Brand spring cleaning

Spring has sprung and what better time to chase out the cobwebs and dust off your brand. 2011 is disappearing faster than a rabbit down a hole, so there’s no time like the present to get your brand in tip top shape as we head into the home stretch of the calendar year.

Here’s some brand spring cleaning tips to get you started.

1.  Do the hallway test – stop random people and ask, “What’s our purpose?” If you get lots of different answers or worse, no one knows then start talking about it the next day (and keep talking about it).

2.  Take an honest look at all your marketing materials and make sure they say the same thing and look like the same company.

3.  Check your turnover, if you have a revolving door for staff it might be time to look at who you are hiring and what your are or aren’t doing once they start.

4.  Define your key words – if you talk about quality, service, innovation (the list goes on) make sure everyone knows what they mean at your company not in the dictionary.

5.  Set clear expectations, don’t just dance to whatever tune customers sing and then wonder why you can’t make them happy.

6.  Revisit your positioning statement and give it a polish.

7.  Spend an hour checking all the links on your website work and go to the right places.

8.  Then spend another hour just reading the content as if you were someone coming to your site for the first time (trust me this will be a revelation).

9.  Get a friend to call your company with a question and report back to you how the call was handled.

10. Read your terms and conditions -– no I mean really read them, if you can’t understand what they mean neither can your customers.

11. Hold a series of brand boot camp sessions with people in the company – what is our purpose, what are our values, why keeping our promises matters, are all good topics to cover.

12. Find three new ways to make your brand more aligned – the way you answer the phone, order confirmation processes, hiring advertisements, the opportunities are endless.

13. Walk into your offices like you are a visitor and take photos or write down what you see.

14. Ask five customers what they like and don’t like about your company (don’t do a survey just talk to them) then repeat item 12!

See you next week.

Michel Hogan is an independent Brand adviser and advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations make promises they can keep and keep the promises they make, with a strong sustainable brand as the result. She also publishes the Brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment. You can follow Michel on Twitter @michelhogan