Who Owns the Brand

Most companies believe that the brand belongs to them. Consequently, they invent a brand and then present it to the market. That’s a variation on the inventor’s naive view: “if I were them I would love this product”.  To engage in mindreading in respect of your potential customers is a big, big mistake.

Frequently, this invented brand continues throughout the life of the business, without alteration, despite the changes in the market. Even worse, the whole process of invention focuses on the logo alone, without any consideration of the other factors.

Reality is that the very first interaction between your company and the very first potential customer starts to create the brand and its qualities. This will occur before the very first sale of your product or service.

If the potential customer likes the result of the first interaction he or she will attribute a positive quality to the brand. It might result from meeting you and concluding that you had the time to listen to their wants and needs. In the mind of one customer you have implanted a strap-line: ‘very helpful people’ – that’s a very good quality in the creation of the brand.

Had the potential customer phoned your company and was kept waiting for too long, they will have ascribed a negative quality to the brand. Either way, you now have a brand, but you don’t know what it is because it’s inside the head of your potential customer. You need to initiate a conversation – not an interrogation - with the customer and ask open questions to determine the qualities they attribute to the brand.

Your customers are the owner of the brand and they will let you know what they want from your brand. This process of conversing with your customers to determine the qualities must continue for some time, with many customers, both prospective and those who have bought from you.  Keep doing this until you have revealed the most popular and most important qualities. Only then can you set about developing you logo and appropriate strap-lines.

            Over time you need to keep in conversation with your customers, so that if their values begin to change you can keep in step with them. If you change the qualities of the brand without the ‘permission’ of your customers, they will react against the change. Resist using a formal written survey; conversing with five customers is worth 500 written surveys. You need to observe tone of voice and body language of the customers.