Brand Fundamentals

You have a brand story, a brand idea, a mission, a vision, purpose, promise, positioning, brand attributes, consumer value proposition, employee value proposition, behaviors, values, and beliefs. What am I missing?

I love branding fundamentals and these components can all be important but there is often overlap, often conflict, and often a few that don’t relate. Many companies have too many. This usually happens because they were created at different times by different departments for different stakeholders and were focused on different audiences. The secret is that they should all relate.

You’ll face some challenges in trying to reconcile these, including working with and convincing the various internal owners. It can be done though, with the right process. A few questions to ask yourself as you review each component and organize into a meaningful framework:

• Have we first aligned the organization on a single brand story?
• How does each component support and build up that brand story?
• Who is the audience for each component?
• How will we use each component? Not where will we show it, but exactly how will we use it?
• Can we eliminate any due to redundancies or conflicts?

You actually don’t need all of them. You need the ones that resonate with and create action within your organization. Putting them to use is an incredibly hard endeavor but will set you up for success. And everyone will thank you.