The history of your brand

There are lots of things swirling around brands at the moment. Will Google pull out of China? The impact of the continuing global slowdown abroad on venerable Australian brands like Quicksilver. Even Australia is in search of a new “brand”, if the Government and competing agencies are to be believed (personally I think we have a pretty good one, but hey what would I know, I just live here).

It’s easy to get distracted and tied up in wondering what’s next and where to go. So today I just want to ask a simple question that is an antidote to that noise – what does the history of your brand have to tell you?

Companies spend a lot of time, money and energy in the rush to move their brands forward. The default answer to just about any real or perceived brand issue is to “change” it (I deliberately don’t use the word rebrand).

Pushed by marketing, advertising and design agencies with vested interests in doing as much work as possible, the valuable and often loved fruits of many years of brand are thrown away to make way for something touted as, fresh, new and different.

But at what cost?

Even when there are real problems, the history can tell us much about how we arrived at the point we are at. More importantly, the history of our brands can clue us into why we do what we do and how we do it. It can tell us what our customers and employees love (and hate), show us opportunity and room for improvements. Most importantly it can show us what to keep, honour and defend.

Something I tell my clients all the time is that you can’t navigate from A to B if you don’t know where A is, and the only way to know that, is to really understand what makes your brand tick – today.

Much like our lives are the accumulated mesh of all our experiences, influences and actions, so too are a brands. So don’t be afraid to put your brand on the couch and ask the hard questions about how you got to where you are. In fact, demand it.

At worst you will move forward armed with what to avoid in the future, but more likely you will uncover some great attributes and things worth saving.

See you next week.

Michel Hogan is a Brand Advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations recognize who they are and align that with what they do and say, to build more authentic and sustainable brands. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment.