Brandology - what brand is and what it is not- transcription

Brandology – transcription

By Fiona Boyd |

This post is a transcription of a video interview Fiona Boyd co-author of Niche Content Millionaire conducted with Brandology founder, Michel Hogan, called “Brandology – what brand is and what it is not”.

Fiona: I’m talking to Michel Hogan from Brandology about exactly what is one’s brand and why this matters. Welcome Michel.

Michel: Why thank you Fiona it’s so great to be here, I really enjoy talking about brand any chance I get, so…

Fiona: Which is fabulous because that’s what I’m going to quiz you thoroughly about today. Now firstly you’ve written a manifesto on brand…

Michel: …I have…

Fiona: …it’s a long time ago but you’ve done a whole manifesto. How did you define brand in your manifesto?

Michel: Well, I defined brand in my manifesto pretty much the way I always define it which is this very broad based perspective that brand is both what you believe and what your actions show. And these are authentic things, they’re not something that you make up, and they come very much from the inside out. And so a lot of people struggle with that definition, because they say, well, but isn’t brand just about marketing. Not in my world.

Brandology - making sure you know what your company's brand is and what it isn't

Fiona: Where do we usually get confused when talking of brand? What is it not? You just mentioned there people confuse it with marketing. Is that common? And what is brand not?

Michel: Oh the list of what brand isn’t, I mean, is…I think a better way for me to frame an answer to that question is that brand is inclusively a lot of the things that people individually assign to it. Um, and they say, our brand is out logo. Well, it’s not just your logo. Your logo has a part of it, it is a marker of your brand, but it’s not your brand. Our tagline, our marketing campaigns, it’s mostly those customer facing, customer touch points that organisations get very wrapped up in, and largely they’re cosmetic, so the visual, the look, the feel, the colours, the you know, what the actual message is also, a lot of times gets supplanted for brand. But, and all of those things are part of your brand, absolutely, but in and of themselves the aren’t your brand, because they have to stem from this sort of deeper point, this core point of your brand which is, as I said, the belief and action piece.

Fiona: The bread and butter of your business, Brandology, is working directly with companies on their brand, aligning that to what they do. Now you would have insight that we don’t have about the mistakes that are most commonly made when it comes to brand. How do you identify them and how do you sort them out?

Michel: Oh, that’s such a great question because most of what I do is dealing with the issues that people have with brand. And I think that the number one mistake that people make is getting tied up in that cosmetic stuff, is worrying too much – and especially with start up organisations or emerging organisations, getting caught up too early on in that, that sort of, the veneer, the look, and not focussing enough on really building that sense of alignment between those core elements, sort of really working to understand, what do we stand for? Why are we here? Why do we exist? Because without that sort of understanding it becomes really difficult, as you move forward, to actually do anything so that it’s in alignment. So the biggest mistake I tend to make, and what I typically end up dealing with is an organisation brings me in, not all that often do I come in at the very early start up stage, but about three to five years later they bring me in and they go, well, we’ve got all this, and this is all not making sense and we’ve got this over here and over here, you know, something’s completely different, and our customers don’t seem to be, we can’t get any traction…

Fiona: …lots of add-ons because of different bits added at different phases…

Michel: …exactly, and there’s no real sort of sense of consistency, continuity, adhesiveness to what’s being built, and so the best piece of advice I can give any organisation, and the one that I tell any organisation, no matter what stage they’re at, is to be deliberate. It’s an easy concept, but it’s one that people find very difficult to do, because it’s so easy to be ad hoc and say, oh, this over here, it’s just that and it doesn’t matter. Really, they’re really – I mean, – but there isn’t an issue in an organisation that isn’t a brand issue. There’s very – that’s a pretty big statement – there really isn’t when you think about it, because the littlest things can unravel, you know, the most carefully planned sort of approaches. And they have consequences, I mean just recently we saw Virgin accidentally sending out their email…

Fiona: …I was offered an upgrade!

Michel: Yeah, right, me too – I’d flown with them…

Fiona: …gold status…

Michel: …Yeah, gold status, after three flights…wow!

Fiona: …then it was rescinded…

Michel: …you guys are really nice. I actually never got the rescinding email, which was interesting, but I never actually thought it was serious, my initial response to it was I thought someone was spoofing Virgin.

Fiona: Whereas I thought, you guys are being dishonest with yourself and your marketing, because I would only…I would have at most a hundred Velocity credits…

Michel: Right, and so, I think they reacted really well, they remedied it as quickly as they could once they noticed the problem, they did it in a way that was pretty honest, they didn’t try and spin it, they just said, oops, sorry, we screwed up, this shouldn’t have happened. And I think that’s actually the best way to do that sort of stuff. But that really came from a pretty authentic place about their brand, their brand is pretty much dealing fairly, in a fairly upfront way with their customers and in a little bit of a fun way, so there’s always that little bit of a wink and a smile, and that was, they built that into what they did in response, and I think, you know, when you have that sort of grounding, when you have really strong brand base, those types of issues become less concerning for the organisation, they have less ramifications.

Fiona: Are you then saying that your brand is very much tied to your core values for your business, and therefore you must know what they are.

Michel: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve actually written quite a bit about this idea that one of the, what I believe to be one of the foundation elements of a brand, for any stage of an organisation is having a set of core values. Now that becomes harder when you’re a startup, because when you’re coming out of the gate…

Fiona: …everyone has a view, all the founders have a view, and there’s difference in the views…

Michel: …exactly, exactly, and you get them all coming, and so what you end up with is sort of a set of beliefs, which are really sort of, somewhat aspirational, you know, this is the type of company we want to be, this is the type of things we want to do.

Fiona: But it’s not what we are now…or yet…

Michel: But it can’t be what you are yet because you’re not doing it yet. And so that’s why that early two to three year period out of the gate, whether it be a traditional start up or just a small business that somebody is getting going, it’s so important to pay attention to that stuff, and really, well this is what we said out of the gate we wanted to be, and this is what we said we believed and we were going to do. How are we doing on that? Are we actually doing that? Or aren’t we? And if we’re not why aren’t we? Was that, were we kidding ourselves, you know, because it’s got to be authentic, it’s got to come from something that’s actually real and true otherwise you can’t do it, not for any length of time.

Fiona: About when do you know that you’ve got your core values sorted?

Michel: I think as a general rule across all the organisations that I’ve worked with over the years, about three years out is usually a good point at which organisations have either really embraced it and are living it, and really have embedded those things deeply, or they’ve turned a different direction. So that three year point I think is a good stage for an organisation to stand back and look at itself and say, how are we doing on this? And then, you know, and then you pretty much know – yes, they were real and yes, that’s what we’re doing or, well, we were kind of full of shit, weren’t we?

Fiona: Ooops!

Michel: Ooops! Well, you know, never mind. And at that point you need to look at, you need to step back and say, what really are we? And because you’ve been doing something for three years you’ve got a history now that you can look at and that you can draw from and say, OK, well based on this, this is actually what it should be, and that’s OK. And then from that point forward you can start to be more deliberate. But you’ve got to give yourself, as a start up and as a younger organisation, you’ve got to give yourself a bit of wiggle room. You’ve got to, got to, got to.

Fiona: Michel, thank you for your time today.

Michel: My pleasure, thank you Fiona.

Fiona: I’ve been talking to Michel Hogan from Brandology and we’ll talk more about brand matters in coming weeks.

Photo: Flickr See-ming Lee

If you have any issues that need sorting with your company’s brand, consider talking to Michel and her team of worldwide associates at Brandology.

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