Elevator Speeches and InstaBranding

We are all familiar with the “elevator speech,” those carefully crafted sentences that organically relay important messages about our business. Sometimes we work so hard to craft them, we forget about the main message. Ourselves. Our audience is going to pay much more attention to our personal brand than the elevator speech, no matter how eloquent. Here are four simple, but often overlooked elements of personal branding that will make your elevator speech resonate.

1. How do you look? Appropriateness is the obvious guideline here. Make sure you have on the right clothes and are appropriately groomed for the occasion. Otherwise, the dissonance in your brand will kill your message.

2. How do you smell? I think that the best place to be is in the center of the spectrum, odorless. If you stink, that’s a no-duh turn off. If you are drenched in cologne, you might impress some people, but you run the risk of offending others. Why take the chance?

3. Practice the speech so that it’s completely you. Change the words to fit your personality. Actors do it all the time. The last thing you want to do is recite.

4. Engage your listeners. Don’t preach. Share. If your speech sounds too much like a commercial, fix it to sound like more like you are sharing information. Use stories or be like a journalist and get put information in a quote. (“I have a customer who wants us to train her husband in being on time…”)

Ultimately, you are the message. You are being instabranded no matter what. Do your best to make sure that your audience is building the right kind of mind space about your personal brand.

Posted by Harry Chittenden

Brand Voice

Brand voice is one more way your brand is distinctive.
While designers and art directors are thinking about how your brand looks, copywriters are thinking about how it sounds. How does your brand express itself? Is it hip and sassy? Or more erudite? Formal or casual? Folksy or uptown?

Voice helps reveal – and reinforce – the personality of your brand. Ensuring your voice is consistent throughout your company is akin to staying “in character.” You expect the Queen of England to speak a certain way, much as you would expect a pop princess to have another way of expressing herself.
Your voice should always be true to your brand.

The voice of your brand is, quite literally, the manner in which your phones are answered. The tone of your advertising. The way your sales force interacts with customers. The attitude your literature takes. How your CEO speaks to the press. Inflection, style, vocabulary choice and even punctuation all are part of your voice, and convey more than just the content of the words themselves.
Listen to your own brand voice in its many iterations around your company. Is it appropriate? Is it distinctive? Is it consistent?

Imagine the language, the tone, the style and attitude a cell phone company would use in a web banner aimed at college students … compared to what a pacemaker manufacturer would use in a journal advertorial aimed at surgeons.
That’s brand voice.

Long Term Marketing

I am a damn near reverent fan of Al Reis and his daughter, Laura. I’ve read two great books on branding by them, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR and The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and I’m looking forward to reading their latest book, The Origin of Brands. Their website, ries.com, is a must for anyone interested in branding.

In an article that I copied from The Atlanta Business Chronicle (ironically, about branding the city of Atlanta), Ries spoke about the long, steady nature of a good marketing program.

The purpose of the marketing program is to reinforce and remind prospects of what you already stand for in their minds. It’s like a religious service. What did you learn Sunday that you didn’t know before? Not much, but you still come away from the service with a renewed faith in your choice of religion.

Marketing programs should work the same way. They should exploit ideas that have already formed in your mind and make them resonate. Over time, this repetition becomes a powerful force for achieving our goals.

The key words here are “over time.” Most brands build with the passage of time, often lots of time. What you say about your product today might be pretty much the same thing you say two years from now. However, the impact two years from now will be far more powerful. Why? Because if you are reinforcing in your prospects “what you stand for in their minds,” each message builds on the last. At some point these you will have staked out important real estate in their minds. Then they are much more likely to do business with you.

Posted by Harry Chittenden

Who’s Minding Your Brand Gap?

When there’s a disconnect between the promise of your brand and the delivery of it … you’ve got a problem. It’s called brand gap.

It’s a problem that requires your attention, because expectations can work for you – and against you. If you try out a new restaurant with no preconceptions about it and have a so-so meal, you might just chalk it up to an off-night. If you try out a restaurant that’s been highly touted and have that same so-so meal, chances are you’re going to feel disappointed. Maybe even a little hoodwinked.

Brand builds expectations. What it can’t do is make your company, your product, your service, or your people live up to them.

Discovering and managing your brand is a collaborative process between your branding team and those in your company you’ve tasked with this important mission.

Living the brand is an ongoing day-in and day-out effort that requires the buy-in and commitment of every member of your organization. While much of the brand decision-making may happen top-down, keep in mind that everything that supports the brand is also going to have to happen bottom-up.

In other words, it truly takes a village to build a brand … and to zealously guard that brand gap.

Posted by Nora Minor