6 Brand Health Perspectives That Stunt Growth
Brand Health Check
We have discussed the importance of growing a Healthy Brand and nourishing it over time. What you choose to feed your brand affects brand health – and how it performs today, tomorrow, and in the future. Combined with brand workouts, your brand diet can help you reach and maintain a healthy profitability, reduce your risk of commoditization, and promote your overall brand health.If there’s one common element among Healthy Brands, it’s that they make a commitment to living and breathing their brand, and they do it consistently across channels and at every brand touch point. Brand strategy is integrated into everything they do.Use this list to see how healthy your brand perspective is:
- Going for the Juice Detox
‘Brand health can be achieved by cleansing toxins for one week.
’It’s great to take some time out of the year to evaluate your brand performance and get rid of anything that could be weighing you down, but you can’t expect to become a Healthy Brand by focusing on your brand only one week a year. A Healthy Brand is achieved by dedication to overall brand health management. It’s about living and breathing your brand on a continuous basis. Healthy Brands do more than just diet too – your brand should exercise to strengthen its core and stretch to stay flexible.Remember that a short-term solution doesn’t usually fix a long-term problem. Brand detoxes can result in brand deficiencies in the long run because of compromises made for short-term gains. You also risk yo-yoing back to the same bad habits unless you actually integrate your brand strategy with everything you do and deliver on your brand promise.
- Thinking That Organic Kale Is Ridiculously Expensive
‘Branding is a luxury I cannot afford.’
Many people assert that unhealthy branding habits are due to economic hardship. They say that Healthy Branding is simply more expensive than junk food branding. This price difference is very small in comparison to the economic costs of diet-related brand diseases, which would be dramatically reduced by healthy diets.
- The Illusion Of Youth Invincibility
‘I’m too young to need branding.’
For some startup and young brands, disjointed marketing messages are a sign of troubled (or non-existent) brand platforms and confusion about the brand strategy. These patterns can persist and become a major problem without a clear, defined brand platform and brand strategy. It’s important to be aware of the thinking behind your brand’s marketing and communications and to take action early if you are worried. Sometimes brands rapidly create new brand elements and messaging that isn’t aligned with the brand strategy because they are in the middle of a growth spurt and don’t want to have to stop and solidify a brand strategy. However, a brand strategy puts the company in a better position for sustainable growth.
- I’m Not Fat
‘My brand is doing just fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.
’Even if you have never had problems with brand health, it is really important to align all communications and touch points with the brand strategy consistently over time. Also, if you develop poor branding habits now, they could cause many health problems later in the life of your brand.
- This Energy Drink Will Get Me Going
'I just want to increase revenue fast and I want a jolt to the system.’
Promotions can be a great way to accelerate sales, but they shouldn’t be considered ‘branding.’ A promotion is used to generate awareness for an existing brand or highlight a limited time offer to accelerate sales. It should always align with the overall brand strategy.Promotions that are incongruent with brand values or the overall strategy may produce a short spike in your sales levels and might make you feel like you have more revenue for a short period of time. But after that boost of revenue fades away, your sales levels will drop quickly, and you will suddenly feel more tired than when you started – with no brand value to show for.
- Not Everyone Needs To Think About What They Eat
'Branding doesn’t apply to my company, we’re B2B.’
Branding is a crucial part of company success, regardless of whether you are B2B or B2C. Brands are important for any company that wants to create unmatched differentiation and give consumers a reason to buy based on something other than price or features. For example, IBM, Intel, Oracle, and Cisco are all B2B brands ranked in the top 20 world’s most valuable brands, according to the Interbrand ranking report. These brands have intangible assets of ‘goodwill’ that drive billions of dollars in value and market capitalization. None of them have miraculously differentiated products – it’s the brands that drive the value.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.Want more reasons to have a brand strategy and stick with it? We've got 10 clear-cut reasons why you're better off with a brand strategy.
