If you’re a growth business, it’s time to think carefully about your brand. Has your brand just sort of ‘evolved’ over time? Is it less of a brand and really just a set of Corporate Identity guidelines? If you had to explain your brand in an elevator pitch, could you? To sum up, is your brand fit and ready to support your transformational growth? And finally (this is really important for growth business marketing) is your brand flexible?
What do we mean by flexible branding? Why is it important to growth business marketing? Let’s look at what flexible branding is not.
Firstly, it’s not ‘corporate identity’. Some businesses fixate fetishistically on the ‘look and style’ element of brand. The logo, colourways, design and so on. Of course, consistency is important. But not at the expense of rigidity or refusal to engage with the changing needs of a growth business. And not least its audiences. At M4G, we’ve met ‘brand police’ (often one individual!) whose role is to ‘guard’ all things brand. They can be a dangerous obstacle to necessary change.
Secondly, flexible branding is not just a single brand story or theme. Growth businesses are invariably undergoing transformation. There will be changes to products, services, systems, culture, customer interaction and more. Is your growth business brand ‘stuck’ with one fixed voice? If it is, the business struggles to communicate the new and dynamic changes it is undergoing. Failure here can be catastrophic. When customers or staff misunderstand the business’s transformation, evidence suggests they leave. Is the transformation you’re making intended to deliver better value to customers? Then never forget that brand is your story to explain how transformation is good for them, not disruptive. Read more about the dangers of customer alienation in a blog from consultants BTD, here.
Finally, a practical point about growth business marketing and flexible branding. Think hard about the needs of content and social marketing. Insisting on a slavish adherence to a ‘one brand, one story’ approach is suicidal. A growth business brand needs flexibility to cope with the multi-layered demands of social and content. Read more about how to do this in our blog here.
Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash