Corporate branding

I belong to a local business networking group who meet monthly over breakfast and listen to key speakers.  One speaker talked about brands and immediately immersed us in his talk by displaying a number of brand logos and asking us what our gut reaction was to each.

I thought this was an interesting exercise as it brought home the fact that what you may think about your brand - after all its your baby and you're passionate about it - may not be others see, feel and think.  To illustrate the point, the speaker projected the brand local of a high street store and this brought forth comments from 'loathe the shop, never shop there', to 'it's okay, its cheap and convenient'.  His next brand logo had a totally different response as we were asked what we felt the brand portrayed. 'High end department store, quality goods, knowledgeable staff always willing to help, pay a bit more but their customer service is great and goods are reliable.'

Our speaker then worked his way through a few car manufacturers logos before moving onto pictures of people, who essentially are their own brand. Sir Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver, to mention a few.

It would have been interesting to have a follow up session, where each of the attendees could have projected their own brand, be that their Company logo, their product or service or themselves, and gain feedback of how others viewed their brand.

Obviously, companies have their own target customers and there is a place for bargain shopping and top of the range. But where it can fall down is when a company feels their brand projects a particular image and the majority of their customers disagree. Your staff too, are important to your brand, and they need to share your vision and passion, otherwise your reputation can easily be damaged.  Picture courtesy of Velo Restaurants Ltd., London who use Repeat Signage software on their digital menu board

User-friendly, Repeat Signage Corporate digital signage software helps with corporate branding