Brief Branding Q & A with Greg Daake

Recently, the Midlands Business Journal asked Greg Daake for his comments about branding. A few excerpts were published, but here is the complete list:

1. What exactly is a company brand?

In short, a brand is everything. It's how you look, sound and act. It's all the moments of truth, internally and externally, arranged together into a pattern of behavior. While often confused with a logo, a brand is how a company makes you feel. Said another way, it's what your customers say about you when you're not in the room.

2. How does a company build its brand?

First your identity, what you stand for. What is your purpose? Why do you exist? What business are you in and how do you bring distinct value to that business? Among other things, it's these guiding principles that shape reputation and feelings about your brand. Every moment of every day you are either strengthening the brand or weakening it. It's very important to build tenets for how you're going to do business. The visuals, your website, your logo, a brochure - they simply signal the company, then the feelings about that company come rushing in.

3. What’s the best way to build a brand and strengthen it?

I think I sort of covered this above, too. But in essence it's all in the experience and feelings someone has when they buy or use your brand. And that experience is delivered by every one of your people every single moment of every single day. It's very important that internally you understand who you are, why you exist and how people like us behave.

4. How often should you review your brand?

An annual consumer perception study is ideal. Married with an internal engagement survey will give you a good sense for external and internal perceptions of your brand... particularly in relationship to the competition.

5. How important is it to change branding every so often?

The reality is that the symbols for your brand should be enduring and persist for as long as possible. You shouldn't seek to change the brand every so often - unless it's wrapped up on a significant change event. Such as broadening of brand scope, narrowing of brand scope, internal culture revolution, changing expressed personality, change perceived composition, name weakness, name confusion, design weakness, advertising breakthrough (Aflac duck, Geico lizard), merger or acquisition, etc... Brands take decades to become seated in the hearts and minds of the public - who frankly are bombarded with brands every second. Ideally, you should invest significant resources in getting the brand expressions and symbols right the first time - for the long haul. Sort of like setting the first tile in the room. If you get that one right, the whole room will look great.