This article is excerpted and digested from Jack Burke’s Creating Customer Connections: How To Make Customer Service A Profit Center For Your Company. Originally published by Merritt Publishing in 1997, this popular book remains in print at Silver Lake Publishing. Ordering information can be found by clicking the book title above.

Author’s note: “Branding” has been a buzzword for a decade or more. Yet everyone, expert and business owner, seems to have difficulty defining it. I maintain that the difficulty stems back to the very basics of a corporate culture. If you don’t know who you are, how can you define it for others? This excerpt from Creating Customer Connections may help you to better understand. – Jack Burke


In Columbia exists an isolated, pre-columbian civilization known as the Kogi. The Kogi are thinkers with a very complex and rich intellectual structure. They believe that the universe was first an intellectual life force, known as Aluna. Creation, in turn, was brought about through the thinking, the imagination, of Aluna. They define Aluna as memory and possibility. In other words, first came an idea, then the process of thinking through all the possibilities of that idea, and finally a plan.

Unfortunately, when it comes to marketing, all too often the action comes before the thinking. Perhaps, we’re all to blame. After all, speed is the essence, action is king. Be pro-active. Beat the competition. Even a bad campaign is better than no campaign. Meet the deadline. The faster, the better.

The gurus of marketing expound on the how’s and the what’s. Here’s how to market in the yellow pages, here’s what to do to build your image. Yet, seldom do we hear anyone delve into the definition of our image, who we really are.

Defining Your Corporate Character

As individuals, our formative years are lessons in developing character. We learn from our parents, our teachers, our churches. Many of us were involved in Scouting, where we were first taught the attributes of character and then we proceeded to build that character through action. First we were taught the ideal, then we were given a plan.

Direct mail specialist, Herschell Gordon Lewis, talks about staying in character with your image. He often cites the example that the image of Albert Einstein does not project with a slogan, “Have I got a great deal for you!” One of the best examples of uncharacteristic marketing was when the banks used to give away free gadgets for opening an account. In my mind, that created a carnival-like hucksterism that just did not compute with the staid, conservative, stable image of banks. It was sort of like a used car dealer giving away tickets to the opera. Neither is in character with the image.

It would be very easy at this point to say, “So what is your image?”. But how many businesses can really answer that question? How many corporate meetings have ever been held to determine the essence of the corporate image? Too few, at least in my opinion.

If you look closely at most business, the marketing is a hodgepodge of good ideas without any cohesion to the character of the business. We have ad campaigns, promotional giveaways, community alliances, sporting sponsorships, telephone advertising, stationery, company logo’s, signage, and all the various components of marketing. Yet, how often is there any continuity? How often do all of these components work together in concert to reflect the corporate image?

The RED Stop Sign

Defining your image need not be a dilemma. Merely wave the RED flag: Research, Evaluate, Determine. I’ve found the RED stop sign analogy extremely helpful in nearly every business, as well as personal, situation. Like a red light traffic signal, it reminds me to stop, Research the situation, Evaluate the data and Determine a course of action.

Since I’ve been known to occasionally jump into projects based on gut-level emotions, the RED stop sign has proven to be a tremendously valuable safeguard. Sometimes it can prevent ill-conceived actions, other times it can help mitigate the loss and sometimes even turn it around. Whatever the situation, we all need a RED stop sign at times.

Research

Here’s a little test that anyone can undertake. Ask each of your employees, including yourself, to anonymously define what they perceive the image of your company to be. I would suggest a format of one or two sentences, followed by five or six descriptive words. For instance, an employee of an insurance agency might reply:

“Our company has an image of stable reliability. Words that apply to our company are: friendly, experienced, stable, security, reliability.”

Compile all the replies, except yours. List any of the descriptive words that are found more than once and compile a list from the most frequently used word to the least. Group the descriptive sentences that seem to be similar, again from the most common to the least.

Now compare that list with yours. If you have better than a 50% match, congratulations, you have the essentials of a defined image. On the other hand, if the comparison looks like two different entities, you need to go to work on defining your corporate persona.

For the truly brave of heart, repeat this little project a second time with ten of your best clients. I mention bravery, because it takes courage to face the truth. In many cases, they will have a totally different image than you. Somewhere within the middle of all this lies your true image, which must be reconciled with your marketing program.

Evaluate

Armed with the data from your survey and the various components of your current marketing program, it is time for some serious evaluation.

A mission statement is the perfect starting point. If you have one, how does it relate to the results of your survey? (If you don’t have one, go back to the basics of developing a mission statement before proceeding further.) A mission statement (what your business plans to accomplish) and the definition of your corporate image are not identical, but they must work together. The main question is whether your corporate image is suited to the accomplishment of the mission.

If your mission statement centers on providing quality service, but your image is high-volume, lowest-cost, there may be a dichotomy that needs to be addressed. If your mission is long term stability, but your marketing emphasis and direction is changing constantly.......I think you’re getting the idea. The two must be compatible.

It is now time to begin evaluating each of the components to your overall marketing in much the same way. Don’t start with your latest advertising campaign. Save that for last. Begin at the beginning, much the same way as if you were a new start-up.

Take my company, Sound Marketing, as an example. Our name was chosen as representative of audio productions used in marketing, training and education. Sound as a noun reflected the audio aspect, while as an adjective it meant healthy, reliable, good. Since education and training can be construed as both internal and external marketing, we decided on Sound Marketing as a name that reflected both our image and our mission.

We then wanted to have a logo that reflected our commitment to the corporate structure, but also have a sense of artistic freedom. To achieve this we selected an award-winning designer of music albums to create a logo, rather than a traditional graphic artist. This talented artist designed an “S” logo that intimated perpetual motion and creativity, coupled with a convention block-style print, but dropping the crossbar in the letter A. The result: a logo that synchronized with our image. Since day one, we have only made one change over the years and that was the color a bit-too-conservative gray to a more vibrant blue.

I tell that story to reinforce the need to start your evaluation process with the basics. Your logo, your print style, your signage, your office decor. Do they reflect the real corporate you?

From there, move on to evaluation of your brochures, newsletters, flyers, direct mail pieces, yellow page ads, and finally your print and media advertising. At each point visualize your corporate image and ask if it fits with that image. You may be surprised at how frequently there is a divergence between image and marketing.

Finally review your operational mannerisms, from the value added benefits you supply your clients, to the operator answering the phone and your sales approach. If your image is that of a friend to your clients, how frequently do you make contact with them? A friend would occasionally stop by to visit, do you make “Howdy” calls or visits?

Do you perceive your image to be well-organized and efficient, but have sales personnel who have to sit on their briefcases to close them? Do you portray yourself as a caring, service-oriented firm, but have a telephone operator with a tendency towards moody brusqueness? Do you market “full-service”, but fail to maintain hours that are convenient for the lifestyles of your clients? Do you position your firm as an advisor to the leaders of business, but fail to belong to the Rotary or other organization where such leaders congregate?

Determine

You’ve now completed both the research and the evaluation, so it’s time to make a determination. Easier said than done! If you are truly lucky, you
may only need some fine tuning adjustments to either your image or your marketing. More often than not though, you’ll find some gaping differences between the two. So which do you change?

Normally I recommend sticking to your image and changing your marketing.
However, there is an exception (as always). Refer back to the results of the survey of your ten best clients. Does their image of you coincide with your image of you? If it doesn’t, you may want to think of changes to your definition of your image. Sticking with the old 80/20 rule (eighty percent of your business comes from twenty percent of your clients), their image of you is the image with which they choose to do business. In other words, it works. And since these are your preferred clients, you may want to adapt your visualization of your image to meet theirs.

Once you’ve locked down the exact image, go down the marketing list to see where there are differences between the two. Rate each one on a 1-10 basis (one being the least important, ten being the most). Starting with the 10’s, if any, and working down, discuss and decide what changes can be made to bring the marketing in line with the image.

Once done, the Determination section also means action, so determine what will be done, who is responsible for doing it and when it will be accomplished. You’re now on track to effectively market your organization because that marketing will represent, polish and build the image you are trying to maintain.

A Process, Not A Project

Please consider everything we’ve discussed as an ongoing process, not a one time project. Depending on the exact circumstances of your organization, periodically review your marketing with your image--never going beyond a year without a full review.

Jack Burke is the president of Sound Marketing, Inc., host/producer of Audio Insurance Outlook, editor of ProgramBusiness.com newsletter, and author of both Relationship Aspect Marketing and Creating Customer Connections. For more information, please visit http://www.soundmarketing.com, call 1-800-451-8273, or e-mail jack@soundmarketing.com.

Copyright 1997 by Jack Burke. Used with permission.