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Many people struggle with understanding what a brand is. I have a trick for helping to clarify the confusion

Everyone has a personality. Most people have friends too. You make friends with the people that make you feel good and generally with people who are similar to you. A company's brand can be compared to a personality. Some people are warm and friendly, other people are classy and sophisticated and some are shambolic and incompetent. It's the same with businesses. The way a company behaves, prices itself, promotes itself, services its customers and communicates to the world all creates the brand image. Customers who associate themselves with your company's brand image or "personality" are likely to buy from you. The employees are ambassadors of that brand, because they have to embody the values you want to project.

Once you understand this analogy it's easy to appreciate the power of a brand. You need to give your business a strong image in the same way that some people have a strong personality. Try comparing your business to a famous person. If Jim Carrey was a company, how would it behave? You can be sure that the adverts would be amusing, memorable and off-the-wall. The product or service would perhaps be gimmicky and fun. The company colours and fonts would be bright and extravagant.

Building and maintaining a brand image is tough as you need to ensure it infiltrates every part of the business from credit control through to packaging and advertising. Once you've got all the elements of your company working in a way that complements your brand image, then you need to regularly review and update to keep the focus. Focus is important as it doesn't take much to damage a good strong brand and there are plenty of famous examples. To avoid being controversial I'll avoid pointing fingers at any real corporations and give you a couple of hypothetical situations instead.

-If you walked into a five star hotel you would expect it to look superior, you would expect porters, perhaps a butler, a pool, a bath, a mini-bar and quality bed linen. You would also expect to pay top dollar for all that. What you wouldn't expect is a receptionist in cut off denims smoking a cigarette and chewing gum. That would damage the image of the hotel right? However if that gum chewing, cigarette smoking receptionist was working in a surf shack in Hawaii you probably wouldn't think it was too strange.

-If you were running a charity that supported ecology and the environment you would use recycled paper and energy-saving light bulbs. However if might send out the wrong message if you issued all your directors with gas guzzling 4x4's.

Every day businesses, celebrities and ordinary people have their reputations ruined by an indiscretion here or an oversight there. So beware, no one thing can create a brand image, but it only takes one thing to destroy it.

Learn more about this author, Daniel Waters.
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