Question

Topic: Branding

Exercises (non Face-to-face) To Define A Brand?

Posted by Anonymous on 2/17/2009 at 11:18 AM ET 250 Points
Hi there,

I have a dilemma! I've been working on defining our company's brand image for some time now. The brand image exists, but it has never been formally articulated. Instead the brand image has been emergent.

I need to define the brand image because I am designing the company's website. I have created some designs which are in the right ball park, but in-order to get them spot on / very specific I need to gather feedback from employees......this will allow me to tweak my designs even further so that are very consistent with the company's brand image.

Recently I have been given a deadline to produce some exercises that will allow our employees to convey their sense of what our company's brand image is. The problem is that these exercises need to be sent via email, completed by the employees and sent back, or completed online because I only have 1 week to do this. There is no time to arrange meetings, focus groups etc. Panic!

I'm really struggling and I can't think of any decent ideas to get the ball rolling. The best I have come up with is:

Ask employees to complete an online survey. Show them a list of adjectives. For each adjective, e.g. global, give a score of 1 to 6 i.e. 1 means that you strongly disagree that our company is global, whereas 6 means you strongly agree. And I have a list of around 30 adjectives for them to vote on.

Send an email to employees asking the question: If our company was an animal, car, or person what/who would it be and why?

And thats all I can think of seeing as I am the web designer trying to do the marketing dept's job!

Can anyone help by thinking of some exercises for the employees to complete, considering the short amount of time I have?

Any help will be brilliant.

regards
Jp
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 2/17/2009 at 11:31 AM Member
    Actually personification is the key thing to get the feedback, get into as much details as you can and use management to enforce filling in the survey

    Sorry but there is nothing more to add from my side at least
  • Posted on 2/17/2009 at 11:33 AM Member
    Actually personification is the key thing to get the feedback, get into as much details as you can and use management to enforce filling in the survey

    Sorry but there is nothing more to add from my side at least
  • Posted by ilan on 2/17/2009 at 11:37 AM Accepted
    JP,
    First of all, I would suggest that you get the terms right.
    Brand Image is the image of your brand in the eyes of the world out there, for better or worse.
    You do not control your brand image, the customer does.
    What you are looking for is the brand identity, which is the aspirational part of the brand.
    It is what you want the world to see you as...

    Why don't you start with a decent brand positioning statement.
    Know who you are, what you stand for, and what not.
    Your employees are not the best people to ask, they will not tell you the complete, honest, authentic true answer.
    Your CEO might...unless he is the typical corporate guy who can't look in the mirror and say:"I'm really ugly"...
    The car,animal,person thing is O.K., but still may not reveal the real essence of the brand, the soul of it.
    It may be enough, but you may end up presenting only a veneer around a brand that doesn't exist.
    What you need to do is a serious brand audit.
    The end purpose for that will not be how to produce a web site. The web site is not the real representation of a brand, it is merely the wrapper around a candy that many people might think: sucks.
  • Posted on 2/17/2009 at 11:42 AM Accepted
    Asking for employee input is a valuable exercise. But, it's not so much how the employees view the brand that's key information for you.... it's what insights they can offer you into behavior of the target audience.

    There are two essentials to reasonably do what you've been tasked with: A) define a key insight into your customers, the emotional trigger your brand needs to pull and B) define your company's strategic point of difference.

    You could ask your employees to help define your customer by writing a customer profile. By giving examples of positive and negative customer interactions. By asking them how they think customers FEEL when they make a purchase. Get to the root of why customers make their decisions. Ask they who they think the audience is? Ask them to contribute demographic or psychographic detail. Ask them to define the key attributes that lead to decision making. Ask them for data on puchases/decisions. Ask them what one essential thing your company does that really matters to its customers.

    Ask them those things. Gather any other research/analyses you have. Then, define your strategy by specifying (succinctly and single-mindedly!) the insight and the differentiation. Then derive your creative from the strategy.

    If you're feeling like the timing may short change this process, you'll need to ask for a little more time. Getting the strategy right is key to the branding process. Let everyone know you're serious and thorough with it.

    I wish you well,
  • Posted on 2/17/2009 at 11:45 AM Member
    Well not that simple, on a 7 point scale one one side you have tall and the other short, the next attribute would be Pretty and ugly, the next is fat Blue collar and white collar, family guy/ gal, singly guy/ gal, male or female and so on, this would give you a final look of the company if it was a person

    Good luck
  • Posted on 2/17/2009 at 11:50 AM Accepted
    Seems like you have lots of good input thus far. I think open-ended is nice but messy.

    I think an online survey is a good way to go. I would use bipolar adjectives in an online survey. You can then submit them to a factor analysis. I recognize that is probably not a familiar statistical technique but one that would help you tremendously.

    Bottom line, you need more support and time to do it right (as some others have suggested).

    Best,
  • Posted by Mandy Vavrinak on 2/17/2009 at 1:17 PM Accepted
    Another thought... append to your survey questions (and keep the survey short, no more than 10 q's) a couple of open-ended ones.

    Here are some I like in these situations (and recognize that your employees are not the best target for this exercise... any chance of e-mailing the survey to a select group of customers? Reward with incentive/coupon/something for feeback?)

    1. Why would someone (or you, customer) buy from us? What makes us different, better? Where do we fail to shine?
    (note... allow anonymity if you want any chance of real answers here)

    2. Thinking about our company image in the eyes of our customers, has it improved, declined, stayed the same over the past three years? Why do you think that?

    Sometimes you'll get great nuggets of insight. They'd need to be re-worded a bit for a customer survey. But that would be so valuable to you... finding out what your customers actually perceive to be your brand image, comparing that to what you'd LIKE your brand to represent, and then crafting messaging/marketing that speaks to the difference.
  • Posted by srbrts70 on 2/17/2009 at 2:05 PM Accepted
    Lots of good advice. My 2 cents...

    I would recommend the following templates on https://www.gtms-inc.com, Go-To-Market Strategies. They have many, many good templates that I have used, and they are customizable and very affordable. Here are the branding ones that will help you:

    ~ Marketing Planning Questionnaire (It has great questions about how your employees perceive your current brand.) https://www.gtms-inc.com/planningquestionnaire.htm

    ~ Brand Workshop Template (An excellent PPT template if you do end up having a face-to-face meeting.) https://www.gtms-inc.com/brandworkshop.htm

    ~ Positioning Worksheet Template (This will help your employees define company positioning). https://www.gtms-inc.com/brandposition.htm

    ~ Brand Perception Survey Template (This will help you gather brand perceptions, which might be ideal for you if you can't host meetings. You can plug these question into a web survey.) https://www.gtms-inc.com/brandperceptiontemplate.htm

    They all are affordable and you can dowload them right away. I would start with the Survey template and then do the worksheet template.

    Good luck!
    Sue
  • Posted by ilan on 2/17/2009 at 2:35 PM Accepted
    A brand audit is an examination of all the brand touch points.
    It is normally done by outsiders, consultants or agencies who know what they are doing.
    The manifestation of any brand is not just the logo, website, advertising and colors.
    It is each and every touchpoint of the brand with the customers:
    Pre-purchase
    During purchase
    Post-Purchase

    For example, how do you answer the phone?
    How does your CEO behave in press interviews?
    What kind of PR do you have?
    Your packaging?
    Your advertising?
    Your vehicles?
    Your annual report?

    Get all of them together and analyze them. Do research about the whole thing, and get customer, employee and agency opinions on it.
    That's in a nutshell a brand audit.
    But remember it has to be done by people who know what to do with it.
    Don't try it at home...
    Connect with me if you need help outside the forum.
    Best, Ilan
  • Posted on 2/18/2009 at 3:00 AM Accepted
    Jp, Bipolar adjectives is what I told you earlier, you put two things the exact opposite and the respondent states where he sees the company in between on a scale, can be 5 but 7 is better to give more freedom

    Factor analysis is a multi-variant statistical analysis that groups statements (or other answers) together to give more sound answers, it is based on respondents' answers to these questions, you can do it using SPSS but it is faster and much easier to hire help in that

    Brand Audit is up there and I would have never put it better
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