By integrating your brand strategy with your business strategy
Whether you plan to grow organically, merge, make an acquisition, a strategic alliance, joint venture or diversify, your brand and how you harness the power of your brand, will be key to your success.
Getting your brand strategy right and ensuring it underpins the whole organisation, will galvanise your staff to move forward with a shared understanding of where they are heading.
Strong brands create brand preference: existing customers stay loyal; new customers are more easily attracted; and staff retention improves as it’s easier to attract the best new talent.
“If more executives understood the economics of customer behaviour and the power of brand preference they would be better armed to generate better financial performance.” Forbes
We share our knowledge
Often a first and vital step involves providing all members of the senior management team, and sometimes the Board, with a clear account of how and why investing in a brand reliably increases revenue and cuts cost.
Years of hyperbole and jargon around the word ‘branding’ have understandably created confusion and cynicism.
“Brand positioning, brand story, brand architecture, brand equity, brand identity .. and on it goes. My first priority is to de-mystify the subject and explain in plain English/ Anglo Saxon what branding is and why it can make an organisation more successful.
Clare Crawshay-Williams, Managing Director, Dean & Donaldson
We evaluate the status quo
We assess how well your brand is currently supporting growth and identify any areas where performance could be improved.
We start by conducting a meticulously designed staff survey.
Whilst we may need to talk to your customers at some point, we believe that staff should always be the initial focus. If you don’t have enthusiastic employees, proud of the organisation they work for, your growth will be constrained.
Your staff are also the most reliable, well informed and cost effective source of information about your brand.
“Talking to the staff first makes very good sense. They know what’s going on at the coal face, and without a motivated workforce no organisation can be successful.”
Mark O’Connell, People Director, Dean & Donaldson
We do our due diligence rigorously
“Without the staff workshops the management team wouldn’t have known or been able to prioritise the operational changes required to increase brand performance.”
Chris Cleaver, Brand Strategy Director, Dean & Donaldson
If the findings indicate that the brand can do more to create growth, we propose a bespoke programme of work that allows us to make detailed recommendations.
This phase of the work may include workshops with members of staff, consumer research, a creative review and an appraisal of all key strategic documents such as the business plan, marketing plan, budget plan.
We want to create a lively dialogue within the organisation about the brand, and how to use it to create a differentiated customer experience.
We work with you to develop solutions
We work with you to create brand values that are relevant, appealing, memorable and differentiating – values that become fully embedded across the entire organisation.
We work with you to create a brand that’s effectively and consistently communicated across every channel.
We help you develop ways to benchmark progress and measure the return on investment in your brand and marketing activity.
We develop internal communication tools that keep the brand fresh, and front of mind
We create marketing and communication strategies, and the plans to execute them, leaving you with all the tools to make things happen.
“Making sure we don’t re-invent any wheels is a key component of the way we do things at D&D.
Nothing irritated me more over my years at Savills than consultants who came in and ignored good and useful work we’d already done.”
Alison Parkhouse, Marketing Director, Dean & Donaldson
We put the right support in place
As well as working with you to ensure you have all the know-how needed to implement the solutions, our People Director can help you recruit the right internal resource so you have all the support you need going forward.
We can recommend suitable suppliers from our roster of rigorously vetted third party individuals and agencies.
We are can act as mentors or as a sounding board once the implementation phase of work has started.