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With the arrival of the internet and social media, the way we deliver marketing has been completely transformed. But some key principles never change: promoting an engaging and consistent brand identity is a key pillar for business growth. Your employees will be essential in achieving this. These are the questions you need to ask to ensure you are maximising your corporate brand.
Does everyone who works for you know your brand values inside out?
Marketing projects sometimes struggle to gain any real traction outside of the marketing department and are often seen as just another item on everyone’s already too long to do list. So dedicating resources to making your internal brand communications interesting and engaging is worth the investment.
For example, when you hold a workshop to develop your brand values, get as many colleagues and key stakeholders involved as possible. This will create a sense of ownership.
Make it an enjoyable experience and add a social element, such as drinks in the pub afterwards, to create a real buzz around your brand and to facilitate networking across different departments.
Create videos or presentations that share the rationale for how and why you came up with the brand values. Interview colleagues from across the company to demonstrate what your values mean and how they shape the way your company communicates with customers.
Successful brand-driven businesses invest in preparing printed or digital brand books. They showcase their values across the office and ensure they are a key focus during staff meetings and other internal communications channels, such as company-wide newsletters and competitions.
How can you make your brand more fun to engage with?
Even the most ‘serious’ businesses will have the opportunity to get together to celebrate special occasions. Why not use these to offer branded products as presents to employees?
When you commission fun yet practical products, colleagues enjoy using them and feel more engaged with your brand messages. Here are a few examples:
- Water bottles featuring your logo to hand out at your summer party
- Branded goodie bags for induction meetings for new starters
- Vibrant and high-quality notepads and sticky notes, which show off your logo and brand values, as a treat for all staff
- Branded phone chargers and screen savers will subconsciously show off your brand during client meetings
- A video brochure to showcase your brand message.
If you need help finding the best promotional products to showcase your brand values, explore our range online or get in touch.
How can you create the right tools for your teams to achieve brand consistency?
Achieving a consistent brand experience across all marketing channels and customer touchpoints will elevate your brand message and make it highly memorable. Marketers know that this is gold dust for their marketing communications, but how do you achieve this?
There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer to this but, here are two ideas our clients have found helpful in facilitating better brand consistency.
1) Make the most of your brand guidelines
Consider your brand guidelines as an ever-evolving communications tool for all your internal stakeholders and agencies. Strip out the marketing lingo that us marketers simply love and often overuse, and make the guidelines very practical and focused.
Listen to the needs of all departments and offer a wide range of examples to show how the brand assets are to be used across all the different marketing channels, whether in PowerPoint decks or on LinkedIn.
Make all the assets easily available and offer a ‘brand hotline’ so that colleagues know you will always make time to answer any questions quickly.
Ask yourself how people can access the guidelines and brand assets when they work remotely: are all the files accessible on your company’s intranet? Introduce yourself the next time staff come into the office and show them the benefits of looking after the brand and share your passion for it. People are more likely to apply the brand assets correctly if they have met with a marketing colleague and understand why the values matter.
2) Recruit brand champions
Yes, its marketers who are mainly responsible for brand guardianship, but this task is simply too big to be managed solely by the marketing team.
Reach out to different teams and recruit brand champions across the business. Provide them with bespoke training and think of clever ways to motivate your champions to continuously look after the corporate brand. For example, note their contribution with the senior management team or make it a criteria of your bonus scheme.
Continuously review and improve your brand guidelines and guardianship processes and how they support your teams in delivering a consistent brand image. Talk to your colleagues to ensure they have all the tools they need to champion your corporate brand.
