Brand

It partially comes from a lack of understanding of what brand really is – a lot of start-ups will get a logo made, maybe a colour palette, and will tick off the brand item on their to-do list.

But brand is much more than that – your brand lives in peoples’ heads. It’s people’s perception of your company, or as Jeff Bezos said once, “it’s what people say about your company when you’re not in the room”.

Here’s 3 things to think about when considering brand building:

• Consistency – Brands tell you what to expect. This is done through repeating people’s experience again and again. This is across modalities; print, online, in person, social media. 
• Joining up the dots – If your website has one tone of voice but the person picking up the phone or walking through a client’s front door has a completely different attitude and ethos, this is an issue. Your brand differentiators should be operationalised across your business, not siloed in marketing.
• Time – Brand building (especially from scratch) is a long-term play. Excelling at the other parts of running a business; sales, advertising, customer service, regulatory compliance (or excellence) gives you the right to start competing on brand. 

Franchising of course gives you access to a brand built over years, or decades. Franchise brands like us have external trust marks such as award-wins, trading history, and glowing verified reviews that independent start-ups struggle to compete with.

The flip side is that in a franchise network, we’re all contributing to a shared brand. Choosing that brand, you need to think about who the custodians of the brand are, and the long-term values behind that brand, and how much that brand resonates with you.

I’ll dig deeper on that again soon. 

Best wishes, Ben.