BRAND THE UNBREAKABLE FRAME

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SECTION III DEFINE YOUR DIRECTION You may have come to the conclusion that your brand could use a bit of a facelift. As you begin considering how to tackle your brand strategy, you might find these suggestions helpful to refresh your brand and strengthen the framework that exists there. Included in this section are also some examples of B2B organizations who have done an impressive job demonstrating great brand work. The value in creating engaging and consistent guidelines for your brand cannot be understated. Having a resource for internal and external audiences that explains how your brand should be represented cross-channel can create a heightened level of consistency and, therefore, have a lasting impact on your audiences. Clearly defined and documented brand guidelines can also help solve an internal lack of clarity around your brand’s purpose, positioning and persona. Defining your organizational character for the world, as well as your colleague sitting across from your office, can go a long way in terms of brand recognition and protecting the framework of your brand. HOW IBM DID IT It’s nearly impossible to talk about great B2B brands without talking about IBM. Here’s a firm that has evolved many times over the years, from selling cheese cutters, to punch card machines, to computer mainframes and servers, to finally, today, selling the ability to deal with data. All the while, the firm has maintained its brand, sometimes with an iron fist. You can’t help but be impressed by the organization’s discipline. IBM has almost 400,000 employees in 170 countries. Its marketing department is global and involves people from different cultures with great distances between them. And yet, go to any one of the firm’s social channels, and you will see a great amount of discipline in everything from the use of the logo and photography, to the voice and tone of the writing and the subjects covered. It’s impressive. 12
DEFINE YOUR DIRECTION (CONT.) SECTION III SO, HOW HAS IBM DONE THIS? It didn’t happen magically, and it didn’t happen overnight. The firm, for a long time now, has invested in tools that make its marketers more empowered by giving them targets that they can hit over and over again. When thinking of successful brand guidelines, there really is no better example in the B2B market than IBM. IBM has photography guidelines, design guidelines, voice and tone guidelines, brand guidelines and video guidelines. It has also built a cadre of tools that explain to its enormous marketing team how to use those guidelines and create compelling (and consistent) marketing materials over and over again. More than that, they market those tools to the people who need them the most. Consider how far a little guidance and documentation at your organization could go knowing how impactful this was, and continues to be, for IBM. 5 SIGNS YOU NEED A <strong>BRAND</strong> REFRESH 1 2 3 4 5 Your organization’s visual identity and/or digital experience is dated or neglected, making it difficult for customers to differentiate and create a personal connection with you. Your marketing and communications strategy isn’t clearly developed or aligned with core audiences. There’s a severe distance between your business strategy and audience needs. Internally, there’s a lack of clarity around your brand’s purpose, positioning and persona; organizational character is missing. You’ve experienced significant changes in capabilities and/or growth and your brand hasn’t kept up. 13
Page 1 and 2: BRAND: THE UNBREAKABLE FRAME BY RYA
Page 3 and 4: SO THE INEVITABLE QUESTION THAT IS
Page 5 and 6: DEFINING BRAND & TRUE DIFFERENTIATI
Page 7 and 8: THE BRAND PLAN PYRAMID SECTION I St
Page 9 and 10: THINKING DIGITALLY SECTION II When
Page 11: MARKETING TECHNOLOGY FOR BRAND MARK
Page 15 and 16: EXPRESS YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL CHARACT
Page 17 and 18: CONCLUSION BRAND is no longer simpl
Page 19: ABOUT One North is a digital agency

BRAND THE UNBREAKABLE FRAME

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