Building Brand Wealth Part One

In this segment we will establish the basis of your branding and why it is so important for your long-term objectives. But you must first answer a very simple question for yourself, is it your desire to create a job for yourself, or a business? This is fundamentally one of the most important questions you must answer for yourself before you move on. If you’re just working to create a job for yourself, let me save you some time, this piece is not for you. This is intended for those that wish to create a business of value, which will run under its own power while you not directly involved. A business that builds its brand value in a way people will buy as a part of your exit strategy. This in a nutshell is what we are talking about for you; creating such value in your brand you will have a need for lawyers and advisers that are always available to provide you services for a fee. I do not understand why people overlook their most important adviser, which is their brand adviser.

The concept of branding is really very simple; the practice of branding is where the breakdowns occur. It’s really easy to sit around the conference table and discuss with your colleagues the goals and objectives of your marketing campaigns as a part of your overall brand development.
 

After you have established your business plan and you design your “Sales and Marketing” budget, there are two things that need to be established. First disconnect YOUR emotion from the process, you cannot allow emotional feelings and sentimentality to enter into this process. Your objectivity is essential in your business, most especially your marketing process. Too many times the process gets derailed due to the emotional ties associated in your day to day business. Learn the process of stepping back, understand the plan and stick with it.
 

After you have successfully removed the emotion from this process, the next step is equally as important, OPEN your mind. Look past the traditional, look into the process of Multi-Media or Multi-Channel presentation. The standards of marketing even ten years ago are much more involved today. This process of reaching out to your market in this “information age” reaches a level of attentive management that has never been necessary in the past.
 

It’s easy to understand television today remains very expensive, and will always be that. Yet the average business can hardly afford this media channel while newsprint, radio and direct mail have become the backbone for the smaller business and their marketing. How do you squeeze better performance from your marketing budget with shrinking resources and diminished returns?
 

Simply put, your individual activities, such as a direct mail piece to drive sales revenue one time, and a radio campaign the next time, ask yourself if you are getting any residual value from those efforts. This is where you define your marketing from your sales efforts. This requires process management to build your brand value. It is not possible to build brand value without a process of “PERSISTENT-CONSISTENCEY”. Lacking this will only reduce your brand value, cost you more money in the long-term and can create an even bigger issue of cash-flow, or lack thereof.
 

So understanding the basics let me ask you, what does Brand Value mean to you? How would you define it? Stop and consider this before you move on:
 

“The Public value or perception of your company’s product or services”
 

What is your BRAND value? The most valued consideration in your exit strategy, Your Image Is Everything!

Case In Point…

• Sold in 2003 for $57 Billion

• Purchased by P & G

• The “BRAND FIT”

Warren’s personal net worth grew $640 million

Plans are only as good as the execution, but the execution can only be as good as the plan!
 

So we will end this segment by asking if you have a business.  Have you sat down, put pen to paper and developed the road map for you to follow two or three years down the road? Please do not consider this a wasted exercise and something that you’ll never look back on. If you never look at it again, that tells you the plan needs work and improvement.
 

In our next segment, we will drill into this process. In the meantime, you can review for yourself the reason for your business, the business plan for your business and most importantly, what you want to get out of your business at the end of the day. After this has been established, the rest of this becomes much easier to personalize in the same way you do your compensation plan.
 

If you need help or clarification about this, please contact me at Joseph.Moore@CLKSearch.com

Introduction to "Building Brand Wealth" : GoArticles.com

Introduction to "Building Brand Wealth" : GoArticles.com

Introduction to “Building Brand Wealth”

I work in a tough, extremely competitive world of marketing. It seems these days that everyone is a marketing pro, even those that own their own business delivering services from home repair services to jewelry and everything in between. Having been a business owner that has started five separate companies I have come to understand this issue from the business owner’s perspective. There is great concern with business owners about where their marketing dollar goes and how does it really help them. Why should they spend the money, and then who should they spend their money with and why.

These are questions we in the business must face every day. As I ponder the purpose of what I have chosen to do as my vocation, I champion ethics in the process of building a successful branding effort. I have come to understand that what I do for my clients is considered an essential part of their business. This has become the essence of what my profession represents to the business world and makes what we do essential in the life of a business.

This is not meant to be a “How To” step by step narrative in the process of marketing your business, that is for another discussion. This is instead a discussion for two specific disciplines in this space, the business owner and the other less invested people that aspire to become the “Best in Class” marking professional.

I don’t intend this to be a lecture to my other fellow marketing professionals that have clearly established their credentials; they will see what this is aimed at and will embrace this conversation as “spot on” for the benefit of their clients. Let’s set the table for this discussion as we move forward. The business owners, which will be the primary benefactor, will see the value in reviewing for themselves what they have done in considering their own “Brand Wealth”.

Now we all have to start by taking a step back when faced with the challenges of a business prospect. We first understand not all will have interest in what you have to say, so you must understand what your value proposition is to them and help them understand this as essential to any branding effort. Not everyone will be in this space; they either don’t understand it, or they distrust it. The vast majority of the business owners don’t see how marketing their business will deliver the revenue in return. As a professional, the first thing we do, which can be very difficult to do, is qualify that business by understanding who you can help and who you cannot. Those that charge in with the request for price (RFP), set up the out of the box process prior to the proper process of discovery. Failure to recognize the value of this process is the basis of failure. How can you offer proper assistance, or will you end up doing more damage than good? Will your client be better off for your relationship or will you accomplish the purpose of drawing down budget dollars instead?

An approach like this is could be reckless and will only serve you and not your clients. Unfortunately this is far too common and is destructive to all those that follow in the wake of this approach. This is the point of separation for the professional. The professional approach is different, as a business owner, be wary of those that present you with a plan from an RFP or a one plan fits all approach. That is a recipe for failure and a waste.

Let’s understand what “Building Brand Wealth” is. Why do we need to have this discussion? When a business owner forms their business, they have recognized how they can provide a product or service within a niche they have identified. They can do it better, faster or cheaper than others. Before they start their business, they see their niche as significant with its marketability being very clear. They feel so strongly about their opportunity they invest everything they have in their business, some invest their retirement, their homes equity, and in some cases money from friends and family. This is a deeply personal level of investment only they can understand. Unless you have been there, you cannot speak to this with the kind of clarity as those that have.

This personal investment is the single most overlooked aspect of virtually every marketing strategy. “Building Brand Wealth” should be the single most important aspect of any business plan, yet is overlooked or is begrudged from the outset of the businesses opening day. But if you stop to think about it, the brand strategist is the single most important professional in the board room. As a business owner they are sure to have their attorney, their accountant, banker, and sometimes their insurance agent alongside them in the decision making process. Without the success of their business, none of those advisors sitting with the business owner at the table will become necessary, except perhaps the bankruptcy attorney.

Everyone looking in from the outside assumes the owners of a business are very wealthy simply because they are owners. This could not be further from the truth as all owners can attest to. But they can become very wealthy if their ideals in starting their business translate to the consumer in a way that they will pay good money for their product or service. Managing the process of getting there in a way that can be cash flowed and developing the wealth in their brand.

The exit strategy that is in every good business plan will be best served only if the start of the business was centered on “Building Brand Wealth”. This becomes an essential conversation that any business owner will have every time they meet with their banker, attorney, and insurance agent throughout the life cycle of their business. Then when they meet with their business broker they will have greater value in their business at the point of exit only if they have made “Band Value” a priority from the start.

As we carry on with this discussion, it is important for the business owner to first understand why they started their business. My first advice would be to put this in writing, you must understand and have the ability to articulate this to anyone you are coming in contact with. Once you have done this, you will be ready for PART TWO of “Building Brand Wealth”.

Don’t Write Off Detroit

RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the New York media. I love the poetry cartoons in The New Yorker, and the short bits called “Readings” from Harper’s. It’s comforting to know that the Wall Street Journal can maintain its confidence in the bankers and traders and that the New York Times still thinks US fashion and Broadway shows are important.

So I’m sorry the media is having financial troubles. But, even while I’m snuggling up to the glossies and the newsprint, or dozing off in front of Thirty Rock or another corporate TV show, it feels like I’m just consuming another version of The Onion, but with more advertising and more corporate ropes tying it down. Amusing, yes, breezy and fun, but nothing you’ll carry to the next day. Certainly not like this read, the one you’re consuming now, with real content to nourish your mind.

Maybe it’s the attitude toward food. The coastal writers seem to be eating well enough, and in mid-February all the corporate news outlets reported that snow storms had closed schools, leaving kids without their school meals. Leaving them, that is, to starve. “The two snowstorms . . . deprived tens of thousands of children from Virginia to Pennsylvania of the free or reduced-price school lunch that may be their only nutritious meal of the day. The nonprofits that try to meet the need when school is not in session also closed their doors for much of the week . . .” the news stories agreed.

Or maybe it’s the attitude toward farming. Sure, the media all reported the suicide of Dean Pierson, dairy farmer in Copake, New York. But have any of them followed up, even to find out what’s going on with today’s dairy? Have they reported on how many dairy farmers and for how long have been living on credit cards and donations from relatives? It turns out, if you look into it, that we’re losing dairies at an unprecedented rate.

Some of the blame for the farm bankruptcies should fall on changing tastes—the clever nutritionists that run the corporate kitchens have learned to make milk-like products that contain no milk. Modern “shakes” may be blended from oils and flours with coloring and flavoring. Cheeses may be made from powdered “milk protein concentrate” and flavorings and color.

Then there are the factory farms that pack thousands of cows on pastures that once supported merely tens of the beasts. Every industry that has been concentrated in this way — eggs, poultry, hogs — has left a wake of broke farmers. Then, when farmers go under, their kids leave the farm. Duh. And consumers end up with corporate food, high-calorie, low-nutrient mixes extruded into microwaveable trays.

Folks, we’re in a crisis, and the coastal media, God bless ‘em, could do much to repair the culture of ignorance that has disconnected consumers from food and farming. Instead of the snide and largely uninformed references about agriculture, the subsidies and environmental degradation, they could actually celebrate the few remaining farmers that do stuff right.

Or, when they stumble on city or suburban families tending a vegetable garden or raising a flock of hens, they could give those folks a pat on the back.

Instead, taking an example from the March Harper’s, a magazine I will truly mourn when it goes away, the literati ignores the achievement of a fellow who has created, from the urban cinders, a garden. In a eulogy titled “Nobody’s Detroit,” the poet Philip Levine mourns that his childhood Detroit is gone. He quotes Giuseppe Ungaretti writing about Alexandria, “My city destroys and annihilates itself from instant to instant.”

I like Levine enormously and, yes, I realize he’s writing more about his own childhood than about a city, but would it kill him to give credit to the folks transforming rusty old Detroit to a self-sufficient food provider for its remaining residents? Dropped off by a bus with hours to kill, Levine finds everything is changed. The old factories are gone, leaving fields of nettles, weeds and abandoned cars. Then he stumbles across a garden brilliant with tomatoes, corn, squash and zinnias, and he meets the gardener, Tom, a retired autoworker.

Instead of seeing Tom’s garden as a triumph of survival, Levine waxes nostalgic about the missing houses on the block, the illegal chickens, and the shacks. He imagines that they’re all on a “great ship sailing us all back into the 16th century . . .”

What’s missing, I guess, is the “gee whiz” factor. How to get the media’s attention? Make it cool, even if it’s unsustainable. Replace the old guy with a well-groomed technologist in a Pierre Cardin lab coat, analyzing the fields with a cool new computer program. Then, replace the old guy’s shovel with a GPS-directed robot tractor, and his garden with a monoculture raising corn destined for the ethanol industry.

Then you’ll have your story.

Margot Ford McMillen farms and teaches English at a college in Fulton, Mo. Email: margotmcm@socket.net.

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2010

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Don’t Write Off Detroit

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