Building a Great Brand

As the Brand Manager here at FashionCapital, it is vital that I know the answers to these questions. So on Wednesday 24^th May, I travelled up to Southbank London to the IBM Client Centre for the Social Business Trust comms meeting to develop my skills and knowledge on how to build a great brand.

The quote that really stuck with me from this meeting was: “a brand is what people say about you when you leave the room” this metaphor really did clarify it for me. You and your team will know what you do, and why you do but are projecting that clearly to your customers/clients/investors and do they think the same?  A brand of a company is the promise, concept and the sole. It’s bottling everything lovely up and using that to create and develop your brand.

A brand weaves the business together. It informs and guides our:

• v  Culture
• v  Behaviours
• v  Processes/policies
• v  Goals
• v  Our service delivery & interactions with customers.

The brand is the heart of the business, it’s the DNA. With everything you do, from customer interactions to new events/projects you need to ask, am I being true to my brand? Am I being consistent?

Another vital point that was discussed was a brands ‘Tone of Voice’ and being consistent with that. Tone of voice is important because:

• v  It’s an expression of the people behind the brand
• v  It sets you apart from the rest.
• v  It build trust.
• v  It can be used to influence and persuade

The most important thing that was discussed and presented really well was, involve everyone! Get all of your team in to provide input on new projects and ideas and listen to their feedback, you can’t do everything by yourself and knowing you built something together is much more rewarding. Also involve your customer, connecting with them on an emotional level, ask for feedback, ask them ‘How do we improve?’ no one likes criticism but it is very important when developing you brand.

Thank you to Social Business Trust and IBM for hosting this meeting, it was extremely insightful and great to meet other brand managers from Social Enterprises.

By Jenny Beth Golding

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