Brand is a result of everything (yep everything)

All the things on the list below, and the thousands of others I haven’t included, are things you need to work on if you want a robust, resilient brand. So let’s dive in.

Brand is a result of …

• Building a viable strategy that everyone knows their part in.
• A plan for how you’re going to deliver whatever your it is that sits somewhere between written-in-sand and etched-in-stone.
• Thinking beyond the immediate thing you’re doing to see what might happen three, four or 10 things down the road.
• Doing the same things every day, consciously, consistently but never mindlessly.
• Deciding if what you’re trading is worth it every time you make a choice (because there is always a trade).
• When you’re genuine about what you care about and stand behind it.
• Bringing whatever that is into as many actions and decisions as you can (because done and delivered beats still trying for perfect any day).
• The experiences people have who work for you, who buy things from you, who are part of the extended network that makes what you do possible (it doesn’t matter what you say, people only really remember what you did or didn’t do).
• Walking your talk, or even better talking your walk — it’s always better if the walk comes first.
• The promises you keep, all of them, even the implicit ones you didn’t think were promises. (To learn more about why implicit and explicit promises both matter click here)
• Your products and services, what they do, don’t do and how you set the expectations for both.
• The way you answer the phone, or email, or chatbot.
• How you answer the question, or fix the problem, or apologise.
• What happens between the sales pitch and the sale.
• How you treat the person who wants to work for you or the one who wants to leave.
• The people you work with and how you work with them. All of them, even that guy in the corner doing who-knows-what all day.
• What your policies are and why you have them. Do they serve a purpose or are they only there because of the that one time someone did something.
• Keeping an eye on what’s going on around you and using what you care about to filter it so you can stay relevant.

But the list is just the starting point — every item needs more detail. Your detail. So go back and start at the top and work down, tell a story for each one. If there isn’t a story you can tell that’s a great place to start thinking about the what and how of things.

Because the brand is a result. The rest is the work that gets you there.

See you next week.