The positive reactions that Brand Image Alignment generates are so bold that we don’t have to dwell here on it’s necessity (Bella Katz happens to discuss it in her post “Small business and the branding crossroads”). Rather, I would like to focus on detecting the need for alignment.
For years now, we have been working with various companies in finding the right platform to develop the bulk of their advertisment, promotion and communication material, all the while maintaining a clear, accurate and effortless alignment.
That being said, how do you know when you need a good alignment job? Here are a few potential (and very real) tell-tale signs:
- Obviousness: Lay all of your promotional material on a table (catalogs, price lists, ads, website) and take a couple of steps back. The items don’t seem to belong to the same company.
- The Musical Chair: For several years, you’ve had to reassign marketing management to a different person, and without fail, this person has reinvented the business’s way of doing things.
- The Vacant Chair: There isn’t someone actually in charge of developing and upholding corporate branding, and the CEO pretty much approves the look of any piece that goes out.
- Right Hand, Left Hand: Somebody in each of your many departments handles marketing and communications. Problem is, they don’t actually communicate together, and as a result, they work in opposite directions.
- A Sea of Suppliers: Your interactive development agency doesn’t know what your print design studio is doing.
- The $500 Logo: you’ve been consistenly working on your logo every year for the past 5-6 years now, and it’s as good as done. This year, you thought you’d ask your nephew (who studied computer graphics) to come up with a new logo. And you’re paying him a plump sum too: 500 clams.
Brand image alignment is one of those things that we notice when it’s missing. Develop it, implement it, care for it, make it grow, communicate it in-house, make it yours.
Do you have examples of situations where brand image alignment is missing?
(photo Tom Spaulding)