Whose Job is Branding?
Whose Job is Branding?
Branding is a part of marketing that requires different skill sets than the marketing team has to offer. It comes from the customer experience, but customer service reps aren’t able to set the strategy. It requires design, but it starts long before design. So the question is: Who is responsible for branding?
This question is one of the main issues that stands between a company and a powerful brand.
It doesn’t matter if you are a small business owner with five employees, or you’re the CEO of a billion-dollar company, the answer is the same...
Branding is everybody’s responsibility
Contrary to belief, branding is not the responsibility of some marketing manager or the person in charge of campaigns or the person with the word “brand“ in his or her title.
Companies that benefit the most from branding are the ones where everyone, especially the people at the top, lead the charge for branding. In those companies, it’s often the CEO, but it’s also the COO and the CFO and the CTO and basically anybody with a “C” in their title who takes up the cause and drives the strategy through the entire organization.
In order for branding to work, every single person must feel ownership and responsibility for the brand. And leadership must drive that into every nook and cranny of the organization so that people are walking the brand talk.
So, how do you do that? It starts by answering the three most important brand questions for your business:
What does it say about a person that they use your brand?
What is the ONE THING a person gets from you that they can’t get anywhere else?
How do you make your customer the hero in his/her own story?
These are big questions. But once these questions are answered, you'll have the foundation you need to allow your entire team to take responsibility for branding.
Your answers to these questions, as well as your understanding of what’s at the top of your Brand Values Pyramid, need to become gospel within your company. Every employee should know the answers and, more importantly, should embody them in their day-to-day actions.
It should be clear to everyone in your company that every single thing that any person in the company does must align with delivering on those promises.
When you have that, the question is no longer “Who is responsible for branding?” Instead, it becomes “Who isn’t responsible for branding?”
If you need help getting your team aligned on who your brand is, reach out to one of our experts below!