Your brand vision: the four step guide to success

Making a company tick. It all starts with knowing what you stand for. We call it your ‘brand vision’.

Get your brand vision right and you’ll see results fast. Teams working together better. Colleagues fired up. Promises to stakeholders kept.

Why bother with a brand vision?

Your brand vision is a powerful business tool. It helps you:

• Focus your people’s enthusiasm and passion
• Decide what to do (and what not to do)
• Boost efficiency and effectiveness
• Put customers first

What makes a good brand vision?

You need four things:

• A compelling position that sets out where you’re going
• Values that guide what you do and don’t do
• A personality that shapes your tone of voice and how you act
• An essence that sums it all up in two words

Keep it simple. Avoid jargon. Everyone in your business needs to get it.

How to create your brand vision

1. Find your position

Your position needs to balance what customers and colleagues want with what your business needs. Look at market trends and values. Spot gaps you could fill.

Get everyone involved, from the top down. Especially the c-suite and frontline staff.

We start by developing ‘territories’ – directional options. We do this in a workshop to make sure we’ve covered everything and the senior team’s on board. Then we test it inside and outside the business.

2. Choose your values

Your position needs backup. That’s where values come in. Pick 3 or 4 that are powerful, easy to understand and different from everyone else’s. They’ll drive your brand forward and help you stand out.

3. Define your personality

Your personality shapes how you communicate with customers and colleagues.

It should guide how you do things. Make it practical – almost obvious. That way, your people will find it easy to use every day, and customers will start to recognise your brand just by how you talk.

4. Sum it up

Try to boil your vision down to two words. It’s not easy, so don’t be clever for the sake of it. Work through lots of options. And always test them internally to make sure people get what you mean.

It’s worth the effort. We’ve seen it transform companies time and time again.

There you have it. The steps to define and clearly spell out your brand vision. Want to know more about how we can help?

Written by Gary Moss, Brand Alignment Partner at Definition.