Community Branding: Don't Fumble on the Goal Line (Strategy)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing™. Today we are highlighting an important aspect of community branding that is often overlooked.

A community brand is a much more than a logo and a tagline. It hinges on ensuring that the entire community has a very clear understanding of the brand, embraces the positioning and works together to deliver on the brand promise.

That final element—working together to deliver on the brand promise—is the hardest part of the branding process. Once a Day Marketing™ refers to this critical stage as Community Brand Integration. Unfortunately, this is the one step often neglected by stakeholders driving a branding initiative.

As big brands like Apple, Nike, Amazon and Google know, once brand positioning is established you have to work 24/7/365 to ensure that everyone in the company understands the brand and collaborates to deliver on the brand promise to customers.

The same is true with a community brand. Unless there is a concerted effort by the brand developers to educate all community members on the meaning of the brand and how to work together to provide offerings that exceed expectations, the community branding effort will surely fail.

Once a Day Marketing™ has spent substantial time in the trenches with local residents, businesses, organizations, schools, churches, event producers and government entities to accomplish these kinds of positive branding changes. We know that once branding has begun, the community must continuously strive to improve the brand, just like companies do, and this branding process will never end.

The final takeaway for a community: If you launch a branding initiative be sure to have the resources and commitments in place to integrate the brand throughout the community. Don't settle for a logo and a tagline. To be successful you must establish the brand positioning, the identity and as well as the integration. Otherwise you might find yourself fumbling on the goal line.

Once a Day Marketing™ inspires clients to brand bold. Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com. Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com. Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at 11:00am (MT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2016 Once a Day Marketing™. All rights reserved.