Video dominates digital consumption. The medium is both efficient and stimulating. Participate by producing short-form videos that intrigue and inform audiences across business units and market categories.
Because audiences consume videos in locations as diverse as the boardroom and the bedroom, sometimes it’s right to have a piece of standalone live-action content, while other times an animated series will best communicate an idea.
Employees work harder and longer for organizations they believe in. The most durable organizations are as well-communicated inside as they are outside. By listening and strategically communicating, brand strategy can help drive maximum employee value and enduring employee engagement.
Via deductive analysis and strategic planning, inform short-, medium-, and long-term organizational goals, the activation plan for achieving them, and the tools to communicate them.
Use sales force insight, customer needs, and competitive analysis to create sales tools that speak to customers, drive equity to the organization, and motivate the sales team with resources they are proud to use.
These sales and marketing resources can include PowerPoints, sales sheets, videos, case studies, investor presentations, and trade show materials.
Brand architecture is the practice of categorizing, simplifying, and communicating what you offer in order to make your portfolio intuitive to customers, employees, investors, and analysts.
Rationalize your portfolio to identify gaps and duplicative offerings, address competitive opportunities, and best integrate acquisitions.
Brand architecture results in clear rules around how to identify and name services, solutions, features, bundles, functions, suites, platforms, and ingredients.
The world is online. Customers expect to be able to learn about and assess options at a digital distance, from a web destination built for their perusal at their pace. A first point of comparison, and a reoccurring stop along the customer journey, your website keeps you top of mind through the purchase funnel. Capture initial interest and follow through seamlessly to retain and protect audience attention. Organizational growth may require a new “face” to the market, and a strong web presence can provide the widest broadcast of who you are and want to be.
In this primarily digital era, tradeshows and gala events endure as recurring opportunities for handshakes and business card exchange. These gatherings are critical because they showcase organizational innovation, build community among category participants, and are keystone in the sales process.
But tradeshows and gala events are not effective alone. They are an ingredient in an organization’s broader communications efforts. When done thoughtfully, they reinforce marketing investments made before and after the event.
The internet era created a naming explosion. Today anybody who has an idea can “claim it” in the public domain by securing a website or social media handle. Despite this phenomenon, names still matter because they are the keys to unlocking memories and associations that drive behaviors.
Today, brand names are strategic more than they are creative. They can drive cohesion between related offerings, separate unrelated products and services, or be used to subvert competitive action.
Names range from descriptive to evocative, abbreviations to metaphors – but there is no single best type of name, only the best brand naming strategy for the circumstances. A well-built naming strategy navigates the competitive, cultural, and legal landscape to ensure a moniker is defensible and enduring. Therefore, naming is primarily an objective, deductive endeavor.
Brands are no longer primarily creative assets. They must be constructed to serve organizational strategy – built on a platform of insights and then continuously measured.
Leaders want to know that their brand investments have measurable impact, whether ROI or KPI. Brand research allows the organization to measure the impact of actions and continually optimize its go-to-market strategy.
Brand market research can be conducted as focus groups or ethnographies, benchmarking or brand tracking, customer journey maps or segmentations, but they all should ladder up to inform company strategy in empirical ways.
Because humans experience brands visually and verbally, it’s imperative to connect not just with good words, but with great design. Take control of the audience connection by directing them towards a finite and elegant set of connected graphic elements. Together, photography, layout, color, typography, trademarks, icons, and logos work together to forge an enduring familiarity with your organization. This consistency will show up on things like business documents, web videos, tradeshow displays, executive presentations – all laced together to feel cohesive and compounding.
Strong brands make companies worth more. Investors want to know that your market position is defendable, that your workforce is retainable, and that your intellectual property is attributable to your organization, exclusively. Well done brand systems let the world know who you are, why you matter, and why this market position is yours to claim. Doing so enables you to tell investors your story in a way that maximizes organizational valuation in a manner that pro formas and economic assessments alone cannot.
Business-to-Business is still human-to-human. Clear and intentional communications help business buyers entrusted with decisions on behalf of their companies feel the validation that comes from being guided to the right decision. Executives are still consumers – they carry mobiles and read magazines – and thus expect a similar level of engagement in business. Stand up and deliver on this expectation by preparing communications tailored to buyer behavior and industry dynamics.
