360 degree branding

Published on October 22, 2005 By Rajiv Badlani In Business

Shelley Lazarus, the head of Ogilvy, talks about 360 degree branding here http://www.ogilvy.com/360/ . Take the time to visit. It’s well worth it. Even if you’re not in marketing. In fact, it is more relevant to the heads of companies than to marketing people. The concept is simple and powerful. Your brand (and this includes corporate brands), must be relevant to your customer; must stand for something that she or he values; something he considers meaningful. Then, all your communication; ALL of it, must consistently reflect exactly those values. Not just in what you say, but also in what you DO. Because you have no control over what your stakeholders’ opinion of your brand is. That is something they determine themselves. And they don’t go only by claims. A brand is what a brand does. Quite obviously, if what you say is contradicted by what you do, your credibility suffers. And if they can’t trust you, you’re dead in the water. You might as well close shop and go home.

You can say you are gorgeous, but must you say it on an eyesore of a hoarding? Behaving this way doesn't make sense and companies aren't getting away with it as easily as they used. Except for those rare companies that have a monopoly product. Which, in today’s day and age, is not an easy thing to achieve. 360 degree branding is a far easier and more logical alternative. People want to deal with people they trust. So, make sure that all the behaviour of your company reflects what you want it to say. Most of the time it breaks down at the last mile. One junior guy doing something that contradicts the reputation you’ve spent millions of dollars and years to build. Like putting your logo on a plastic bag for instance, and making a statement on your behalf that says: “We know that use-once-and-throw is irresponsible behaviour, particularly when using a material that will take 3000 years to biodegrade and will leave huge problems for future generations, but because using plastic is cheaper than reusable cloth bags, we’re going to be irresponsible anyway. We don’t think you’re smart enough to figure all this out and who cares what you think anyway” Ouch! If you’re the head of a company that sets serious store by your brand values this probably made you wince. There are better and very affordable alternatives available at www.badlani.com/bags/ Cloth bags get reused as many as 500 times and putting your logo on one is a great way to express your brand values. Write to me at rajiv at badlani.com and we'll be happy to design a program specially suited to your brand story and your audiences.

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