More often than not, consumers associate brand-speak with trickery, exaggeration, misdirection and outright deception. The sad thing is, I don’t blame them. A lot of brands are disingenuous. What those brand managers don’t realize is that tricking someone into buying once is far less profitable than earning customer loyalty and trust over the long term.

Investing in your Brand for the Long Haul

Branding is so much more than just looking good. You need to pick up where we leave off.

Good branding requires ongoing maintenance. But unfortunately, too many companies slow their branding efforts to a near-halt after unveiling the new logo and website.

In a number of ways, rolling out your new visual identity is really just the beginning of one of your most important branding endeavours… that is, a long-term and focused investment in building trust.

“Investing in brand development is increasingly important to build credibility and differentiate,” says Cynthia Round, executive vice president of brand strategy and marketing at United Way of America, which recently rolled out a completely revamped brand campaign. “People are making purchasing decisions based on how closely aligned their values are with an organization and how much they trust what that organization is providing.”

Your brand platform should accurately and honestly represent your organization’s core values, but it is equally important that your actions and business practices follow in line. Trust and personal connection are at the foundation of employee and consumer loyalty, both of which have a significant and direct impact on your bottom line.

Brand Trust: as Simple as Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Building and marketing a good base image is only step one. If I’ve heard of you, I’m more likely to trust you at the outset. But trust is built over time, accrued from a consistent collection of experiences and perceptions. To get to level two, you need to do what you say you are going to do. It seems easy, but it’s a step that so many fail to reach. Finally, customer trust and loyalty are confirmed and reinforced when you simply repeat step two at every opportunity.

Deliver on your promise in a consistent way, and you’ll never lose business due to a lack of credibility.

Free Advertising: it Goes Both Ways

If your brand promises gold and delivers bronze, you’re finished. Bad news travels fast and far. So in failing to live up to the image you’ve created for yourself, you’ve not only alienated one customer, but have also lost out on potential business from all of the people your single unsatisfied customer has complained to. You may be able to hold your head above water for a while with this strategy, but it won’t last.

On the other hand, if you’ve planned your brand strategy on a basis of sustainable and honest values (i.e., you can and do deliver what you say you will) then what you’re reinforcing is a lasting impression of quality, value, and credibility. Good news may not travel as far or as fast, but the ROI (considering your investment is nothing more than doing what you do anyway) can be immense.

Approximately 80% of our new clients come to us via direct recommendations from former or existing clients. That’s a significant amount of advertising that’s being done on our behalf, at no expense to us.

Honesty and Authenticity = Tangible ROI

The bottom line is, every company wants measurable, tangible returns on their investments. This is especially true when it comes to branding strategies. Trust is a tricky thing to measure, but when the United Way undertook a campaign to determine investor and donation motives in 2003, they found that a strong brand was 67% of the reason people chose to invest in the organization.

Often, it’s the smaller daily interactions that illustrate how your brand is working for you. And that’s precisely what you want. Small actions (both positive and negative) build upon one another, impacting the experience your brand provides, and acting directly on its strength.

Once you’ve built the visual aspects of your brand, success is as simple as delivering consistently on what you’ve promised. People will pay more for, and choose more readily, the experience and peace of mind that a healthy brand provides.

If used systematically across your business, design can bring a range of measurable commercial benefits:

• Improved sales and conversion rates
• Improved market position
• Greater customer loyalty
• A stronger and more credible identity for your business
• The ability to open up new markets

Design increases the value of your products and services to your customers. A professional image for your business and its offerings gives customers a reason for buying from you, and not from your competitors. In addition to improving the customer’s impression of the products and services you sell, design can also improve the way your business operates – the efficiency of its processes, the quality of its packaging and the marketability of the business.

Most people think of design as simply “decorating”… covering the outward appearance of products or the graphic elements of things such as your website, packaging and marketing materials. While these things are very important, they are just the tip of the iceberg. Design actually plays a part in nearly every aspect of what most businesses do. For example, when a business creates a consistent look across its brand materials, products, signage, stationery and its marketing activities, they are using design to improve their business and future prospects.

You can also use design to benefit your business in less obvious ways:

• product and engineering design
• graphic design – from manuals and marketing literature to signage and software interfaces
• packaging design
• software design
• retail and point-of-sale design
• interior design and fit-outs
• exhibition and trade show material design
• promotional design
• annual reports and company presentations

It’s a good idea to conduct a design audit – look at key areas of your business such as your brand, your product and service development, your work practices and customer communication and consider what role design plays in them. There may be opportunities to use design to make your business more efficient and to add value to your products and services for your customers.

It’s also a good idea to remember that corporate design is a highly specialized field. The ability to design and build a house does not come included with the purchase of a hammer… it is the same with corporate design. While the tools designers use continue to improve the industry and design products immensely, there is much more to successful design than picking up a software package.

DO:

• review prospective design firms’ portfolios carefully
• ensure the work shown in the portfolios was actually done by the firm or professional
• discuss your project with a senior designer before signing a contract
• ensure the designer is familiar with marketing and sound corporate design theory and standards
• make certain the firm will be doing the work (beware of outsourcers – fronts for cheap unqualified labour)
• ask questions… enough until you are comfortable the firm suits your business perfectly
• trust the professionals to do a professional job – if you were a designer, you would have done it yourself!

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.