Brand is much more than a name, its a unique design or symbol and our brand is our public face. So ownership of our brand is important.
However, before we even get to the stage of ‘agreeing’ our brand we need to determine:
- the image we want ~ considering our ‘target market’ is important because our brand gives a promise of experience and an assurance to those we work with and those we want to support us.
- what makes us unique ~ why should people come to us, buy from us/access our services, work with us or support us? It’s a competitive market place out there!
- what are our values ~ we all have values in our personal lives, they are what drives us and businesses/charities are no different. If we were to list our life and business values and choose the top three of each, how many would be the same? If not, why not? Are our personal and business lives in conflict with each other?
- we need to be committed and believe in what we do ~ people buy from people, so if you believe in your product/service (and that ‘passion’ shines through) then it’s likely they’ll want what we have.
Brand is important and in helping everyone understand what we do, we need to build recognition. We can all think of businesses and charities that are instantly recognisable. At Christmas, many retail businesses invest huge amounts of money into campains and adverts to help us ‘persuade us’ to spend our money. It’s a fact that people or customers build habits, they like the safety of that.
At HEALS we’ve been considering all this. We started out with an idea but for a while (like many new businesses or charities) we drifted from one event/project to the next. Along the way there were great successes and lessons to be learnt. Everyone needs to go through this process, as all the successful people in business know.
Now we have something really unique ~ how do we know? Others are interested in what we are doing, we’ve had endorsements at Westminister, there’s interest in Wales, other towns and our partners (local and national) are telling us too. Our brand has changed from a ‘free’ symbol to something that still shows who we are but demonstrates that we are competant, committed and passionate. Our core values remain, to help people help themselves and everyone involved with HEALS from grassroots to the top shares these values. That in itself makes us unique!
2014 is going to be an interesting year, a time of hard work, making our organisation’s foundations and structure stronger and inviting others to join us, work with us and support us.
What does your brand say about you and your business/charity? Does it convey your message? Does everyone understand your values and can you honestly that everyone involved in your business shares these?
http://www.alisoncross-jones.com
alisoncrossjones 
1 thought on “Brand ~ what does our brand say about us and what we do?”