Use your brand story like a team compassin the long term!
This last blog, out of a series of 4, emphasizes the way you, as a brand manager, should use your brand story like a team compass
By on Nov 16, 2009This last blog, out of a series of 4, emphasizes the way you, as a brand manager, should use your brand story like a team compass
in the long term, emphasizes the opportunities to do so much more with your marketing plan than just the making of
My 3 previous blogs were about:
1st: How difficult it is to align all brand stakeholders on your marketing plan objectives. People tend to forget the brand objectives youve shown, they don't recall them in the long term. Align your brand team members is a tough job!
2nd: The necessity to reach your brand team members with a marketing message theyll understand quite well, by turning your brand objectives into an understandable team compass: write your brand story!
3rd: How you write the brand story, which is as much important than the content of the story; speak the language of your public and reach out to them.
Avoid the one-time shot!
You came that far: developed your marketing plan, written down your brand story and presented your brand objectives into a story towards your brand team membersso youve been a marketeer, a story teller and a sales manager all-in-one Wow, youve shown some competence there,but do all your efforts pay offin the long term?
What a waste of energy, time and resources would that be, if you wouldnt maximize that sales meeting momentum and failed to continue surfing the wave youve created
Once you have won the attention and the confidence of your public, you shouldnt let go of them anymore, just keep close with your public
Making those efforts to write your brand story for a 'one-time shot' would be a waste of your energy and time but even more importantly, would be a loss of brand resources in the long term. The challenge is not only writing your brand story and transferring it but ensuring a close follow-up afterwards! Do you want to keep the momentum going or do you prefer to burry your peoples focus 2 months after your successful sales meeting? The latter is not an option!
So, before writing down your brand story, you should already think through all different channels youre going to use in the long term, in order to keep linking your people with your common brand goals. Like a good captain who consults his compass on a regular base, you should use your team compass, your brand story, regularly within a certain time frame.
Be as much innovative as possible
So youre going to maximize that team compassone caveat though: look out for the rehearsal pitfall.
- Don't act as the school teacher who likes to repeat things. With adults, this could provoke the opposite effect. If you want your people to live by the brand objectives in the long term, than its your job to keep this momentum going by reinventing yourself again and again, be innovative, and keep seeking for new hooks
- Do not want to be the police man, the controller, people don't want to be ruled, controlled in general and there's no immediate need to control your people, they're adult collaborators, not criminals... If your brand team members are deviating from the common brand objectives you have no reason at all for blaming them, nor ruling them, before youve cleared out the situation. Go back in time and try to find out where youve lost them and for what reason!
- By using different techniques and a diversity of promotional tools youll be able to ban routine, avoid the rehearsal pitfall and be as innovative as possible. The art is to keep your team members focused on the brand objectives, without them noticing anything, without them being too suspicious about your scenario
Use your team compass regularly to check your course
Like a sailer who uses his compass non-stop to maintain his course in order to approach his endpoint without detours , so can you evaluate on a regular base your co-workers' attitude regarding the marketing plan objectives, simply by applying some small actions. How do you measure your teams temperature?
Before we dive into the implementation part, you need to help yourself first: develop a flowchart(ex. gantt chart)in which you plan all your tactics that youll implement within a certain time frame. Good luck to you if you dont need a document nor a time line thatll guide you when starting to implement all different tacticsLet me help you with a summary of tactics that you can start using as of tomorrow:
1. Formal tactics:
- Start your future brand team meetings with one opening slide presenting your brand story: use no more than 3 headliners into your story:
- brands objective(qualitative) = how excellent you want to get!
- brands objective(quantitive) = how much you want to get!
- main customer program thatll serve your brand objective(s) = how youre going to get your objectives!
- Continue your future brand team meetings with an update of your business results versus your marketing objectives from your marketing plan through a handy scorecard(A5 format). Dont forget to communicate with your public; the use of data is good, too much data isnt! Rather demonstrate your actual course versus your plan through the use of metaphors: ex. In this second quarter, weve conquered the Mont Blanc(4810m), and now were over half way up to top of the K2(8611m). An image speaks a thousand words so why dont you show pictures of these 2 mountain peaks in a nice slide. Every time, you make progress, you replace your current mountain by a steeper one, ex. Machhapuchhare.Ill let you google what height youre on now!
- Close your future brand team meetings with a round table and hand your co-workers the opportunity to talk and discuss the current situation and measure the temperature in your brand team. Let them speak freely about their daily performances and do not try to project solutions for all issues that they come up with. These are all valuable take aways, very usefull information that will enable you to analyse your current business situation.
- Link milestones to your brands success and use any opportunity to celebrate your sales success and to expose your common brand objectives. You can attach wall posters with your message in your meeting rooms, develop plate-mats, hey youre the marketeer, you know whats best for your people
- Add your brand story or your brand objectives or a metaphor to your usual internal mailings and surprise your people with your rich fantasy!
2. Informal tactics:
- Interfer with your office co-workers during corridor talks about their personal attitude and try to gain their insights and gather feedback on how they feel about your common business results and progress.
- Talk with your sales reps during field visits about their personal perception on common business results and progress.
3. Uncommon tactic:
As you evaluate your brand message retention with your sales people through an internal recall questionnaire, why not do the same for your common brand objectives! Make it a light questionnaire, put some humour in it, but test it! Staying on track is the message, and therefore you need to stay alert at all times, measure your teams temperature and refer to your common objectives!
Start now with being a marketeer who tells brand stories
Story telling is a new innovative approach to hold your teams attention, but its your job to keep the fire burning within each of your brand team members over a longer period of time. Story telling makes people look at their brand from another perspective but story telling forces you as a brand manager to think more profound about the essence of your brandso you could grab your teams attention with your brand story and have them alignedin the long term.