Companies invest a good deal of time and expense in their branding – and rightfully so. Positioning one’s company as a recognizable icon that symbolizes leadership in an industry can sometimes be the key factor to profitability. Once your brand becomes the shining beacon it was projected to be – what could go wrong? A lot. Even the biggest brands around have had some trouble with name purity. Here’s a few questions you should ask yourself to increase your integrity awareness.
Does your team love your brand?
Twitter’s VP of Design recently tweeted from a third-party application instead of from Twitter’s official app, and pretty much everyone noticed. We all have our favorite communication technologies, but if your brand develops one, you shouldn’t use another platform. When you or your employees openly use the other brand, you’re unintentionally telling the whole world that the other brand is better. While the implication of such behavior is not detrimental when exhibited by lower level employees, the further up the pyramid it goes, the harder the impact.
Do you promote your brand internally?
Fashion retailers often understand the value in their salespeople doubling as real-life mannequins. They accomplish this in many different ways: some make a rule requiring the brand as a uniform, others opt for offering deep discounts for the employees (which practically ensures their wardrobe consisting of mostly the store brand), and some more pricey spots develop in-store relationships with their vendors who are generally happy to offer free merchandise to the sales representatives (who otherwise could not afford these brands). Give your team a little economic desire to flaunt your logo.
Is your brand the industry expert?
Do you retweet or share posts from your competitor? STOP! Your brand’s social media should exude a feeling of industry expertise either directly, such as relativity and timeliness in Twitter feeds, or indirectly, such as originality in visual engagement on Facebook. Boast original content when possible, but re-tweets or shares should only come from sideline sources like news reports, independent bloggers, or other general fanfare.