partner plus brand basics session 3 slides

Cisco Confidential © 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 1

Brand Basics Part 3: Bringing Your Brand to Life John Bowen, Alex Millet and Mohammad Saigol Brand Consultants

18 April 2013

Presented by

© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2

• Brand consultancy

• B2B and corporate focus

• Strategy and design


• Part 1: Understanding Brand (4/4/13)

What we mean by brand, what value it can offer to a business, and how you might begin to think about creating or improving your own brand.

• Part 2: Defining Your Brand (4/11/13)

Guidelines for helping you define what your brand stands for in the context of your competitors, your customers, and your own company and culture.

• Part 3: Bringing Your Brand to Life (4/18/13)

Information and advice about translating your company’s brand strategy into customer brand experiences through messaging and design.


• What brand identity consists of and how to develop yours

• How to express your brand through tone and messaging

• How to communicate your brand internally to build brand culture

• Some suggestions to help small and medium sized businesses get the most out of a brand building initiative

© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 6 Cisco Confidential Cisco Confidential © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 6

“Most of the logos we admire more often than not are part of a well-designed system.”

Brand Identity Essentials


An opportunity to express your strategy

An opportunity to increase awareness and recognition

An opportunity to differentiate


Highly recognizable attribute

Strong cultural associations

A powerful branding tool


Specialized topic area

Some positioning considerations

Some practical considerations


Aa Bb Cc

Aa Bb Cc


Aa Bb Cc

Aa Bb Cc

cap height

x height


The quick brown fox jumped

over the lazy dog. tracking,

or kerning

leading


Brand photography

Product photography

Illustrations and infographics


Another tool to communicate and create differentiation

Often based on, or aligned to, visual elements of the logo

Consistent use builds equity


This slide is based on one of Cisco’s graphic elements


Explore existing resources

Explore local resources

Explore the web


If your company were a person, what type of person would it be?

A bridge from strategic language to creative language

The foundation for your brand tone of voice


It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it

A way to operationalize your brand personality

Important for sales and service focused brands


• Create three specific guidelines based on each of your brand personality traits

• Look outside of your category for additional guideline ideas

• Come up with three specific tonal actions your employees can easily remember and be held accountable for


How you focus your messages toward specific audiences

Builds on the foundation you created in Part 2

A strategic briefing tool


A promise to the outside world is meaningless if your people aren’t internally prepared to deliver on it.


Educating your employees about your brand

A way to record, refine (or reinvent) and reinforce your “way of doing things”

How you align brand promise to customer experience


Advocacy Action Understanding Awareness


Top-down communications

Bottom-up communications

Deeper immersion tools Brand

Messages


“What is exciting in terms of corporate brand culture is that unlike product brands, its importance is tangible, incontrovertible.”

Brand Culture


Some tips and ideas as you begin your branding initiative…


• DO take brand seriously

• DO brand internally first, and externally second

• DO create brand guidelines


• DON’T confuse “I like it” with “It’s right for the company”

• DON’T spend money without clear goals

• DON’T trust your social media strategy to an intern


• 5 branding DOs

• 5 branding DON’Ts

• 5 tips for getting the most out of social media

• 5 tips for developing your brand on a budget

• 5 areas to invest in brand


The Brand Basics course has shown you what brand is and why it’s valuable, how to begin developing your own brand promise, and how to think about expressing your brand both visually and tonally.

Branding is a big topic. We’ve only scratched the surface. We hope you’ll read the workbooks and review some of the additional resources.

Now it’s up to you. Your brand already exists, and it’s growing – make sure you cultivate it into the powerful, business-building tool it has the potential to be.

Thank you for joining us!

Thank you.

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