David Ogilvy

Your brand’s foundation

June 18, 2011

 

How are you building your foundation?

A brand, much like someone’s personality, isn’t something you concoct or fabricate.  You can’t put it on and take it off at will.  It’s not window dressing, but instead it comes from within your company, the culture, the people, the vision and of course…the marketplace in which it exists.

 

You can, of course, amplify your brand by doing the right things with intention and frequency.  But…the foundation is already set.

In fact…you build your foundation with every choice you make as an organization and as the individuals who work for that organization.  David Ogilvy once said “every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.”  In today’s digital world where everything is archived by Google — it goes far beyond that.

Long before you are consciously on the radar screen of your target audience…you are creating your brand’s foundation with every:

• Tweet
• Facebook update
• Snarly employee wearing one of your logo’d shirts in a bar
• Branded truck driving carelessly
• Sponsorship of an event
• Comment left on someone else’s blog, FB, etc.
• Advertising/Marketing offers

Think of each action as a log or brick.  Without meaning to — you are stacking each of those choices/actions together to create my first impression of you.  The foundation upon which I will decide if I want to keep interacting.

And by the way — your absence is as noticeable as your presence.  Those choices should be made as carefully as deciding where you do want to be seen.

Here’s my question.  How intentional are you being about your brand’s foundation?  Are you building it with a vision and purpose or is it just happening haphazardly?

 

Hat tip to Derrick Daye for reminding me of this Ogilvy quote.

 

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Brand truth: I don’t care

June 13, 2011

…Are they really the tree huggers you’d hoped?

…about what you wish I cared about.

Way too many brands chase the fad of the day, thinking they can jump on a swell of consumer sentiment and rise those profits into the sunset.  No so fast, my friends.

For your brand to be effective, sticky and enduring — it has to be about what matters to your consumers.  They have to genuinely identify with it/care about it.  You can’t make them love you.  (Nod to Bonnie Raitt)  No matter how hot the trend is or how passionate you might personally be.

Case in point — a recent study done by OgilvyEarth (I’m pretty sure David Ogilvy rolls his eyes from the grave on that one) shows that most consumers aren’t buying the whole “green movement.” In particular, men are not motivated or swayed by green marketing messages.  It turns out that their perception when they hear green is “more expensive.”

So playing to the trend is actually hurting those brands who hoped that men would be moved to pull out their wallets based on the green movement marketing position.

Time to do your own brand check.  Are you trying to force an idea, value or belief at your core audience?  Or…do you know yourself and your core audience so well that you know what brings you together?

And before you are quick to answer…be ready to tell me this.  HOW do you know that your brand is what truly resonates in the hearts of your core audience?

 

Hat tip to Kami Watson Huyse for tweeting the Ogilvy link.

 

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