First and foremost, companies work best when everyone is aligned on where the brand is going. Everyone is motivated because they have a song to sing and a banner to stand behind. Great brands are not built solely by marketing, but by the whole organisation coming together. What we think we are selling is never solely what customers are buying, and solving consumers' emotional needs is the most fertile ground for brands to grow.
To get the best results, those key to developing and communicating the brand need to feel involved in its creation, becoming its best advocates.
This is where a Brand Key can help.
A Brand Key is a comprehensive framework that serves as a cultural bonding exercise within a company. It is developed together, as a unified team, and provides a clear compass and an engaging blueprint for all involved, guiding them on the brand's essence, purpose, and behaviour to foster long-lasting connections with consumers. We all want success, and sharing in the vision of how to get there is the social glue that great companies are built upon.
The Brand Key is also a framework that can be built on, and brought to life through, various audiences as required; it can act as an input to other work such as strategy development, product creation, and the end-to-end consumer experience. This creates a clear, engaging, consumer-focused and motivating brand blueprint for all stakeholders to fervently buy into, giving anybody who touches the brand a clear direction on who we are, why we exist, and how we should behave.
The brief for any exercise like this is to bring clarity, relevance, and inspiration to how the company articulates itself as a brand. We call this the consumer-facing proposition. We need to build a compelling and cohesive brand story that answers, in the audience’s head, ‘why’ your company is the only experience of its kind and ‘why’ they should try you / remain loyal.
The vision must clearly set out why consumers should care, and what need it is solving in their lives.
In order to unlock these answers, we work closely with you to pinpoint the most important need state to address. What is the key differentiator above all else we are chosen for? What are our most appealing personality traits they will consistently buy into? What is the most compelling and competitive reason we should be chosen?
Most importantly, what is the simplest distillation of our brand into a core idea or promise that will resonate with consumers?
This proven tool has allowed us to help clients articulate their vision and values for consumer-facing brands for over 10 years. The process is designed to differentiate companies within their perceived competitor landscape, articulate what the brand stands for, and provide recommendations on how to create relationships with target audiences by building an emotional connection, ensuring they return again and again.
We always want our clients’ products to be part of the mix that defines their customers as good people, who make the right choices.
The Brand Keys we’ve created over the years have provided our clients with a rock-solid foundation for their brand. It has worked time and time again as a successful tool to help inform brand development and provide the all-important judgement criteria needed to express their brand consistently.
So, what would happen if each member of your team passionately embodied your brand's core values? How might this shape the future of your organisation? We're confident that the results will be nothing short of remarkable.