Our approach to branding
PHILOSOPHY OF BRAND
Far more than a logo or graphic identity, a brand is an enterprise itself: its culture, its strategies, the focus of its future and a key driver of its success. A brand should rouse, startle and shape new thinking, attitudes and behaviors.
It should ignite your enterprise internally with the power of your ethos and courage and should stir new, external audiences to sharper, more eager engagement because of your convictions. A brand should help shape the cultures you operate in and make a statement about the human potential you impact.
PROPRIETARY APPROACH
Imagine a brand as an Octagon that hosts each of these intangibles, all of which play a critical, ‘sine qua non’ role in a brand’s formation:
Vision (where you want to be in 3-5 years, your quest), Mission (what the organization needs to make the Vision real), Core Values (your ethos), Total Offering (elevator speech), Audiences (and the insights that bind them to you), Promises (guarantees you make, why your audiences should trust you), Personality (your archetype), Name (more of a problem than you’d imagine), and Positioning (your reason for being, why anyone should care).
BRAND AS PURE STRATEGY
Integrating business, marketing, communications and culture on one page, in less than 300 words, a Brand Octagon captures a total system and so is both a practical management tool and pure business strategy.
Most clients frame their Octagons for all to see; they have been translated into languages from Icelandic to Turkish to Chinese, in the East to the West all around the world.
COMPREHENSIVE IMPACT
A Brand Octagon is only a starting point, a means, not an end. It is the heart and soul of an energized corporate culture. It is the most compelling source of external communications and content strategy that we have ever known.
More and more it is the basis for co-creation, community building and entry into the fourth age of marketing. It is the filter through which you can successfully migrate your brand to foreign and distant shores. It is the basis for five-year plans and the measurement systems that track KPIs and ROI.
FOR WHOM IS INTENDED
The Brand Octagon is for companies of any size, category or country of origin. The Brand Octagon process is particularly important for companies passing through crossroads and stages of development, repositioning, launching an IPO or even launching a start-up.
The Brand Octagon is for countries. The Brand Octagon is for individuals. The Brand Octagon is for CMOs and Management Teams for whom their brand is their passion and source of competitive differentiation, growth and success.
