Defending Your Brand

Over lunch with a CEO, they asked, “We’ve built a good brand — maybe a great one. We’ve got great customers and market presence now, but that can erode. The thing I worry about is how do we go about protecting our brand from competitors and copycats?”

A brand is everything your company does. Well-constructed, it’s built on a solid foundation of beliefs and backed up by consistent behaviors. Too often, I see the nurturing of the brand left to the marketing team alone, or worse, outsourced to an ad or marketing agency.

Not all ad people and marketers are alike.

Some will take a given product or service, be assigned a budget, and do some advertising.

Others will take a promise marketing approach — which involves telling a product or service story that includes making a promise and living up to it. This approach creates a brand experience framed by how well you deliver on your promise. Promises kept consistently creates great brand experiences.

Of course, this promise-making and keeping method must include more than just the marketing team. After all, it isn’t the marketers who keep the promise alone. One of the team’s most important roles is making great products and services that deliver on the promise. Over time, your brand becomes an experience of these promises kept.

It’s the marketers’ job to tell promise-making stories that the united team lives up to.

It’s the team’s job to protect the brand by building great products or shaping great services.

The leaders’ job is to attract, convince, and nurture the right people, so they have the appetite, capacity, and skill set to protect the brand.

United together, the team, marketers, and leaders defend and nurture the brand. Competitors and copycats become less relevant when you have a trusted reputation for keeping your valuable promises.

If you’re not protecting the brand this way, who will?