What Is My Brand?
About a year ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “What is a Brand?” In it, I reprinted an article that my father, Carlos Hidalgo, had written answering that very question.
In the post, my dad calls out three parts of a brand: Character, Physical Attributes, and Style. (I won’t take time here to elaborate on these three. You can read about them in the actual post.) Since posting that article, I’ve had a number of conversations about branding, and have found myself helping companies conduct “brand audits” around these three parts of a brand.
So, I thought I’d offer up some questions to help you and your team take a look at your brand to see if there any disconnects.
- Describe the Character:
- How do our customers describe us?
- How does our staff describe us?
- How do our customers say we treat them?
- Why does our company exist?
- What value do we bring to the market?
- Why is what we do important to our market?
- Describe the Physical Attributes:
- What do we do?
- What do we provide?
- What makes our product/service better than our competitors?
- Why should anyone buy from us?
- What can we say about our product/service that no one else can?
- Describe the Style:
- What is our company’s “personality”?
- What is our company’s “demeanor”?
- What is our approach to change?
- Where are we on the “conservative” to “cutting edge” scale?
- What words would be used to describe our look, feel, design, etc.?