services, and your customers. Here are some surprising statements from my clients about the process of developing their evolved brands: • The brand evolution forced us to take a stand for what we believe. As a result, we had more clarity about the business we are in, why and how we do what we do, the impact of our work and the benefits to our employees and customers. • It seemed easier to evolve my brand as a company that has been around for some years. When we launched our business, we were in start-up mode, trying to attract enough business to stay in business. The maturity we now have provided traction, and with this traction, we can more easily evolve and accelerate. • The brand evolution brought our leadership team together. Because we all more deeply understood what we collectively believed and how to apply these beliefs, the leaders were in lock-step with our purpose and promise, making their jobs easier and more aligned with their personal values. This echoed out to the entire team and was especially useful in our sales team's results. • The brand evolution unearthed research to understand better how our services (or products) impact the lives of our customers. The process clearly went well beyond a previous "rebrand" and prior strategic planning exercises. This fused together our business strategy, marketing strategy, and our culture, with how we express and communicate with our customers. • The brand evolution created deeper employee engagement and increased our retention. While we expected to see an improvement in our ability to attract new customers, we did not anticipate the benefits for recruiting new employees and deepening our team's engagement in their work. In the end, these benefits aren't all that surprising. An expert-driven brand evolution should create clarity and trust with your customers, employees and the public. It should unite a team that is driven to serve a high purpose and do valuable work. It should attract customers who are aligned with your beliefs and appreciate that you share your beliefs with them. They'll thank you by their repeat purchases. An evolved brand captures the unique beliefs the organization stands on and operates from and that distance you from the competition. This is what all beautifully evolved brands offer. Most important of all: a well-evolved brand offers integrity for your organization because it brings together the disparate parts of your company by aligning your beliefs, business goals, and behaviors. SOLVING THE BRAND CHALLENGE Steven Morris On Brand For the past 25 years, Steve has served as an advisor and consultant on brand strategy, organizational life, and humanized marketing strategy. He has worked with companies such as Samsung, Habitat for Humanity, New Balance, Sony, LG, Amazon, NFL and MLB franchises and is a regular speaker for TEDx, Creative Mornings, CES, HOW Conference, Social Venture Network, American Marketing Association, and AIGA conferences. Steve has published two books, Brand Love and Loyalty and Humanizing the Customer Journey, as well as a forthcoming book, The Evolved Brand: How to Impact the World Through the Power of Your Brand. He has been featured in Business Week, Brand Week, Ad Age, Conscious Company Magazine, MarketingProfs, and HOW magazines. Steve leads his own brand and business strategic consultancy, Mth Degree. Contact: steven@theMthDegree.com, 619-234-1211 or www.theMthDegree.com RO

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