Building a New Brand

Last week, one of our clients unveiled their new brand to employees. It was an amazing day for the associates who joined the company meeting to hear the long-awaited announcement. The CEO and partners presented our branding approach and explained the work we undertook to arrive at the new corporate identity and, more importantly, the new brand.

The process they described wasn’t just about selecting a new name and tagline. It was about emerging in the market under a new brand, with a new brand promise and set of brand attributes that will differentiate the company for years to come. Employees were fascinated by the process, and the message really resonated with them when the CEO described brand as “what you do.”

This excerpt from the CEO’s script shows how she outlined our process:

“When we started, we engaged Dobies Health Marketing to help us with this process. You will recall the survey you all took. Carol asked you about words and phrases. She asked you how decisions were made and what type of environment you worked in. She asked you how we dealt with mistakes and about our organization’s personality.

She also asked us [the leadership team] about what we wanted as leaders, how we made decisions and how we thought about our company.

She walked us through a Branding Framework. We talked about how we wanted our company to run. We looked at organizations that have an Expert Brand, such as BMW, Mayo Clinic and Apple. They stand out as the industry’s preeminent leaders.

We looked at organizations that are customer-centric and customized, such as Lands’ End, Zappos, and Target. They try to make their clients a part of who they are; they include their customers in their brand experience. And we talked about Authentic Brands, such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Ben and Jerry’s. Their products make peoples’ lives better; they support growth and help the customer be better.

The idea behind the Branding Framework is that an organization will have trouble delivering on its brand if the styles of leadership aren’t in line with brand attributes…”

I am very proud to have led the leadership team through this branding process. I watched them weave very different leadership styles together to arrive at a singular authentic strategic intention (brand platform). Using findings from employee interviews and leadership/culture indexes, they discovered the key behaviors that were keepers and those that needed to be jettisoned with the old name. Although it was a lot of hard work, they had a tremendous amount of fun as they turned “NewCo” into a dynamic new brand.

I can hardly wait to share the new brand with you and reveal more details about the brand promise and corporate identity. But, now is not the time. Over the next six to eight weeks, leadership will lead each department through a series of meetings to discover and adopt touch points aligned with the brand. During this time, work groups will deliver new systems and processes. Staff will get comfortable with new key messages, and hundreds of items will be reprinted with the new company identity.