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Business First Article 'Discover your hidden asset!'

Your brand is one of your most valuable assets. Local companies may know their brand is important but they need to know how to value it. It is crucial that businesses understand how successful branding can impact positively on their bottom line and learn to capitalise on this in the upturn. I want businesses to understand that by nurturing and valuing their brand, they will get a return on their investment. I believe passionately in branding as I know it works. Take time to understand that your brand is an ‘intangible’ asset and is probably your most powerful asset, yet frequently the least leveraged tool in your toolbox.

Your brand is like a person. You conceptualise, conceive, give birth, nurture and bring it up. Everyone has a brand; the problem is they don’t realize it. The brand is fundamentally what people see when they look at us so it needs to be brought up with good parenting. With the recession, companies are in a situation where, if they fail to give people a clear direction and a real vision of where they are going then they will flounder. Companies must make time, have patience and invest. When people say they can’t spend the money, it means that they don’t understand the value of their brand. But if you do it right, it will give you a strong return on your investment.

Your brand is an asset. The dictionary says ‘an asset is a person or a thing that has value or worth’. It is profoundly wrong that branding is referred to as a ‘discretionary spend’. A brand has two elements, substance wrapped in emotion. We should not have one without the other; you have got to have the substance to back the emotion, they must be a good match otherwise it is not sustainable. We put so much time into our product, features, processes, equipment, premises that we forget about the emotional wrapper which is the element that connects you to your market. The most powerful thing that a brand does is create an increased desire.

We hear in the housing sector about ‘negative equity’. If it has a value or worth then it could potentially be negative. We have to understand that if we don’t invest in our brand today, take advantage of the recession and look at what our brand is doing for us as a powerful tool then we are going to miss out when things start to lift.

My 7 Branding Rules are:

1) Keep looking ahead – you must have a vision. You can’t brand, market and sell your business unless you know exactly where you want to go.

2) Build and refine strong brand values.

3) Get up close and personal with your customers.

4) Innovate – make innovation part of the DNA of your business. We have to differentiate from our competition. If you can move from a red ocean to blue ocean and make your competitors irrelevant then the market is yours.

5) Be a good story teller: Communicate. The big deal about a recession is the trend is to cut spend and the first thing to go is your marketing activity which means that the noise out there is reduced. When there are lots of companies shouting, you only get a small percentage of the shared voice. But in a recession you get a bigger share of the voice. Steal that voice in a time of silence!

6) Treat and respect your brand as an asset.

7) Be committed to your vision – branding is a journey, not a destination. With Manleys Six ‘e’s© you can never stop building, changing, innovating and reinvesting in your brand. You must ‘educate’, ‘excite’ and ‘engage’ with your market, ‘evaluate’ what you are doing, ‘evolve’ your business and then you have to ‘enforce’ it.

And then ultimately what you have to do is never give up! What we find is those who surround themselves with wise counsel and keep going will enjoy the best feeling in the world. Success!