Brand affects culture

Branding is not just for your clients/customers!

Strong brand affects the culture of any company!

Having staff buy into your brand is all about confidence in the company. It is important to make sure staff are proud to be associated with the company and what the brand stands for!

How to do this – this involves keeping the staff involved with the importance of brand and to understand that they are the brand, just as much as the Logo and associated catch phrase!

As I’ve mentioned in previous rants the staff of a company can be the most effective branding tool. As a customer opinion of a company will often come from the last face to face interaction they had with staff!

For example think of your last bank experience – if you dealt with an idiot that did not know how to handle your accounts chances are you think the whole bank is run by idiots, flip that around to if you dealt with a star your opinion of the bank would be so much higher and your more than likely to recommend the bank to your friends!

So brand does affect culture if staff aren’t confident, proud or in love with the brand you can’t expect them to sell it, if they are then you’re on track to having a global phenomena for a company!

Best place to start is at the top, you have to love your brand!

Green Blogging

Finally Green gets a blog...

The Green Running Man

Check it out!

To brand or not to brand...

This is really one of those not why but why not sort of questions.

Why would a company spend money on a brand? It’s simple really, obvious or not brand is the reputation of the company. This is why a personal brand is so important; guys like The Donald Trump and Sir Richard Branson are huge brands in themselves and have massive effects on the companies as a whole. Why would the Don have his name on everything if brand was not important, you may say... well he has the money, but really his brand helps generate the money.
So whether your a small one man band or a larger organisation brand is the most important part of the business – this always makes me chuckle when I hear the first budget to be cut is always the marketing – in my humble opinion if a company is wanting to make sales or acquire more business then really they should shoot the bean counters and amp up the marketing and advertising, you don’t have to spend big dollars to have great results some of the best campaigns are done on the cheap!

So coming back to the start of this rant – branding also starts at the very basic level – yes that’s right my humble reader the very text you use on letters, emails, website or any form of communication is where your brand starts, not just your logo and colours but right from the basics, this also flows through to what you write how your staff interact with customers, all in all every touch point with clients should tie in and represent the brand.

So how does all this waffle and tangent discussion relate to Red?? That’s easy email is a touch point that is largely left to the staff to brand, what I do is bring the corporate style to each and every email, all branded consistently from the text to the logos!


Concerned about personal style and taste?
You’re kidding right? If you’re not then why not have the staff do their own thing for business cards and letter head etc? While you’re at it fire the marketing team as I’m positive if you adopt this approach they will have a heart attack any way!!

Below is a great example of before I came along and after I had enhanced the day to day emails also a good example of why its not best for staff to do it, also note: each stuff member had a different sign off - not exactly brand consistent!!

So summing up why Brand! Simple, consistency is key; a well designed and executed brand will deliver higher results as the reputation of the company comes from the brand!

Check these guys out as a good example – touch cast next – you would not think the company is only a team of 3!!

Whats up at Calcium

Well a lot has happen since I last posted.

Most of the work has gone into my little brother Green, busy at the gym working out and growing stronger by the day!!
Anyway we have also had a few new groups see the light in email marketing and have joined us in the revolution!!
Some nice big names such as Mike Pero Mortgages and FMG - thanks guys for your support!

Watch this space for more....